The HOA pool is closed, so they’re using yours.
That was the first thing I heard when I stepped through the side gate and saw five children already in the water. The HOA pool, so they’re using yours. A woman in a visor and a bright polo stood on my patio like she owned the stone under her feet. This is my private property. She didn’t even look at the boundary markers or the fence. I’m the HOA president. You don’t get to tell me what I can do.
The pool is completely inside my property boundary. I said it once, then again, because she was already waving the children deeper toward the shallow end as if my words were weather. Keep arguing and I’ll have your house taken away. She laughed when she said it. The laugh sat in the air with the chlorine and the wet footprints on my deck.
Why did you enter this property? I asked her the question the way you ask someone who has already crossed a line they pretend not to see. The HOA gives me authority over this house. Ma’am, that isn’t how private property works. Karen, you need to leave this property immediately and take these children along with you right now. Right now.
She did not move. The five kids kept splashing. Two of them were hers. The other three belonged to neighbors who had decided, without asking, that a closed community pool meant my backyard was now public water. I had not invited anyone. I had not posted an open house. I had filled the pool myself, paid the chemicals myself, and locked the gate myself after the last HOA meeting where they announced the community pool would stay shut for plaster repairs.
I live in a small cul-de-sac at the edge of Willow Ridge. The house is mine. The lot is mine. The pool sits fifteen feet inside the rear property line, which is printed on the survey I keep in the kitchen drawer. The HOA president is Marlene Croft. Everyone calls her Karen when she is not in the room. She has been president for six years because nobody else wants the emails.
Marlene believes the bylaws are a suggestion for other people and a weapon for her. She has fined residents for trash cans left out two hours after pickup. She has sent violation letters for grass one inch over the limit. She has never, until today, walked onto private land with five children and treated a backyard pool like a municipal facility.
I told her again that the community pool was closed and that this water was not hers to assign. She pointed at the HOA handbook as if the paper could move a fence. I pointed at the survey. She pointed at her title. I pointed at the gate she had opened without knocking.
The children were already climbing out and running across the deck with wet feet. One slipped. Nobody was hurt. Marlene told them to get back in. I told them to get their towels and go home. Marlene said if I kept arguing she would start the process to place a lien. That was the threat that went too far.