Imagine not just living in an HOA but also living right next door to a horrible HOA president.

That might sound like a worst case scenario, but for the homeowners in this story, it actually gives them the chance to get revenge on the HOA president after she pushes them too far.

Keep reading for all the details.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Vindictive HOA President

I babysat (and elder sat) for the neighbors down the street who committed this malicious compliance, so I was there to hear the ranting as this whole mess went down.

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.

Joan didn’t believe them.

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.

Even when proved wrong, Joan STILL didn’t believe them.

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.

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.

Liz and Dave again went out of their way to make sure they didn’t violate any HOA bylaws.

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.

But they kind of did violate an HOA bylaw.

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.

Liz and Dave were willing to repaint.

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.

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

They got the swatch set from the HOA.

But there was a big problem with the official swatches.

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.

There was nothing Joan could do about it.

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 bet Joan wishes she hadn’t complained about the previous house color being slightly off. She deserved to live next to an orange house after being so mean to her neighbors.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Same!

Another person lives near an orange house.

This person would respond to creepy behavior with more creepy behavior.

Another person is skeptical of the paint colors actually changing.

The HOA President has nobody to blame but herself.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.