Imagine getting a letter from the HOA telling you that you have to trim a tree because it’s overhanging the sidewalk. Would you be annoyed at it or simply comply?

In this story, one homeowner is in this situation. He’s pretty annoyed, but he’s willing to comply.

It sounds like this homeowner takes pride in his yard and wants it to look nice, so receiving this letter from the HOA made him pretty annoyed.

Keep reading to find out exactly how he complies.

HOA didn’t like the 3 inches of our tree on the sidewalk

I living with my parents temporarily and came home to my dad bitterly putting on his jacket and boots.

He’s not the type to express his frustration so I asked what’s going on.

Apparently the HOA, who has only sent us a letter once in the 12 years we’ve lived here sent one today nitpicking our yard.

Let’s see what the HOA’s problem was this time.

Our Christmas tree was 3 inches on the sidewalk and was a “hazard” to pedestrians walking space and didn’t align with the tree maintenance code that doesn’t allow overgrowth onto streets or sidewalks unless 8 feet tall.

This also affected the tree across from the Christmas tree since that thick branch you can see cut out was 7.8 feet tall over the sidewalk.

There were a few other nit-picky things but the letter at the end was like “you have a week to fix this or you’ll be charged 50$ a day till it’s fixed”.

We recently got a new head of the HOA who’s gunhappy to “fix” the neighborhood since the old HOA President was pretty laid back during their last years.

OP’s dad was pretty annoyed at the letter.

The letter was pretty passive aggressive too with specific measurements, direct quotes from the code, and a speak about keeping the neighborhood nice.

I think my dad was even more mad because he’s been working on the yard all week to make it nice for the winter and had just the Christmas tree left.

So he told me “well if they want it done that fast and are going to be hounding me the moment its overgrown then I don’t wanna risk it becoming a problem over the winter”

He did what he had to do.

We measure the overhang, it’s 8.3ft 🙂

In his words “it ain’t pretty but it’s within code”

No expected rebuttal from HOA as they haven’t sent another letter and this was 3 weeks ago.

My dads only concern is the tree having a dead patch but he’s been meaning to get different tree since that one is coming close to being as tall as our house and is too much upkeep for him and his full time job. Plus he’s getting a bit older which makes the outdoor work harder for him now.

To clarify, OP’s dad did trim the tree to make it compliant with the HOA rules, but it’s not like he did a pretty job pruning it. He just cut what needed to be cut to comply. I don’t blame him.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person offers some tips about tree trimming.

Another person explains why it’s so important to keep the tree branches off the sidewalk.

This person agrees with the HOA.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a community who realizes their mistake after restricting parking to residents only gets guests and delivery drivers towed.

Another person doesn’t see anything malicious.

I think the malicious part is simply that the tree wasn’t as pretty as possible after being trimmed. It was compliant though.

I can see both sides of this.

As someone who likes to take walks around my neighborhood, it can be incredibly annoying when a tree is blocking the sidewalk.

As someone who has trees growing at the edge of the property line near a sidewalk, sometimes my own trees are the ones I’m struggling to walk past.

It can be annoying to have to keep trimming the trees, but it’s worth it.