There is no shortage of HOA horror stories out there, and they are usually well-deserved.

What happens when an HOA that denies your membership tries to tell you what you can do with your yard?

That’s what is happening in this story, but don’t worry. It all works out in the end.

Take a look!

Satisfying HOA Revenge

About 10 years ago, me and my wife moved to the suburbs to raise our kids.

One of the things we noticed was that our neighborhood had a community pool.

However, you had to be a member of the HOA to use said pool.

That’s weird.

Once we moved in, I contacted them to join, and was told they are “not accepting new members”.

I was surprised to say the least, as I was offering these people free money, but whatever.

Now fast forward 3-4 years, me and wife had both completely forgotten this interaction.

My wife had taken gardening as a hobby and was getting quite good at it, but our backyard is extremely shady.

After many attempts, we decided to put in a raised bed garden in the front yard.

We did our research and it was not illegal to do so in our city, so I built her one.

Sounds beautiful.

It came out great, our front yard looked like something from a magazine (all due to her hard work, not my skill), with many people making a point to walk by and see it.

The neighborhood kids loved snatching berries as they played nearby.

Perfect right?

That’s when the calls started. The city inspector would be by our yard weekly, because someone kept reporting our garden.

Every time he would come by, we would ask if we needed to take it down/it was illegal, and he always said no.

After a while, we got tired of this game (and a little pissed off they wouldn’t come talk to us in person), so we filed a freedom of information act request to get the name of whoever was behind this and confront them.

Once the request was submitted, we never heard back from the city.

The anonymous calls reporting our garden also stopped.

Wow, she just won’t let it go.

This would have been the end of it, but our anonymous friend simply couldn’t leave well enough alone, and a couple weeks later I received a call from what sounded like an older woman.

Caller- “Hello, I’m sorry to tell you that you are going to have to remove your front yard garden”

Me- “Who is this?”

Caller- “That doesn’t matter, you need to remove it right away”

Me- “If you actually want anything to happen, it absolutely does matter, it is not against any city law or regulation, and we’re not taking it out unless you can provide a lot more information”

Caller- “It is against HOA rules. You cannot have a front yard garden in this area per the HOA”

At this point I realize these are the same people that rejected my offer to pay them free $ to join their stupid club, and happily I explained this to her while grinning ear to ear.

I hope they keep adding on to it every year.

I could almost hear the color draining out of her face when she realized who I was.

Needless to say, the garden is bigger today than it ever has been, and we even threw a couple kid playhouses up there, cuz why not!

Why can’t HOAs just let people live their lives?

I’m sure people in the comments will have lots to say, let’s take a look.

Yup, I agree with this commenter.

The person in this comment asks an important question.

Yeah, HOAs are almost never a good option.

This person says to make sure the FOIA request is fulfilled.

Absolutely dodged a bullet here.

Why would anyone ever TRY to join an HOA?

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.