HOA Demanded Removal of Security Cameras—Until Homeowners Sued the Board and Stuck Them With $4,000 in Legal Fees
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HOA power trips can become expensive.
This board dared one homeowner to challenge its flimsy camera violation.
He responded with paperwork, delays, and one carefully chosen loophole.
The legal bills piled up.
Let’s check out the details below.
HOA tried to punish us – Told us to “Stop them if we can” – Malicious compliance cost them 16% of the annual HOA income – And the cameras are still installed today
This happened several years ago, and is a multi-year long story – I’ll keep it as succinct as possible.
We installed cameras in front of our home that were looking at our vehicles. Part of the camera angles did overlook parts of two neighbor’s properties (one back yard and one side yard).
The cameras were battery operated and had a function where you could “gray out” areas that you didn’t want to film.
When motion occurred in the grayed out areas, the cameras would not be activated to film.
The neighbors’ entire properties and several bushes on our property were grayed out – we did this when installing them.
The neighbors had different reactions to the cameras.
One of the neighbors was a friend – and had no issues with this whatsoever (we showed her the camera angle – and she said she didn’t care whether or not we grayed out that area – we still left it grayed out over battery life concerns).
The other neighbor’s name was Karen (not really, but we all know why I chose that name).
Karen was on the HOA board and, as you can imagine, we didn’t get along with Karen or the HOA Board.
We told Karen about the camera and showed her the grayed out areas at the same time that we told our friendly neighbor about it.
It was simply an FYI conversation (we are not on friendly terms) – not an “asking permission” conversation.
She told us to take the cameras down immediately or we would regret it.
They really weren’t breaking any rules.
About a week after we hung the camera up, we got a notice from our HOA that we were violating the bylaws.
The bylaw in question? A “nuisance to your neighbors” bylaw.
There wasn’t a specific bylaw preventing placement of cameras, so this is all they could find to try to punish us.
We responded with a letter detailing how we were not violating any bylaws or laws in general – and asked them to cease and desist.
The HOA obviously didn’t drop it.
We all know how these stories go though. They did not cease. And they did not desist.
Their first response?
“The HOA has the right to enforce these bylaws. Try to stop us, if you think you can.” (These types of responses were, unfortunately, quite common from this board.)
We entered this battle with one goal in mind: to cost them as much money and time as possible.
The legal fees were quite expensive.
The HOA hired a lawyer specifically to fight us. To my knowledge, this has not happened to any other residents.
In the following 4 months we ended up costing the HOA over $4,000 in lawyers fees fighting this battle.
For reference, the entire HOA income was ~$25,000/year.
When it came time for our official HOA hearing over the matter, we had successfully postponed it (thanks to an attorney friend) 3 separate times.
There were over 100 back and forth emails with the HOA attorney and ourselves. Each one of those emails was a 15 minute expense for the HOA.
And I was happy to follow up a follow up question with another follow up question if it meant the HOA attorney was going to keep billing them (Did I say “follow up” enough times?).
The HOA “won” but couldn’t really do anything.
We didn’t actually want to take this battle to court, so we ended up removing the cameras the day of the hearing (to prevent being fined – even if the fine wouldn’t hold up in court).
The HOA decided in the hearing that we were guilty (surprise, surprise) of violating the bylaw.
They couldn’t fine us – as the bylaws don’t allow a fine until after a hearing has been held – and the cameras were already removed.
In the end, the punishment was a sternly written piece of paper on the attorney’s letterhead (delivered via certified mail) that stated that we were “…not allowed to place a camera on our home that had the potential to invade a neighbor’s privacy.”
Keep in mind, the letter specifically stated the camera could not be placed “on our home.”
The next board meeting was pretty interesting.
We left the cameras off of the home for about 4 months – until the annual HOA meeting.
You should have seen the look on the HOA Board’s faces when I asked them to explain the $4,000 line item for attorney’s fees that simply stated “Title searches – Attorney fees.”
The Board actually tried to hide the fact that they spent $4k trying to fight us over a couple of cameras by putting the fees in as “Title searches.”
Needless to say, that meeting did not go well for them. About half of them lost their positions on the Board.
The other half (including Karen, unfortunately) remained on the Board.
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But OP is the big winner for finding a way to install the cameras.
About a week after the annual meeting, we installed new cameras – facing the same direction as the prior cameras – only this time, we installed a post in the ground and mounted the cameras to that post.
The admonishment we received after the hearing specifically stated that we were not allowed to install cameras “on our home” – and said nothing about putting them on a post.
They did send a letter to try to tell us to remove the cameras, but a sternly worded response indicating that we were prepared to fight them actually worked this time around.
I guess they didn’t want to spend another $4k fighting us.
We didn’t receive any follow up responses.
And the cameras on the post are still installed to this day (over 2 years and running strong).
The HOA board made a huge mistake taking on this homeowner, and they eventually realized it wasn’t worth fighting.
That’s a big win for the homeowner!
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
They could’ve taken them to court for another reason, and possibly won.
This is a good point.
This person is completely against HOAs.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a homeowner who doesn’t care whether or not their neighbors hate their yard flamingos, because they aren’t subject to the HOA.
A former HOA board member weighs in.
The homeowner’s relentless correspondence cost the HOA $4,000, exposed hidden attorney fees, and helped unseat several board members.
He later mounted the same cameras on a post, perfectly obeying the letter banning them only from his house.
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