Marla Stout said they found a purple-tinted wood stain from Home Depot. The Raintree Lake Neighborhood Homeowner’s Association wasn’t happy about the compromise. “We got a notice that we were being fined by the HOA," Stout said. That was last year. The family fought it and won, but the dispute wasn’t over yet. The family received more letters outlining more serious consequences.
“(The letters said) that if we didn’t remove the swing set from the subdivision in a couple of weeks, we go to jail,” Stout said. She said the family talked to all of the neighbours who could see the playground from their homes and asked them to sign a petition saying that the colour didn’t bother them. Stout said that the homeowner’s association told them it wasn’t good enough. “I think it’s ridiculous,” said Dillen Steeby, who lives next door.
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He said he sees the purple playground quite a bit and the homeowner’s association’s opposition to it has him seeing red. “I’m really perturbed that they would waste money pursuing something like this,” Steeby said. “Money on court costs and lawyer’s fees to attack really good people like this and go after a swing set.” HOA guidelines require a playground to be “subdued and within harmony with other colours of the community.” The homeowner’s association did not respond to a request for comment. The Stout family said the next step will be a trip before a judge. There is to be a community meeting soon.
6 comments:
Every time I read about an HOA they're overstepping their bounds. Every time I have to deal with the management company for the place I live in they can't find their arses with both hands, a mirror and a map. Perhaps somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic there's a HOA/management company that just get on with their jobs.
I am reminded of something I was told some years ago when I asked about the light-purple color of the church in St, Francis, South Dakota.
The story was that the man who had been hired to do a great deal of restoration work got to the place where he needed to repaint the church on a Lakota Sioux reservation he asked the elders "What color?" and could get no agreement. So he asked the children, and they said "purple".
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.1409101,-100.906055,3a,75y,47.49h,78.29t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1si_Ivg8PIy7AECkpttp7rJA!2e0!7i3328!8i1664!6m1!1e1?hl=en
I love HOA disputes!
If you don't want to live by their rules don't buy a house there!
Mostly people seem to think the rules are for other people, not them.
But what if they change the rules after you bought the house? We have a case in southeastern PA where 15 years after the subdivision had been established, the HOA ruled you couldn't park a vehicle in your driveway with any signage. So anyone with a company vehicle, like a plumber, electrician, or salesman, had to rent a parking space outside the community and walk home.
Jesus wept for the sins of sharks !
I have enough issues with the council taking thousands of my dollars every year for which they do bugger all.
The idea of having to live by rules set by one's neighbours is akin to letting a moron decide what clothes I wear, what car I drive and if I put diesel or petrol in the tank.
Actually, it is exactly the same.
Let someone else decide things for me ? What, you think I have not a brain ?
I read often about Americans shooting each other (and the white cops shooting the black non cops) and see a country with some serious issues, but if such as a home owner's association where to raise it's Medusa like head around me, there would be blood, bullets and a lot of biting.
Lordy (excuse the religious exclamations, I like to throw them around to annoy the people that believe in the man in the cloud, and I am not talking about Steve Apple Jobs) how anyone can let someone else decide things for them is beyond me.
Grow a pair, and plant the seed to grow a brain as well.
Need more advice, encouragement ? Call me, $18 an hour.
I'm an HOA president, on my fifth year. I got on the Board because we had a crazy woman who kept being reelected (by doing special favors for some people) who darned near ran us into bankruptcy. We don't have all that many rules, and none of them is just plain crazy. I guess we're doing a good job, because nobody ever comes to meetings, and we only hear from owners if there's a complaint.
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