The Great HOA Revolt That Wasn't

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

When an HOA meeting, an internet repair call, and an 88-year-old woman with a water heater all pointed to the same problem.

Last night I coughed my way to an HOA meeting.

A couple of the ladies from the neighborhood and I decided to walk to Village Hall. We’re guessing I have some kind of grass allergy, but honestly, who knows. I’ve been miserable lately, and earlier that day I’d gone to acupuncture where she spent a good chunk of the appointment working on my sinuses.

Whatever was happening, I spent the entire walk coughing my brains out. It wasn’t that clear your throat cough. It was the hacking echoing down the block, warning the neighborhood of the coming plague cough. The one where you feel like you just dived in the pool wrong and are now drowning in your own snot.

By the time we arrived, my husband had pulled up and met us there. The second we got inside, I stopped coughing. Not one cough.

The three of us walked inside together ready for battle. Unfortunately, we walked directly into the Village Board meeting. Oops.

After a brief period of confusion and looking like lost tourists in our own town, we figured out our mistake and found our way downstairs to the HOA meeting.

The floor was open for homeowners.

The first speaker was a woman asking the board to waive a $100 fine because her contractor was already scheduled to fix the issue.

The next speaker was a lovely 88-year-old woman who has lived here for four months.

She told the board she had been to the management company three separate times because nobody ever calls her back.

She wasn’t there to fight. She wasn’t there to complain. She simply wanted to know if she could install a tankless water heater.

Imagine being 88 years old, owning your new home, and feeling nervous enough that you need reassurance before replacing your water heater.

That’s how uncertain people feel. Then it was my husband’s turn to speak. If you’ve ever met my husband, you know he does not waste a microphone.

He laid out a detailed case explaining how the landscaping company wasn’t doing its job.

Then he circled back.

Then he circled back again.

Then he made absolutely sure everyone heard him.

Honestly, after months of calling, emailing, complaining, and watching nothing happen, I don’t think he was trying to make a point anymore.

I think he was trying to make sure someone finally listened. He finished with what was probably the best question of the night. “What can we do as a community to hold these contractors accountable?” He talked about block captains who could inspect the contractor’s work and report back. 

He was immediately shot down, and the conversation was going nowhere. So I decided it was my turn. Let’s speed things up. I talked about the HOA app. The missing meeting minutes. The lack of responses when homeowners reach out.

The fact that people don’t know what’s happening because information simply isn’t available.

I knew a representative from the management company was sitting in the room, so I wanted to make sure he heard it.

That seemed to open the floodgates.

Suddenly it wasn’t just about landscaping. It was about callbacks. It was about communication. It was about getting answers. It was about feeling like your concerns disappear into a black hole.

Then my walking partner, who hadn’t even planned on speaking, took my bait and started talking about moving in and later discovering she would have to pay for sealcoating after being told it was optional.

That got people fired up.

At this point, I should probably mention that I had taken a gummy before the walk.

In my defense, I wasn’t expecting to spend the evening accidentally attending the wrong government meeting, listening to an 88-year-old woman make sure she had the right to install a water heater, and watching my husband launch a one-man campaign against a landscaping company.

Somewhere during the meeting it kicked in just enough to make me realize I was sitting in a room full of adults arguing about sealcoating, shrubbery, missing meeting minutes, and whether contractors ever return phone calls.

Honestly, it only made the whole thing funnier.

Then things started going sideways. Two women started talking to my husband in a way he didn’t appreciate. One of them was the HOA president. His amygdala was fully online.

No backing down.
No retreat.
No surrender.

I wasn’t even paying attention anymore.

I’ve sat on boards. I’ve run organizations. I’ve attended enough meetings to know exactly when a conversation has shifted from solving problems to defending positions.

Once that happens, I’m done.

I’ve learned that the people who volunteer are usually the ones who get things done. The downside is that people who spend all their time solving problems can become so focused on the solution that they stop seeing how it looks from anyone else’s perspective.

Neither observation is meant as an insult. It’s just something I’ve noticed.

People become so focused on solving a problem that they stop seeing how the problem looks from anyone else’s perspective.

The conversation had crossed that line. Nobody was listening anymore. Everyone was preparing their next argument.

So I stood up, didn’t look at anybody, and started walking toward the door. Then somewhere around shoulder height I snapped my fingers and did the universal come here motion with my hand. 

Classic stoner move. Never broke stride. Never turned around. Just assumed my neighbor and husband would eventually follow.

Apparently, from their perspective, this was less clear.

