Homeowner Association Blocks Guests When Fees Go Unpaid

The Stoneybrook West homeowners association in Orlando, Florida is serious about collecting its fees. So serious in fact that the association will not let anyone coming to see Melissa Solis in the gated community. Solis has fallen behind on her association fees and now guards at the gated entrance to her neighborhood prevent her friends, family, babysitter and even the pizza man from going in to see her. Even Melissa's mother-in-law was banned from coming inside when she came for a family birthday party. Association lawyer Jim Gustino says, "We have to bring whatever lawful pressure that we have to bear on these folks. No one feels good about it, but it does result in collecting money. Many folks will, by some miracle, come up with the money they couldn't come up with before, because they don't want their family members to be denied entry."

Comments

What's Next?

[Logical Zebra]

So if she still fails to pay the HOA fees, will the association next block her from entering her own neighborhood?

Re:What's Next?

[amplt1337]

HOAs are pure evil.

And it amazes me that a country full of people that supposedly care about their freedoms and whatnot, will gleefully hand over their rights to boards governed by petty backyard Napoleons just so they can buy in an area where someone else mows the grass.

Re:What's Next?

[bluefoxlucid]

It supposedly keeps the rabble out.

The theory is that you can force people to keep their homes maintained, which makes the area look prettier and thus raises your property value. This also keeps the crime out, and the gangs and rabble and unshaven unwashed masses.

The reality is the guy next door is still running a crack house. It's easy to force him out because you can go to the bank and get a lien on his house for his owed fees. Then when he doesn't pay further, you foreclose his house. But if he pays his fees or pays his lien, and you can't get enough evidence to get a police raid done (and the cops find stuff), you're still living with a drug dealer next door.

They don't supply any services except telling everyone else to not let their yard look like ass.

Re:What's Next?

[flyneye]

For a small fee, we will drive the van down to Fla. and disrupt this evil organization so Mellissa can get pizza again. Hannibal and Faceman will infiltrate the Association and get the goods on the hoods. I will be welding armor plating to the van and mounting .50 cal machine guns on top, so I pity the fool who doesn't open a gate for me. Murdock will get into a chicken costume and dynamite the gates anyway. In the end, the HOA will have to give back all their ill gotten gains and we will be eatin' pizza in Melissas living room before the credits roll.

Re:What's Next?

[flyneye]

I don't even get my lawn mowed. I live in a middle class neighborhood that you couldn't tell from the next one. There is an HOA who dropped by a list of "suggestions" and guidelines for landscaping, lawnmowing, parking, placement of trash dumpsters, etc. It woulda been a real downer too, because I wanted to plant lots of fruit trees and berry bushes on my open property( a no no since it attracts birds who eat berries and sh*t purple on the cars), but then I caught the association head getting head from what appeared to be a youthful teen in his car in the driveway.I suggested that his wife may not be amused. Now I fortify my homebrew with 4 different types of raspberries, 2 kinds of blackberries, 3 kinds of grapes grow on my fences, apples, peaches and cherries are still 5or 6 years away. I can keep my old untagged broken truck in my drive till I get around to fixing it, guarded by at least a dozen pink flamingoes that line my driveway. I burn "free" mixed firewood in my shop, which smokes a little harsh and I mow my lawn when I get around to it. Napoleon wound up at Waterloo too.( Water + loo= flushable toilet) See there is Slack out there for Subgenii who have paid their small fee.

Re:HOAs may be evil, but she agreed to it

[WwonderLlama]

Deny service, sure. But allowing guests in isn't a 'service'. Mowing your lawn: service. Plowing your driveway: service. Blocking your family from coming to a birthday party: DIS-service.

Re:HOAs may be evil, but she agreed to it

[bluefoxlucid]

HOAs don't supply any service. You plow your own driveway and mow your own lawn. HOAs just tell you what you can't do, like you can't have a pink mailbox because it looks like ass and lowers everyone else's property value because they live too close to a house with an ugly pink mailbox.

Re:HOAs may be evil, but she agreed to it

[bluefoxlucid]

They can't enforce that rule because it's illegal due to the telecommunications act. Any satellite dish up to 1m in size can be used.

Re:HOAs may be evil, but she agreed to it

[JesseMcDonald]

The route from the community entrance to the driveway is presumably the HOA's property (as a "common area"). Permitting access to this property is a service which the HOA is within its rights to withhold. The means by which you and your guests approach your property is one of the things you have to think about before making a purchase. It's also something most people recklessly take for granted. If you don't have a clear property right (e.g. easement) in the ground you must cover to access your property, you'd best remain on good terms with those who do.

If you want to talk about the issues with HOAs, let's start with the way the terms supposedly attach to the property rather than the owner; i.e. the way that you—as the sole owner of the house and the land on which it's built—aren't permitted to sell your own property to anyone who doesn't also contract with the HOA. Of course, the new owner might end up needing a helicopter to get to their new home, but limited access shouldn't prevent you from selling it to them.

Communists

[Moof123]

HOA's are voluntary communism. I'm amazed to see folks who rant about freedom and liberty only to choose to live in one of these distopian cookie cutter "communities" full of conformist rules. Thanks to private security, they are like mini police states.

I made a conscious decision to buy a place where I could paint my house without getting approval from a committee. I have not regretted it, despite having one dirtbag neighbor with a bunch of dead and dying cars. It is worth it.

Re:Communists

[Qzukk]

The problem is that the "land of the free" keeps on shrinking. I'm watching that out of my office window as we speak: street after street of little houses of varying quality (some are well kept, some with rotting roofs and dead cars in the yard) being bought up and demolished to make room for tall, skinny rows of townhomes. You can bet those townhomes have HOAs, even the ones being squeezed in between the dingy trailer home and the quaint little house that's still painted like a candy cane from Christmas.

Re:HOAs may be evil, but she agreed to it

[flyneye]

Dunno what planet you are from, but here on Earth in a place called the U.S.A. when we buy a house it involves an agreement with more pages that Stephen Kings " The Stand" with print so small, ants can't read it and details that make Microsoft EULAs look fair and friendly. Nobody reads these, crap, it takes an hour and a half just to sign the damn thing,just flippin through the pages. HOAs can appear just about anywhere, even in my neighborhood. It's just as bad as the way we let politicians take away our rights with legislation and start an income tax over the last century. Just like boiling a frog, turn up the temp slooowly, froggy won't even notice till his eyes explode. Best advice, infiltrate and subvert an HOA from within and eventually dispose of it. It's an unamerican institution as the modern Democratic party, hellbent on ressurecting the old USSR business model (anyone notice that failed a while back?) Failing infiltration, open tactical warfare and thermonuclear intervention may be required to rid your neighborhood of these cockroaches.