Imagine moving into a neighborhood with an HOA. Would you assume you had no choice but to pay the dues and abide by the rules, or would you try to get rid of the annoying HOA?

In this story, one mom is actually successful at abolishing the HOA! Joining the HOA board is just the beginning.

Keep reading to see how it all started and the very satisfying ending.

Mom takes down the HOA from the inside.

My neighborhood does not have a Homeowner’s Association. At least, not anymore.

When my parents first moved in, my older sibling maybe two years old and with me as a little glowworm, there was an HOA. They took money from the neighborhood in exchange for their services.

At first, and for quite a while, my parents just kind of shrugged it off. The HOA shoveled the snow off the streets in winter and dealt with trash collection, so they were doing something worthwhile, right?

Ha! No.

The HOA wasn’t responsible for any of that!

The city controlled the snowplows and garbage trucks, not the HOA. But still, there was the illusion of effort.

And besides, one summer they decided to contact a company to plant new trees all over the neighborhood! The fact that the company was owned by the son of the head of the HOA was totally coincidental.

The trees were the beginning of the end for the HOA.

Grandma noticed a big problem.

Why? Well. My grandma on my dad’s side was visiting when they came around to plant the trees. My grandma, who is a certified master gardener. And so she stared through the windows of our house as the guys planting the trees just. dropped the saplings on the grass. still with their roots inside the bag they came in. No holes dug, no holes cut, just a bagged sapling lying on the grass like a pathetic and sad stick.

The saplings laid there all night. No one came back to actually do their job and plant them.

My (master gardener) grandma mentioned offhand that those saplings were going to die unless they got in the soil.

And something clicked in my mom’s head. She was paying the HOA money, actual money, every month, while both she and my dad worked, taking care of two very little kids, sending us to daycare and preschool and arranging babysitters and feeding us, and the Homeowner’s Association was just going to pull this half effect nonsense instead of do what she’s paying them for? No. No freaking way.

Now, OP’s mom is on the inside.

So she showed up to the head of the HOA’s house and basically demanded that the trees get planted properly like she’s apparently paying for them to.

The head of the HOA, so excited for someone actually caring about the neighborhood, made their second mistake. They asked if Mom wanted to join the HOA.

She agreed. The trees were planted, but most didn’t make it.

My grandma was right.

OP’s mom was not your typical HOA board member.

First things first, my mom showed up to the next HOA meeting. There were like, five people there. No wonder they asked Mom to join, they desperately needed the people.

So Mom looked at this collection of white people (herself included) who weren’t even paying money to the HOA like the rest of the neighborhood. All the “contractors” the HOA called in were close relatives of other HOA members and weren’t paid by the HOA. After all, they’re family.

So my mom started digging.

She spent pretty much a full summer taking down the HOA before she had to go back to teaching in the fall. With me carted along after her and my sibling old enough to be in school or daycare, she dug through the years of paperwork detailing the HOA’s financial situation.

Ah-ha!

And she found something… extremely enlightening.

The HOA didn’t actually do anything.

Well, they didn’t do anything to benefit the community. Everything they claimed to do was either covered by the individual homeowner or by the city itself. So they were collecting money from all the neighborhood residents under false pretenses, and actually they weren’t even supposed to be in our neighborhood!

Their association’s zone was a whole different neighborhood!

She was busy that summer!

So what is a working mother of two small children to do while her husband is off at work and she’s off for the summer?

She goes door-to-door with pamphlets. Me and my sibling in a stroller as she weaves her way through the neighborhood blocks, pamphlets explaining the situation and how to stop paying for services you’ll never get. Pamphlets that are, of course, written in both English and Spanish to account for the high amount of Latino and Hispanic people in our neighborhood.

And naturally, she got a lawyer. And an accountant.

It put a major dent in her pocket, but if it meant the entire neighborhood wasn’t exploited for money each month, it was worth every penny.

Mom won!

Another HOA member helped her sift through the documents and data and pass out pamphlets and encourage people to show up to the meetings, but had to back out because of work-related reasons.

My mom rolled up to the courthouse flanked by the lawyer and accountant, her kids safe at home with her husband, and had more than enough evidence to get the Homeowner’s Association the heck out of her neighborhood, expose the fraudsters for the frauds they were, and make sure that no HOA would ever push their luck in our neighborhood.

It’s been almost 19 years, and no one’s even tried making another Homeowner’s Association in our neighborhood.

Talk about a neighborhood hero! OP’s mom did a huge service for the whole neighborhood. Wow! Most people who live in an HOA would probably dream of having a neighbor do the same thing.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person has a question.

Another person assumes there weren’t really any consequences.

Here’s a similar story.

It was satisfying.

One person really can make a big difference.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.