My neighbor told me she had absolutely no idea what was happening. She saw me stand up. Then saw me walking. Then saw the hand signal. Then entered a brief state of confusion.

Are we leaving?
Is she leaving?
Am I leaving?
What is happening right now?

Meanwhile I was already halfway to the door. So she got up. Then realized we couldn’t just abandon the chairs.

Turned around. Pushed both of our chairs back in. Then hurried after me.

Which somehow makes the whole thing even funnier. Not because she followed me, but because her Midwestern manners kicked in during the extraction.

The meeting may have been descending into chaos, but by God those chairs were going to be put away properly.

The best part came afterward. My neighbor said she wished she’d been tougher. She wished she’d stared everybody down on the way out.

We stood outside laughing, practicing her new tough walk while my husband came outside laughing. Apparently he looked up, realized his wife was gone, realized our neighbor was gone too, and immediately understood exactly what had happened.

That’s my wife, he laughed. She’ll just leave everyone confused.

He drove us home because there was absolutely no chance I was walking back through whatever pollen-filled nightmare had nearly killed me on the way there.

During the ride home, my neighbor kept working on her departure strategy.

The tough walk.
The turn.
The point.
The whole thing.

She demonstrated it repeatedly. Apparently in her version, she doesn’t look confused. She doesn’t stop to push in chairs. She doesn’t scramble to catch up. She confidently stands, turns, points dramatically, and leaves as though she owns the building.

It was significantly cooler than what had actually happened. I supported the rewrite.

The funny thing is that I walked into that meeting thinking we had a landscaping problem.

I walked out realizing we might actually have a communication problem.

The landscaping complaints.
The water heater confusion.
The sealcoating frustration.
The missing meeting minutes.
The lack of callbacks.
The unanswered questions.

None of them seemed connected at first, but sitting in that room, listening to one homeowner after another, I noticed something.

Nobody felt heard, and that realization had actually started earlier that morning.

My day began with a phone call from my oldest friend’s 82-year-old parents. I’ve been helping them with their internet problems for weeks. AT&T has been a no-show.

Appointments have come and gone. Sometimes the internet works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Now they were getting warning messages saying things were unsafe. When you’re 82 years old and mostly use your devices for banking, unsafe is not a comforting word.

For weeks, I had been telling the company the same thing. I thought the problem was the line. Not the router. Not the passwords. The line. They’re still running on old phone lines while the other side of the street already has fiber.

By noon I was at their house, troubleshooting, talking to support, and trying to help them navigate a system that seemed determined not to listen. The technician seemed like a no show and then right before my walk, the technician finally showed up, and my friend’s father called me. 

The technician wanted to change all their passwords. I told him that was fine as long as he changed them on everything. Then I explained what I’d been saying all along. I think it’s the line.

His response? “You’re probably right.”

I laughed when I heard that because that sentence perfectly summarized my entire day.

The 88-year-old woman who wanted a water heater was probably right. 
My husband was probably right.
My neighbor was probably right.
The people complaining about callbacks were probably right.
The internet problem was probably the line.
The landscaping problem was probably real.
The communication problem was definitely real.
The challenge wasn’t figuring out what people were saying.

The challenge was getting someone to listen long enough to hear it.

Maybe the board isn’t the problem. Maybe the management company isn’t the entire problem. Maybe the contractors aren’t the entire problem either. Maybe the real problem is that information is scattered everywhere and nobody has a good way to connect the dots.

What I do know is that the most productive thing that happened all day wasn’t during the HOA meeting. It wasn’t during the AT&T service call. It wasn’t during the arguments.

It was afterward. A few neighbors standing around laughing, comparing notes, and realizing none of us were as alone in our frustrations as we thought.

That’s usually where communities begin. Not in the boardroom. In the conversations afterward.

And for the record, on the drive home I gave my husband my official assessment of the evening.

This is the president’s fault. He looked at me. What?

I said if I had been running that meeting, I never would have let you talk again.

He started laughing.

I’m serious. You got up. You made your point. Then you made it again. Then you made sure everyone understood your point. Again.

At some point, she should have thanked you for your comments and moved on. Instead, she kept engaging, which only encouraged you.

Anyone who knows my husband knows that once he feels strongly about something, additional discussion is not a deterrent.

It’s fuel. The more they talked, the more he talked. The more he talked, the more they talked.

It was a perfectly self-sustaining ecosystem.

I may not remember all of Robert’s Rules of Order, but I’m pretty sure “keep arguing with the guy who likes arguing” isn’t one of them.