Imagine living in an HOA neighborhood that has a large community space. Would it bother you if one of your neighbors had about 30 friends over, and they hung out in that public space instead of at the neighbor’s home?

In this story, one homeowner is dealing with this exact situation, and they really want the neighbor and his friends to meet somewhere else. However, since they aren’t breaking any laws, it seems impossible to get them to move.

Let’s read all the details.

AITAH for trying to prevent gatherings in my neighborhood from people who don’t live there.

Context: I live in a HOA regulated neighborhood.

Once every 3-5 weeks, one of my neighbors who lives in my neighborhood hosts a “get together” in the island that is in the middle of my neighborhood’s cul-de-sac.

Originally the get together was a small amount of people (5-10ish). My issue is that it’s grown out of proportion.

Now they regularly have 30+ people attending their meetup.

Here are some more details about this meetup.

Caveat: The neighbor hosting is a firefighter who is hosting adult bible group meetups.

The 30+ people that attend bring lawn chairs and grills, and have a whole breakfast out there every 3-5 weeks (roughly once a month).

I don’t have a problem with the idea of a bible group, and I realize that you could change the circumstances and have it be a party and it wouldn’t be any different.

OP is annoyed by the size of the gathering.

My problem: The size has gone beyond “neighborhood” size.

The amount of people who come now have so many cars that the ENTIRE culdesac has cars lined up for parking stretching back towards the entrance of the neighborhood.

They host their gathering on the “public island” in the middle of the cul-de-sac. (Not the neighbor’s actual property). And thus is becomes a pseudo public event.

Again, I don’t have a problem with their expression of religion, just that it isn’t appropriate to have this many people who don’t live in the neighborhood coming here.

They aren’t really breaking any rules.

My neighborhood has regular homeowner events (chili cook offs, holiday events, etc). This I have no problem with because 1) they are usually infrequent and related to holidays and 2) they are all neighborhood homeowners.

The people coming to the bible group don’t even live here, and again not saying the guy hosting can’t have friends over, but the size of the group makes me think he needs to change to being a formal group and find a different public location that is not my neighborhood.

I’ve tried digging into local municipality law to determine if there’s a way to get them to move, and they aren’t breaking any noise levels so that is out the window.

OP isn’t sure how to get them to leave.

The amount of cars they bring does make navigating the roads in my neighborhood a pain, which is the only means I’ve called and filed a complaint on them before.

But the real issue is that because the host is a firefighter, he’s got the cops in his back pocket.

AITAH for wanting to find a way to have them relocate to a location that isn’t in my neighborhood (effectively right outside my house)? And if not, how in the word do I deal with this situation?

If it’s a public space, and they aren’t breaking any laws, OP probably can’t force them to relocate.

Let’s see what Reddit suggests.

Here’s a suggestion to check with the city.

Another person suggests reading the HOA covenants.

It could be worse!

This could be a good first step.

If they’re not causing problems, it doesn’t seem like a big deal.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.