Homeowners’ associations are meant to build community, not barricade it with bureaucracy.

But when five long-standing board members weaponized the rulebook against everyone, one homeowner decided it was time to stage an overthrow that would restore some much-needed order to their community!

Read on for the full story.

Revolution against our HoA

My wife and I moved into a 64-townhome community that was 10 years old at the time.

The HOA board was comprised of 5 members who were original homeowners when the community started and had been the sole board members ever since.

And they ruled that neighborhood with an iron fist.

Their sense of entitlement was absolutely wild.

They thrived on their quarterly walkthroughs of the neighborhood, writing up every single home for some kind of violation, no matter how minor.

EVERYONE got a violation letter.

Even the smallest details were put under a magnifying glass.

Our first letter, during our first month living there, said that our garage door paint was starting to peel (it was a 2cm scrape where the panels met). It needed to be repainted.

The siding needed to be power-washed (there was a patch of green moss behind a bush), and the sliding door on the deck was dirty (just some dirt on the bottom from recent rain) and needed to be washed.

We had 30 days to fix the issues or begin accruing a fee of $25 a day until they were resolved.

Turns out, the HOA leadership was focused on all the wrong things while real issues were going neglected.

I asked around, and everyone gets these ridiculously petty letters every quarter.

No matter what you did to maintain your townhome, you were going to get a letter about something.

As this was going on, none of the major issues in the neighborhood were being addressed.

After a decade since construction, the ground had settled unevenly, and many homes had standing water issues that wouldn’t drain after a storm.

Rainwater would sit for 5–7 days in people’s lawns.

More importantly, there had been a legal fight with the town since the community started about our road being “dedicated,” meaning the town would be responsible for snow removal.

There was already a lawsuit in the works on behalf of the homeowner’s, but they hadn’t seen any real traction with it.

Our HOA dues included paying for our own snow removal (which we shouldn’t have to). We had been paying an attorney for ten years to fight this, with no resolution in sight.

So they decided it was time to start sticking it to the man.

Fast forward two years, and a few of us had enough.

We decided to band together to replace the board at the next annual meeting.

But they were thwarted before they could even begin.

The existing board got wind of this and hit us all with pages of issues with our properties.

If you had outstanding issues, you were not in good standing with the community and therefore couldn’t run for a board position or even vote.

Little did the corrupt leadership know, this would only strengthen the bond between them.

This petty move only brought the community closer.

We spent the weekend before the meeting helping each other clean out our HOA honey-do lists.

We took pictures, documented everything, then had the U.S. Mail certify delivery of each packet with the completed list and photos to the HOA board — who lived 75 feet away.

Come board night, oddly enough, the lawyer was there to give an update: no progress had been made with the township on dedicating our road.

He stuck around as we moved to the elections for the next board.

The board keeps trying to hold the homeowners back, but this time, they weren’t backing down.

We brought our signed petitions to add our names to the ballot.

The board said we weren’t eligible because we all had outstanding issues with our properties.

We called crap, showing our receipts from the post office confirming they received our completed lists with documentation.

They replied they hadn’t reviewed them yet.

We told them that wasn’t our problem and that we were in good standing.

This time, they had legal representation on their side.

The lawyer, overhearing this, stated that we were eligible to be on the ballot if we could confirm the issues were resolved before the meeting.

The HOA president glared at the lawyer, but the lawyer just shrugged and said, “The rules are the rules.”

The voting finally led to some real change.

With the exception of the 5 existing board members voting for themselves and each other, we were voted in nearly unanimously.

I led the revolution because I was tired of the petty crap when there were real problems in the neighborhood.

Sadly, the rest of the newly elected board voted me as President. I had no idea what I was doing.

But regardless, they got right to work on some much-needed quality of life changes for everyone.

But we spent the next few sessions removing all the dumb violations from most of the neighbors.

We went through the by-laws to really focus on what mattered.

What happened next?

Their work with the lawyer wasn’t done yet.

Turns out that lawyer was a friend of the previous President and was in no hurry to resolve anything because he was enjoying our excessive bill.

I notified him that if it wasn’t resolved in six months, we’d find new representation.

He was actually good at his job when pressed to do it.

He won the case, the town appealed, and tried to drag it out.

He fast-tracked the appeal, since it had been going on for ten years — and we won that, too.

The town dedicated our road.

Then the lawyer argued that it should have been done years ago.

He claimed it wasn’t him slowing things down, but the town.

Then some cash started coming their way too.

He ended up getting us a settlement from the judge for back pay on all the snow removal we had paid for.

We used that settlement to install French drains across much of the community to clear the standing water issues.

With the money left over, we fixed a lot of the neighborhood problems the HOA should’ve been addressing all along — fences and sidewalks in disrepair, dead trees, and shrubs.

The rest is pretty much history.

It felt great getting all that done without dipping into our capital reserve fund.

I remained President until we moved a few years later.

Our family had outgrown the townhome.

Now we live in a newer, larger development… with a new HOA.

I was asked to run for a position on it.

I replied, “Not a chance… but I will lead a coup d’état if I need to.”

From dead shrubs to dead weight, these homeowners removed everything holding their neighborhood back from greatness.

What did Reddit have to say?

Surely these self righteous board members had a “violation” or two of their own!

Down with the rules! But first, some reconnaissance.

The whole concept of an HOA is puzzling to some people, and rightfully so.

It’s so satisfying watching corrupt leadership topple.

Ultimately, the homeowners took back their neighborhood one bylaw at a time and turned a petty playground into a real community.

We love to see it.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.