Public roads are supposed to belong to the public, not the loudest HOA.

So when one resident discovered her city had quietly handed over part of a shared street to an entitled HOA so they could install a private gate, she realized the traffic problem was about to become a massive headache for everyone involved.

Keep reading for the full story.

Looks like I stumbled upon a corruption scandal (public road given to HOA)

My state has an anti-donation clause.

The idea is, it is super illegal for any level of government to simply give away public property to a private party.

But that didn’t prevent this homeowner’s city from doing exactly that.

Guess what I found out my city did?

Yep, they apparently gave away a portion of public road to the neighboring HOA, so that those selfish idiots could build a gate.

A gate that only members of that HOA will have keys for.

City leaders seem to think they can get away with it.

The city councilor for my district blames it on “prior administration,” and so far won’t lift a finger to fix this.

No one ever asked me or my neighbors if this giveaway was OK.

It was never on any ballot measure.

Everyone else takes turns passing the ball onto someone else.

Apparently, it was done years ago, before I bought into the area.

But the other HOA only got around to putting up a gate earlier this year.

The previous owner claims he had no knowledge of this.

Had I known about it, I might have moved elsewhere.

The HOA had their own flimsy reasons for justifying it.

The supposed reason: This other HOA claimed commuters were “speeding” through “their” neighborhood for years.

But not much was ever done to stop this behavior.

There are no speed limits posted anywhere in the subdivision.

You tell me how that works?

Apparently, no one in either city government or this HOA ever heard of speed bumps or of cops.

They also seem to be ignoring the simplest and most effective solutions.

We have speed bumps in my HOA’s area.

They are about the least-invasive thing a city can do to discourage bad driving in a suburb.

Unless your car has totally shot suspension, or you want to drive faster than is reasonable, they’re not likely to get in your way or hurt your feelings.

Speed bumps would certainly have been a better solution than a gate.

The gate stands to cause way more problems than it will actually solve.

A gate won’t fix the problem.

All it will do is tick off commuters, who will then probably turn around and “speed” back out of the neighborhood to find another way to work.

The HOA still has no idea how much trouble they’ve caused.

Great job, other HOA, you just doubled the traffic problem you were complaining about!

Others will likely wait for an HOA resident to exit the gate, then tailgate them so they don’t have to double back.

The first time the gate closes on someone’s vehicle, that’s going to be a real circus.

That’s not even considering vandalism, or the gate breaking all on its own.

This resident thinks ahead to the massive headache this gate is going to cause.

It’s going to be traffic-pocalypse on the first work day after the gate is in operation, scheduled for early next year.

Like many of you, I did not want to deal with an HOA at all, but I could not afford to live anywhere else.

But the homeowner now finds them

We share a set of roads and backyard walls with the HOA idiots who stole public property to build their gate.

The two HOAs are “separate” in only the most technical sense.

Things used to operate much differently.

Until the corrupt giveaway, all streets in the area were owned and maintained by the city.

The only way you knew you were in one HOA area or another were signs saying so.

Once this idiot gate is in operation, they will have one and only one way to access their community.

This won’t bode well for traffic.

Traffic already gets bad going in and out of there during the morning and afternoon commutes. It’s now going to be way worse.

I have no idea how a school bus is supposed to serve that mobile home park now.

The two entrances are not even 100 feet apart, facing each other where the street dead-ends.

With the new gate closed, there won’t be room to turn a bus around.

So once the homeowner does some digging, he finds something interesting.

I read an interesting statement from one of their residents, submitted to the city years ago when they were getting ready to illegally donate the street to the HOA.

This resident made the solid point that if people didn’t want to deal with military base traffic, maybe they shouldn’t have bought property near one.

She also noted that only about 50% of the offending HOA’s members wanted a gate. Figures.

I can believe the latter.

It turns out, this gate was even more unpopular than he initially thought.

I have a family member who rents there, and she is TICKED.

The other family member, who owns the place, didn’t want the darned gate either.

My HOA is acting like they were paid off by the other one.

Now the HOA looks even worse.

The board has not only bought their crappy story hook, line, and sinker, but had the gall to accuse me and other HOA residents of being the source of the supposed “problem” that they use to justify the gate.

To call them “totally useless” would be a great understatement.

They’re trying to act like it’s not their problem. The heck it’s not.

I don’t pay HOA dues for fun.

What a saga.

Redditors chime in with their thoughts.

This commenter thinks the HOA and the city should both be reported to higher powers.

This commenter has additional considerations.

Another city seems to have learned a very similar lesson.

In other HOAs, homeowners’ input actually seems to make an impact.

They closed the road, but opened a whole new mess instead.

Both traffic and common sense were completely blocked here.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.