I’m not sure who came up with the idea for an HOA, but whoever it was almost certainly had way too much time on their hands.

That’s the only possible way you can explain being that invested in what their neighbors do with their own property.

This couple moved their elderly mother in after hip surgery and the neighbor, the HOA president, accused them of having an illegal renter.

We’ll call my neighbors Liz and Dave.

They were nice folks who ran afoul of the homeowner’s association (HOA) when the busybody president, who lived next door to them (we’ll call her Joan), got it in her rotted turnip for a brain that Liz and Dave had taken in an illegal renter.

Renting out rooms was strictly against HOA policy.

They had not rented out a room. Liz’s elderly mother had moved in with them after breaking her hip and being unable to live alone anymore.

She made them produce birth certificates and drivers’ licenses, and was embarrassed when they proved it.

Joan sent them a very threatening letter about their “unlawful renter” and how fines would accrue if the “unlawful renter” didn’t vacate immediately.

It was accompanied with a copy of that part of the bylaws and pictures of Liz’s elderly mother taken through windows of their house. Creep alert!

They wrote back that there was no renter and explained the situation.

Joan did not believe that “story” and had the HOA lawyer start sending them certified letters about their continued violations with ever increasing insane fines.

This went over poorly.

Liz and Dave got their own lawyer to fire back a cease and desist letter. After many increasingly aggressive back and forths, it all culminated in an association meeting where Liz, Dave and Liz’s mother came in with ID and birth certificates, and basically made Joan look like the pimple on the backside of humanity she was.

The neighbor thought they were lying  and promised revenge.

They won, but Joan was furious, and swore she’d get them for something.

Joan maintained until the day I left for college (last I knew of her) that Liz and Dave had forged those driver’s licenses and birth certificates to keep their unlawful renter.

So, when the couple painted their house, they made sure to check the by-laws.

Cut to the following fall.

Liz and Dave needed to repaint the house after making some siding repairs post-hurricane. They carefully checked the bylaws for approved paint colors and picked out a fairly bland shade of something between brown and tan.

They gave the painters the color info listed in the bylaws to the painters and painting happened.

Even so, she got them on a technicality.

Less than a week after their house was painted, they got another certified letter from the HOA lawyer stating their house was the wrong color.

They fired back evidence they ordered exactly what was in the bylaws.

Well, after many back and forths it turned out the approved color and the swatches on file with the board no longer matched because the manufacturer had changed the colors in their line slightly due to some kind of formula change.

Their house was a few shades darker than it should have been.

See, the bylaws listed the manufacturer color info “for convenience” but the shades actually had to match the official swatches you could have theoretically borrowed from the board and gotten color matched.

Nobody ever did that, but Joan was out for blood after the “unlawful renter” and forced them to have to repaint.

They found an even better one and pounced on it.

Liz and Dave were taking no chances on the second try.

They got the swatch set from the HOA. For some reason it made no distinction between approved accent colors (most houses in the neighborhood had brightly colored doors) or house colors.

They decided that if they had to paint their house a second time, Joan, the dog that caught the car, could live next to the most garish option they had.

It was pumpkin orange.

The painters asked multiple times if they were sure. They were very sure. You couldn’t see the orange from inside, but you sure could from next door!

Joan made many attempts to object to this, but it was within the letter of the HOA rules, and the house stayed orange until long after I moved away.

I’m sure Reddit loves this tale of sticking it to the HOA!

It seems that they’re all the same.

This person says she honestly deserved worse.

Let people express themselves!

Some people just say no.

They probably could have called the police.

Seriously, y’all, mind your business.

Doing otherwise isn’t going to end up in your favor.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.