Real stories of HOA abuse against homeowners just trying to live in peace.
In five days, the HOA is going to fine me $1000 which, per a previous email, they already did. They also already sent it to their attorney, Mankin Law. Mankin Law, who is already intimately familiar with me [and not in a good way], told me to comply with the HOA by submitting an ARC. The HOA will be fining me because my roof remains tarped due to the storms we had in 2024: Debbie, Helene, and Milton.
In my neighborhood, homeowners used to “get in trouble” for parking on the streets in front of their homes and in their driveways in a manner that blocked the sidewalk. This is what happens when driveways are short. This is what happens when you do not park in your garage. This is why people used to park at the edge of their driveways parallel to the street in a display of ugly compliance.
There are some things that Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, has done right. (Right means that I agree with it. If you disagree with it, then it would be wrong, right?) I would not have known about these HOA updates if it weren’t for Deborah Goonan’s website, Independent American Communities.
To recap, in my neighborhood, we used to pay $50 per month for CDD fees and also $50 per month for HOA fees. As of January 2026, the HOA fees are $103 per month. There are 717 homes here.
I don’t know when we got a property management company in addition to our Homeowners Association. I probably don’t know this because, as I have mentioned, I have only attended one or two HOA meetings. When I moved here, we had an HOA with some members, including a president, with all members being residents of the neighborhood. That was it. And that was all.
As I previously recounted, I am in this neighborhood because it was what I could afford at the time (I cannot afford it presently, but have yet to get to the thicks of this story to explain.). Although I liked the communities Panther Trace and MiraBay, neither of those are what I imagined for my life. I didn’t have dreams of suburbia and Homeowners Associations.
In the thicks of fighting my Homeowners Association last year, I began to disassociate from my home. The ideas I had about improving it, and the things I had already done to make it my own, no longer became sources of joy. My home, in fact, was no longer my home. It was a just a house. Then I remembered, that was how I felt when I moved in.
My mother recently told me about this woman who went to jail over her Homeowners Association’s complaint of a brown patch in her yard. I understood all of the steps that led there before reading these articles as this is a mirror of my own story. Check it out; and also read the follow up story about others in the neighborhood.
Maybe I am not the best neighbor. Sometimes, I leave my trash bins out too long. Sometimes, when I am doing yard work, I leave my tools and things right where I was using them. Sometimes, I cut my grass at 8 or 9 in the morning. Sometimes, I play thumping music. But more than that, I have only been to one HOA meeting in my entirety of living here. And I don’t even remember which year that was.
Even before I was an adult, I lived in an HOA neighborhood (right, Mom and Dad?). What I remember is that they organized fun events for us. We had phenomenal block parties and we knew each others’ names and where all the kids belonged.