When you live in a condo, you get the benefit of using all of the common areas of the community.

What happens if your condo HOA decides to convert to an over-55 community, and restricts your kids from all common areas?

That is what the family in this story are dealing with and they don’t know how to stop it.

Read on for the details.

HOA Converting to Over 55, Considering Banning Our Kids from All Common Areas Including Our Front and Back Lawn

Twenty years ago when I was 18, and immediately following my father’s divorce and suicide, my mother moved my brother (16) and I into a condo in a small, sixteen-unit condominium complex in Northeast Ohio from our previous two-story home near Columbus.

Our neighbors were about half retirees, half middle-aged single adults in their late 30’s and 40’s, and one or two families with one or two minor children.

We both attended high-school and college in the area, and I lived there, at least while not living on campus or out of state, until I got married at 28.

My wife and I rented an apartment from a large 100-unit apartment complex that just happened to be located directly across the street from our small condo complex.

We continued to visit the condo, either to host larger parties, work out of the larger garage if necessary, or to spend time with family.

Five years ago my wife and I started having kids, of which we now have three, ranging from 1 month old to 5 years old.

That worked out well.

After the second kid our small apartment was getting cramped, and my mother was getting remarried, so we decided to buy the condo from her last year.

Not only was it more affordable because it was a condo, but I’ve lived here since I was a kid and I’ve personally handled nearly all of the tens of thousands in maintenance costs over the years, due to my work as a contractor, so it’s already been modified to our preferences.

Can they even do that?

A few months after my mother moved out, we got notice that the board of our 16-unit HOA received a request to convert to an over 55 community and that they were running it by their attorney.

I had never heard of this before, but it appears that it’s legal to convert if at least 80% of the units have a resident over age 55.

With some basic online sleuthing, I was able to determine that due to the younger 30 and 40-something owners moving out or selling over the last 5-10 years, we are now the only unit out of 16 with owners under age 55 (my wife and I both turn 40 next year).

We believe the board here was waiting to enact this change as three of the owners are exactly 55 and they would need to have waited for them to cross the 55-year-old threshold in order to move ahead with qualifying for this.

Despite the owners ages, two owners presently have children.

One has a 24 year old adult daughter, and one has a 10 year old minor kid. At least 3-4 owners are in their 80’s and 90’s.

It is pretty easy to guess how this vote will go.

Anyway, long story short, we received a second notice that they meet all the legal requirements and the HUD survey, and are going to go ahead and vote on this change.

They won’t tell us who initiated this change, or even why, instead telling us that we can submit our concerns in writing and the HOA attorney will reply.

No owners meeting will be held, only a board vote, and all board members are 60-80 years old with no kids.

Since we’re the only owners under 55 we believe it is almost certain to pass.

We filed a long list of concerns with the board including our view that even if we’re allowed to remain living here, it will noticeably reduce the property and resell value.

That just isn’t right.

Plus, our kids may not be allowed to host birthday parties or have friends over anymore, and most importantly, may not be allowed to play in the front or back yards, or anywhere outside our walls, which are all technically common areas.

The yards here are un-partitioned and stretch for roughly 100 yards, undivided, behind and in front of the units.

My brother and I must have played in these yards with our friends thousands of times over the years.

Unfortunately as the years have gone by and our neighbors have moved out and been replaced by older residents, we’ve gradually received more complaints about noise, parking, and most recently, our new 58 year old neighbor this summer came running out of her house screaming at us and our kids because she said they had touched her flowers and if they did it again she was going to “beat their ***”.

That being said, I believe in all honesty that we are as a whole generally quieter and more well-behaved than the average family of five.

My kids keep to themselves and mostly stay directly behind or in front of our own unit, with minimal screaming.

We both work from home and have monitored them all day at times to verify this.

Would it be legal to restrict our children’s use of the yard in such a way?

They should absolutely hire an attorney.

At this choice I feel we have no choice but to hire an attorney, but from my past few weeks of online research, it actually appears that this is a legal form of age discrimination even if we lived here prior to the over 55 conversion.

As a gambit end-run around this potential outcome, I deeded all of my children fractional shares in the condo so that they are now also property owners.

I fear the designation of all outside space as common areas places this out of my control and we’re going to be at the mercy of a handful of grumpy old people who are perhaps tired of seeing and hearing our kids.

Does anyone have any experience with anything like this?

I mean I could totally understand if the community started as a retirement community but to have the rug swept out from under our feet like this with our childhood home feels terrible.

It’s exceptionally difficult to find any examples online of existing communities that have converted and then restricted families.

Almost every post I’ve come across involves moving into an over-55 community.

That is awful, I can’t believe it is even legal. It really shouldn’t be.

Let’s see what the other people in the comments have to say.

Good thing they couldn’t afford it.

Here is someone who says the kids can still use the common elements.

This commenter says that they can’t restrict the usage of their property.

This person dodged a bullet.

Sometimes it seems like HOAs just want to make people mad.

Whether they’re aware of it or not.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.