Homeowner's Association

The Homeowner's Association. The villain in many a story. You must all paint your houses the same shade of beige, you must keep your grass at precisely this height, you must not keep your rusty old junker on cinder blocks in the front yard. So unreasonable, right? And for all these wonderful features, you get to pay a hefty HOA fee!

Which brings me to the point of my story: What if someone lived in an area that had a Homeowner's Association, and went out of their way to annoy the HOA? My friend and I were talking about this some time back, and I went on a rather ridiculous monologue.

 

So, what if someone was super-rich, and hated the Homeowner's Association? Because said person has a gazillion dollars, they don't care if the HOA fines them for stuff. They have a rusty old car that they're planning on fixing up, but mostly they just tinker with it and leave the eyesore in the front yard for everyone to see. They sit in a lawn chair drinking beer, and leave the empty cans all over the place. The HOA slaps fine after fine on them, but the person just shrugs it off and says "So what, I can afford it!"

Then the tacky lawn ornaments arrive. Plastic flamingos, thrift store gnomes, and an old toilet for planting flowers in. They haul out a ratty old couch with duct tape all over it, some leftover from their college days before they got that winning lottery ticket. Still covered in eleven years' worth of storage unit dust, they leave it on the curb, because why not. Passers-by notice mouse droppings and ragged holes from its time in that lonely concrete-and-metal building.

The HOA is really getting fed up now. They've fined this person so many times, they could buy a Lamborghini with the money, but still the fool won't let up. Property values are lowering, and finally the head of the HOA announces that they must take legal action.

So the threat arrives at this rich person's door, both verbally by a woman who almost seems to be breathing fire as she speaks, and by a rather vindictive letter taped over a cheesy-looking welcome sign. The rich person calmly listens to the woman, then looks over the letter and its remarkably long list of heinous crimes. With a shrug, they decide there's only one course of action.

Shortly afterwards, the president of the HOA is calmly drinking their coffee, and glances out the window. They freeze mid-sip. It couldn't be. But it is. The horrid zillionaire is casually walking down the street, dressed in baggy shorts, a stained A-frame shirt, a faded baseball cap, and ratty tennis shoes. And walking ahead of them, on leash and harness, is an enormous alligator.

 

 

This time the HOA committee means business. All of their prior warnings only seem to have made the wealthy eccentric's behavior worse, and keeping a wild animal is finally taking things too far. But, to their horror, the problem resident has obtained all the permits for keeping an exotic animal of that sort. It's completely legal, the police, city council, animal control, and SWAT teams say, and unless the alligator actually causes a problem, there's nothing they can do about the situation. Meanwhile, the zillionaire buys a new hunk of junk to work on in their front yard, while covered in engine grease and wearing that stupid baseball cap.

The following HOA meeting, the president brings up the subject of getting rid of the rich person once and for all. Certainly there must be some legal cause to kick them out of their perfect manicured utopia. Unfortunately, it seems the zillionaire has further worked their evil magic, because most of the peasants, er, residents are on their side, rather than the HOA's. The residents start bringing up every perceived slight the HOA has ever committed. The complaints about the minivan. The fine for the pansies, which were described as cheap, ugly things. The eviction notice given to that sweet old lady who used to live on Heathcliff Avenue, whose crimes included feeding cookies to too many kids, wearing a flowery dress the committee said was in poor taste, and adopting too many cats (which were indoor cats, and had no effect on the neighborhood).

There are varied tales about what happened at that famed meeting, but the general consensus is that a riot took place, followed by a revolt, then a ballroom blitz. There was screaming and raging and cursing, picket signs appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and crumpled citations were thrown. The HOA committee was overthrown, and many papers containing rules and regulations were burned.

After that disastrous event, some of the former peasants became part of the new HOA, and the former HOA members were disgraced and hid in shame in their houses, curtains drawn. At the following meeting, the zillionaire makes an appearance, the first in many an HOA meeting since they moved in. The rich person takes over the committee, and renames it to the ALA—the Alligator Lovers' Association. A new list of rules is drawn up among the members, much more reasonable than the previous ones. The former HOA members are informed that they must comply to the new rules, or face eviction. Many of them, either too ashamed to remain, or unwilling to part from the now-banned Gucci handbags, leave.

 

The ALA is still alive and well to this day, and it's been said that the zillionaire is planning to branch out. Take over more HOAs, turn them into something better. Currently, there's two Homeowner's Associations that have turned into the Flamingo Lovers' Association and the Rusty Old Junker Association. And there's more to come, the zillionaire promises.

So, if you see someone in the neighborhood, dressed sloppily and working on the rusted-out frame of an old land yacht, you'd best tip your hat to them. You never know, they could be the President of the End Homeowner's Associations Association of America.