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Carol Zier was shocked when she opened the letter from her Villages at Sand Creek Homeowners Association management company and discovered she was being ordered to paint the trim on her little shed.
And she was given just 30 days to get it done.
Carol was puzzled. The trim on her shed doesn’t need to be repainted. It’s not peeling or chipped.
That’s not the problem, according to the HOA.
Her trim is the wrong shade! It’s not an exact match to the trim on her home, the HOA declared.
And it doesn’t matter the trim has been the same color 12 years. Git ‘er done!
“I am just totally blown away by this,” Carol told me. “If you look at it, you wouldn’t even thing the shade is different.”
Carol assured me she wasn’t some covenant scofflaw who picked fights with the HOA. She’s always been a law-abiding HOA resident since she and her husband, Jerry, bought their home in 1999.
Heck, she said, Jerry served on the HOA board before his death in 2003.
“I always pay my dues and I work hard to keep my home looking right,” Carol said. “And I never complain about things in the neighborhood they need to fix.”
So I drove out to her tidy home in the Villages at Sand Creek, a 141-acre, pie-shaped neighborhood off of Airport Road with about 500 homes developed in the late 1990s at the confluence of Sand Creek and its east fork. A city walking trail runs along the creeks with HOA-owned walkways providing access between a homes, including Carol’s.
In the evening sun, I studied the paint trim on Carol’s house and then on the shed.
I took some photos and brought them back to my editor, Dena, who studied them. She concluded the house trim was a “sandy” color and, by golly, the shed trim was more of a “putty.”
Her exact words: “The horror!”
She was being sarcastic. (She often gets that way when editing my columns.)
Anyway, I guess it’s true the colors don’t match.
But, really? Who has time to go around conducting CSI analyses of trim paint on hundreds of homes? If it’s so close that it escaped detection 12 years, why go after it now?
I called the HOA for an explanation.
Board member Bob Ricketts said the 12-year delay puzzled him, too.
And, I asked him, if the HOA can spot Carol’s trim mismatch, how did it miss the six-foot-tall fence along the HOA-owned walkway that runs next to her yard?
The wood on the fence is bare, ugly, rotting wood.
Even worse, Carol said a piece of the fence blew down last spring and the HOA declined to fix it saying it was her responsibility.
Ricketts said he was unaware of the fence issue and promised to look into it.
I’m guessing Carol will be forced to paint her shed trim long before that fence is ever painted. Wanna bet?
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Personally I would like to see a sunset clause in all HOA actions, etc. That is if they don’t see it or act within say 1 year, then its approved by default. Also if an HOA is not active for say 5 years then the HOA should be dissolved and the covenants removed from the homeowners deeds.
Reason number #567032158 why people hate HOAs.
Was there any mention of the huge crack/hole in the sidewalk next to the house (first picture)? If the sidewalks are the HOA’s responcibility, I hope Ms. Zier writes them to let them know!
I lived there briefly and that HOA is ridiculous. Half their fences are rotting, the other half get blown over constantly. They used short nails for the fencing as opposed to screws or framing nails (probably saved them a penny per nail) so just pushing on the fence can make it fall apart. They’re just collecting fee’s and harassing people! Repairs to the fence were done at my expense, as they never bothered. Hope they like a 2 inch screws I put in =).
Since all HOAs have failed in their primary mission of increasing property values, why can’t the people of Colorado abolish the HOA law. Obviously, nobody wants them. (except for the RV storage yards)