“Living on Cuckoo Court”: Chapter II

The HOA used black paint to cover over our parking space number, along the curb. When he gets home from work at 11:00pm in the dark, my son, who has a handicap, needs that open parking space. Our neighbors started parking in the unreserved space, so I got some white paint and put our number back. The HOA fined us for that. What started it all? The HOA accused us of a “late payment.” But our payment was not late. I put the envelope, with the money order in it, in the locked mailbox of the property manager’s Gaithersburg office. Apparently, during the covid summer of 2020, the office staff did not check the mail for a while, they fell behind, and that money order was not cashed for two months. Now I’m careful to mail each month’s assessment directly to the main processing office in Atlanta, Georgia. The Gaithersburg staff are dismissive over the phone. I paid the $200 fine just to get the HOA off my back. Nobody knows of these things. Nobody holds the HOA accountable when it does these things. We pay for the HOA’s errors. –Marie, Pintail Lane

Estoy muy de acuerdo con esta iniciativa, the QV Friendly Team, ya que somos abusados por Quail Valley HOA. Adelante hagamos prevalecer nuestros derechos de propietarios basta de injusticia y abuso. Todas sufren por separade, y en silencio. –Dulcinea, Chickadee Lane

The Quail Valley HOA collects a monthly assessment, $88.25 from each of 500 townhomes and $84.25 from each of 92 single-family homes. It spent $4,000 to take photos of the front, back, and sides of houses, including a photo of each front door, all 592 of them. I don’t think anyone cares to uphold the “holy front door convenant” any more, if there is such a thing. Let there be Norwegian doors, Brazilian doors, Cameroonian doors, Piscataway doors, Spanish doors, and Chinese doors. People will not buy junk, they want their front door to look great, be secure, and reflect who they are. Neocolonial 1979-era doors, 592 of them, one after another, were kind of boring anyway. We have more urgent needs for how our hard-earned money is used. –Doug, Quail Valley Boulevard

Three huge white pine trees are waiting to fall on our home. Two of these trees have multiple trunks, like fingers coming out of a hand. The branches all have green needles, so they appear “healthy.” But year after year, more and more bark compresses between the “split” trunks—it collects and rots until one of the trunks breaks away in a high wind. “Included bark,” as it’s called, is first on the list of reasons why trees break in ice storms, according to the staff arborist with the Tree Care Industry Association. So it’s only a matter of time. We have seen two roofs crushed by falling trees in recent years, and there have been many pine-tree breaks and blow downs. The county says the trees are on HOA property. The HOA claims the trees are “healthy,” and removal is too expensive. The HOA has a legal duty to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the residents. Human life should be the priority. We would be safer without any HOA, because then we could appeal to the county to take down the trees. Is this negligence? Somebody, please, step up and take responsibility for these hazardous trees. –Juanita, Bobwhite Circle

The fellows with the sidewalk snow plow caught the edge of my asphalt driveway and broke off a chunk. The HOA cited us in the spring for having a broken driveway. I ask them to pay for the damage. Silence. They also wrote that our plastic shutters needed painting. The shutters match the house now, and it turns out that the HOA’s Architectural Guidelines do not require plastic shutters to be painted. We don’t know where we stand. Communications are unclear. It requires our time and our money to try to address these errors and mistakes. Everyone suffers these insults alone and separately. There is no accountability with this HOA. Who would hold them accountable? The yearly HOA elections are poorly publicized, widely ignored, and generally considered a joke. It’s hard to see how any of this might improve. –Asheesh, Swan Drive

You are a hostage, a debtor, on a runaway train of debt. After 45 days, if they don’t like your repair or response, the HOA fines you $100 per month. Two “problems”? $200 per month. And so on. Even the IRS doesn’t pile on fines like that, building toward infinity. The HOA has no incentive to stop the train, or to deal with you reasonably. It has every incentive to keep this train running, to keep the engine well stoked. For example, a public servant returns from overseas to find letters threatening a lien on her house. Honestly, how thorough was the effort to reach her? –Zack, Barn Swallow Terrace

Our two kids never got to swim in the pool in the summer of 2019 because the Quail Valley HOA property inspector never showed up to see and approve our repairs. When we got the violation notices, we quickly made the repairs. I kept all the email correspondence. We never got our pool passes. Why should they bother to respond or show up? They have no deadline. There is no hand to limit the punishment that the HOA doles out. It’s of no consequence to them if they make an error or behave negligently. There is no force to oppose or balance against their power. The laws, written mostly 40 or 50 years ago, all favor the HOAs. –Mary, Grosbeak Terrace

I fell a few months behind on my HOA payments during the epidemic, and they sent their collections attorney after me. That added several hundred dollars of lawyers’ fees to what I owed. Much worse, they expect me to pay the rest of 2021 in advance; which was nine months times $88.25 per month, or $794.50 in a lump sum. My HOA payments are now up to date, but I told them I couldn’t pay that amount. Even if I could afford to, I wouldn't. That is an unreasonable thing to expect anyone to do. We are working families here in Quail Valley. We are all fighting a covid epidemic. IndependentAmericanCommunities.com has an interesting article, “It’s Time to Reign in Predatory HOA Attorney Fees.” I agree with that. –Jim, Phoebe Way

This HOA demand is impossible to obey: "Ensure that water drainage is not directed onto adjacent property or common area." Even if you deployed 20 or so rain barrels to capture all of the rain spilling off your roof, the runoff from your lawn would still convey to the common property. On every single lawn and house walkway in Quail Valley, the rain water runs downhill to the common lawn, or to the common sidewalk, where it meanders on its way to the storm drain that is usually along the curb in the street. Some storm drains are located in the large common lawns. Many of those need repairing, as the 40-year-old brickwork supporting the iron grates is crumbling and the gullies are eroding. These spots are candidates for Rainscapes, and there’s county money to help with that. But how do you speak with an HOA who does not understand how rain moves across the landscape? They are already too busy, photographing our front doors. That is our challenge. –Aiko, Oriole Place

These testimonials are summaries. Chapter I in this series, consisting of seventeen stories, can be found at patch.com/maryland/gaithersburg/living-cuckoo-court-nodx. Residents, who can provide fuller histories, fear retaliatory acts from their own HOA, and thus names, locations, and details have been altered. Many HOAs across the nation, but not all, exhibit similar dysfunctions (independentamericancommunities.com). The Quail Valley Friendly Team of families is trying to end these Quail Valley HOA abuses. –Steven Sellers Lapham, a 20-year resident, lives at 18737 Purple Martin Lane, Gaithersburg, MD 20879, USA. MuskratMusic@gmail.com.