Imagine buying a home in an HOA and deciding to run for a position on the HOA board with the goal of disbanding the HOA.

What would you do if you were told you couldn’t disband the HOA and also couldn’t change any of the bylaws. Would you enforce the bylaws, sell your house, or simply vent about it?

In this story, one man is in that exact situation. He’s actually HOA president, and this isn’t the way he wanted things to work out at all. He wanted to disband the HOA, and now he’s stuck enforcing bylaws.

Keep reading to find out why disbanding the HOA turned out to be such a huge failure.

Disband the HOA, they said… it’ll be fun, they said…

Board President of an HOA consisting of a few dozen single family homes.

Begrudgingly ran and was elected last year after we were handed over the HOA from the builder.

Personally? I hate HOAs and don’t think they should exist — anywhere, for any reason.

I’ve lived in HOAs my entire life and have seen very little good come from them.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!

But, me being on the board was preferable to some of the busybodies that live here.

Like the one who complained my grass was dead and wanted me fined — during a drought, with water restrictions, in one of the hottest summers in recent memory.

I view it as attempting to preserve some value in my property, somewhat offsetting the value lost from there being an HOA.

They considered disbanding the HOA.

Community sentiment was that most wanted to disband the HOA, except for one person (Paulie), who felt strongly about keeping it.

When I ran I told everyone, we’ll look into the possibility of disbanding it, and if we can’t, we’ll try to remove the onerous bylaws.

Great, pretty much everyone was on board.

Myself and the other board members put in a ton of time interfacing with the town and the state, ultimately to find out that disbanding is not an option. (Not totally unexpected – there’s a good reason, albeit one due to the town’s ineptitude when approving this subdivision.)

There was another option, but the homeowners didn’t like that either.

So, next best thing – we gather estimates and feedback from the community and put together a presentation, shared during several informational and 1:1 meetings, on what it would cost to amend the bylaws to remove the dumb stuff the builder put in there.

The vote fails. Too expensive.

Which, ok – I respect – it was a bit under $400/home. Not a ton of money in the grand scheme of things but I do know some folks in the neighborhood are financially pinched right now.

This is unfortunate.

We announce that, since the vote to amend failed, we would start enforcing bylaws as written in the future.

(Did I lose your support yet? Keep reading!)

No hard date yet, we need to meet as a board and figure out the particulars.

We did assure everyone that we’re going to take a measured and reasonable approach to enforcement. No measuring lawn height, no forcing people to remove unapproved sheds, for example.

This sounds so frustrating!

Paulie is enraged that an HOA would dare enforce the bylaws that he agreed to when buying the house. The very same Paulie that was desperate to keep the HOA.

My neighbor Tabatha, who was always friendly with me, is now contemplating legal action against the HOA because the bylaws don’t say what she imagines they should say.

Read that again. Let it sink in. Let the waves of stupidity wash over you.

I wonder if anyone feels dumb for voting down amending the bylaws.

At the start of this process, I set the expectations with everyone: if we don’t amend, we’re going to enforce the bylaws as written. We’re not going to pretend they don’t exist (an actual request from several people) because, paraphrasing our HOA’s attorney – who’s been practicing in this area for over 20 years – that would be supremely dumb.

(OK, I think his actual words were, it’ll open yourselves up to legal liability from the town and state, and there’s a risk an unhappy homeowner can bring the HOA to court for not enforcing bylaws.)

Basically, we’re not going to half do this thing and potentially have legal issues down the road. Either we amend the bylaws or we’re stuck with what we have.

And, again, I’ll emphasize we’ll be reasonable with enforcement.

This isn’t what he set out to do at all.

The folks on the board are all extremely busy with work and we don’t have a management company. Nobody’s going to be out looking for violations. We care primarily about the aspect of our subdivision that the town and state (and by extension the EPA) cares about.

Don’t mess with those things and we’ll be fine.

Sorry, I know this is sort of stream of consciousness, I’m just so incredibly mentally fried after all this. You try to fight the good fight, disband or at least reduce the scope of the HOA, and people call you names, accuse you of working behind closed doors (even though we’ve sent out countless emails, presentations, letters, held informational meetings, etc), make wild claims about your intentions and your character, and honestly skirt the line pretty damn close to libel.

I so desperately want to sell and leave this dumpster fire behind me, but it’s not yet in the cards.

How frustrating! He wanted to disband the HOA or at least get rid of a lot of the bylaws, and now he’s stuck being the bad guy enforcing the bylaws.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

I’m curious about the answer to this question too.

This comment made me laugh uncontrollably for a minute. I love the strategy of it.

Here’s a petty idea he could’ve tried.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who is thinking of alerting the city to their neighbor’s campers being lived-in while parked on the street.

Another person also wanted to disband an HOA.

I really do like the suggestion in the comment about being super crazy strict about the HOA bylaws in order to annoy the homeowners so much that they’ll want to pay up to get rid of the ridiculous bylaws and in the process raise money to get rid of the bylaws by collecting fines for all the violations. Seriously, get out that ruler! That might be the best strategy!