Washington Mom Plots Against Her HOA After They Tried to Stop Her From Building Her Kids’ Backyard Playset. The Funniest Thing Ever Happened Next.

Living in a gated community with a homeowner’s association (HOA) comes with its set of challenges. For some home buyers, they make the deliberate choice to steer clear from neighborhoods with HOAs because of the trouble that could transpire from having one. D.I. Riley (@d.i.riley), who’s from Washington, told TikTok about the drama that ensued between her and her HOA that started all because of a playset. Talk about petty.

Riley is a mother who lives in a single-family neighborhood of 170 houses. She set up a wood playset with a swingset and a slide for her toddlers last September. But because it was secondhand, she had to refurbish the playset with some lumber from Lowe’s.

Within a day of setting the playset up, Riley got a call from her HOA president. She didn’t know how this person got her number, but she answered anyway.

“Hey, I hear you guys are doing some construction in your backyard. What’s the deal with that?” the president said. Since Riley had to do minor repairs, it might have been counted as such. But to call a repair “construction” is a relative extreme.

“Construction is a strong word. We’re just building a playset,” Riley said. To this, the president claimed that she needed to submit a “request” to the HOA before she could proceed with the project so that the board members could ensure that no rules were being violated.

HOA drama

Riley checked the rules beforehand and was aware that there weren’t any violations on her end. Regardless, she builds the playset anyway because she couldn’t leave the project unfinished. The next day, the HOA told her in all caps to “CEASE AND DESIST ALL CONSTRUCTION IMMEDIATELY FROM THE BOARD.” They included a photo of her building the playset in her backyard, which she suspects was taken from the inside of her neighbor’s house.

Later on, the neighbor who supposedly took the picture joined the HOA board. At first, Riley thought it didn’t matter because she already submitted a request to build the playset. If the board doesn’t respond within 30 days, it’s automatically deemed approved. Time passed by, and Riley thought the drama had blown over.

But three months later, the HOA contacted her again, asking for more information to “approve” the request. These questions were irrelevant to the rules, and Riley concluded that the HOA was merely finding a way to deny her request. So, she told her HOA that her request had been automatically approved because they failed to respond to her during the given timeframe.

This ensued a back-and-forth between Riley and an “anonymous” HOA board member.

She took the issue online and asked their neighborhood Facebook group if they’d had problems with getting playset approval as well. But the president of the HOA was the group’s moderator, so Riley wasn’t allowed to express her concern.

Lawyers got involved

Fed up with the HOA, Riley decided to communicate with her other neighbors in person. Apparently, their neighbors were also upset with the president of the HOA and how fussy she’s been with the rules. Since they were being censored by the president on the Facebook page, Riley made a new one.

Immediately, other neighbors started joining in the new group. They also started airing out their grievances against the current HOA that they were not allowed to talk about. Instead of listening to the community and offering an olive branch, the HOA escalated the issue by getting lawyers involved.

The HOA hired them to check for “liability” and “defamation.” Riley claims that the HOA even commissioned one of the attorneys to intimidate her coalition with lawsuits. But Riley and the new group were not fazed, and eventually, the HOA election brought a new set of board members. Even the president of the old board stormed off after giving a frenzied speech on Zoom.

All’s well that ends well? Not yet, because Riley was still getting harassed by a “board member” through email. Riley immediately recognized that the emails must be coming from the previous president, even though the sign-off merely said “the board.”

Suffering from success

Riley never had the ambition to be part of the HOA board, but she recognized that something needed to be done about the harassment. She posted in the new Facebook group, suggesting that all the board members should be removed because they’re probably still in cahoots with the old president. Riley also disclosed the harassment she was still receiving through email and explained why the current board is unequipped to run the HOA.

Within two days, Riley was able to garner enough requests for removal to get the old board out. Who replaced the old board and became president? It was none other than Riley herself, who didn’t even want the position.

“I don’t want to be the president of my HOA,” she said, exasperated because of the drama. “But somebody has to run it. Otherwise, the crazy people are going to come back in.” She accidentally became the president in the end, which is the funniest outcome possible considering that it all started because of a playset.

(featured images: Emily Bow Pearce, D.I. Riley)

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