An inside look into Home Owners Associations
Home Owners Associations (HOAs) are the norm for most neighborhood developments in the United States. They are a necessary evil, but lately have bordered on being the bane of my existence—and I know many of you agree. So, in the spirit of this home issue, I thought I would share my view on HOAs, along with stats to back my perspective.
I realize that there needs to be some sort of baseline enforcement of the rules based on each community’s HOA bylaws for the protection and upkeep of the neighborhood. But I have witnessed a flurry of ridiculous, frivolous complaints against neighbors (and my husband and me) that are infuriatingly invasive, disrespectful, and the opposite of neighborly.
It seems that some HOA board members get a kick out of being on a dictator-like power-trip tirade. Take for instance a call my husband received a few weeks ago reporting a complaint from someone on the HOA that our boat has been parked in our driveway for two weeks. (It was actually parked in our driveway on our property over the weekend). Complaints happen if we park it in front of our house on the street or temporarily in the neighborhood’s overflow lot for a day or two, so we can’t win.
Then there’s a neighbor who was told to take his shed down that he built that’s barely viewable above the level of their fence backyard because the board had voted against sheds. The method of turning in the neighbor? Someone on the HOA walked onto his property toward the backyard to take photos of the shed.
These aren’t major situations, of course, but it could snowball into those that are, that make the news, practically infringing on our rights as Americans. Horror stories are out there, like folks being fined for keeping their daughter’s bike on the front steps during the day, for leaving a soccer goal in the front yard overnight, and for sidewalk chalk pictures in a neighborhood full of families.
To take things a step further, a man who took in his grandfather built him a wheelchair ramp because he had a hard time walking. His HOA fined him for the ramp because they didn’t approve the ramp before being built, but he had already gotten a permit with the town. On top of that, they fined him for not applying for a resident application for his grandfather. He fought the fines handed out every day for three months, which totaled about $30,000, until he eventually won the ramp case, not the residential tenant part, was forced to foreclose, and moved down the street to a non-HOA neighborhood with his granddad.
According to a 2024 HOA report from the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs (SCDCA), Horry County led the state in HOA complaints for the fifth year in a row, with more than 360 complaints filed against nearly 300 HOAs in South Carolina. It’s a 32 percent increase in complaints since 2022, and Horry County led the counties in the state, accounting for 24.4 percent of those complaints.
The top three complaints:
