“Living on Cuckoo Court”: Chapter III

April, 2021

My landlady works evenings, 40 hours a week, so she cannot attend a 7:00pm HOA board meeting to plead her case. She is 76 years old and still works full time for the school district. She has debts, health care expenses, and probably other things I do not know about. She has a hard time getting someone on the phone at the HOA. Carpenter bees were eating away at the wood around her front window. She told the HOA that her son was visiting in two months, and he would patch the wood and cover every­thing with high-gloss paint, which repels the bees. That was not good enough, and the HOA fined her. –Anthony, Bluebird Terrace

I gave them my bank account number for direct withdraw of our monthly HOA assessment. Somehow two payments got missed. I had to give them the information again. Why can’t they follow up on a simple trans­action? Bank account numbers are not something that should be misplaced. –Oliver, Purple Martin Lane

As the covid pandemic hit hard, June 2020, the HOA seemed to be fishing for things to fine people for, as many as possible. Throw mud at the wall and see what sticks. We expect two or three violations from the HOA every year, as the record shows. Yes, there are patches of dead grass in the back yard. We have two family dogs, and they urinate. That happens, so we are constantly cited. We plant grass every year. But in 20 years the HOA had never mentioned our wood-particleboard shed. It’s in good repair, and it’s the same color scheme as the house, only a bit darker. In 2020, the HOA suddenly says the shed must be the same color as the house. Well, the time to paint the sides was before it was all assembled. If we tried to paint the shed now, we could not reach the two sides that are tight up against the fence. Walking along the outside of the fence, you’d look through the slats, and you’d see a different color. So our shed would have two tones. It would look weird. The “violation” makes no sense. Now I have to spend my time? I have to defend the color of my shed? That could mean trying to reach them on the phone. Showing up at an HOA board meeting in the evening. Writing more emails. Keeping track of the conversation. Keeping this record. –Susan, Kingfisher Terrace

Contractors must obey county code, but they can be ignorant of HOA rules as they build. This discrepancy sets the homeowner up for expensive fines, even requiring the homeowner to tear-down and rebuild a new structure. For example, I had just moved into the townhome where I plan to retire. A few weeks later, a huge tree fell across my back fence and almost hit the house. Immediately I got a letter from the HOA that my fence was broken. (Hey, thank you for your concern!) I worked fast with a contractor to get a new fence built across the back. “Make it just like the other fences on either side,” I instructed the builder, “so it matches.” He built a very sturdy basket-weave fence across the back, with a nice gate, in the line of fencing along the back of these townhouse properties. Yes, of course I should have read the AC guidelines, where I would have learned that the basket-weave design is no longer allowed in Quail Valley. But I was a new homeowner, in a hurry to secure my property against burglary, and in a hurry to mollify the HOA. A kind phone call from the HOA, when the HOA tree crushed the old fence, would have been appreciated, and would have avoided much headache and confusion. But the larger issue remains: either Montgomery County is serious, or it is joking around at the expense of tens of thousands of homeowners. Either HOA rules are to be followed, by builders, as part of the building codes, or they are not. Enough of this abuse. –Greta, Grackle Way

The hornet nest was in a tree on the little grassy island in the middle of the parking lot of our court. An HOA-owned tree, but the HOA refused to pay to have an exterminator remove the nest safely. This is not a hornet nest deep in the woods. Kids play on that lawn. We get in and out of our cars. We got up a little petition, signed by residents on our court. Summer, fall, the HOA says it will do nothing. Finally, the winter wind tore down the paper nest. Why do we pay $88.25 per month to the HOA? I don’t get it. –Michael, Hummingbird Terrace

We have a crisis of debt, and a crisis of mistrust. Government has failed us. Because of debt privacy laws and disinterest, nobody in Montgomery County seems to know how many families are placed in financial distress by HOAs, or whether this problem contributes to homelessness. No resident wants to go to the HOA with a community problem—like water collecting on sidewalks, forming ice in the winter; like crows leaping into litter cans and making a mess—because there is no good relationship. No trust. It’s been poisoned. You don’t want them to know your name. If HOAs had an original, worthy purpose back in the 1980s, it’s been lost in the muck of fines and debt and miscommunication. It’s a nationwide problem, and it is a local problem. –Margaret, Phoebe Way

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. Chapter II at patch.com/maryland/gaithersburg/living-cuckoo-court-chapter-ii-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.

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