Then she said something that would come back to haunt her. She told me that as long as the boat wasn’t visible from the street, she didn’t care where it was. Put it in your backyard, put it behind your house, I don’t care. Just get it out of sight from the street within seven days or you’ll be fined.
I pointed out that my backyard wasn’t big enough to fit an eighteen-foot boat. She snapped that I needed to figure it out and that if I was creative enough, I could surely find a solution. She emphasized again, “As long as it’s not visible from the street, there would be no violation.” When I pointed out that I had no other place to put the boat since my garage was full and I didn’t have a backyard large enough to reasonably hide a boat and trailer, she suggested I rent storage space or get rid of the boat.
I told her I wasn’t going to do either of those things based on an invalid rule. She left my house angry saying I’d regret not cooperating. I actually considered her demand over the next couple of days. My backyard was small, but I could technically fit the boat back there if I removed some landscaping and shifted things around. It would block access to my back door and make the yard completely unusable and I’d have to pay someone to remove a few shrubs and part of a fence, but technically the boat wouldn’t be visible from the street.
I was planning to do exactly that even though it was ridiculous. I got quotes for removing some landscaping and had borrowed a friend’s truck to help maneuver the boat through the side yard. I was literally going to comply with her unreasonable demand even though it would destroy my yard’s functionality, but Patricia couldn’t wait. She had my boat towed before the seven-day deadline she herself had given me. Her impatience would prove very costly.
I came home from work three days after our conversation to find my driveway empty. My boat was gone. I stood there for a moment just staring at the empty space where my boat should have been. My first thought was that it had been stolen. Then I noticed there were no tire marks or signs of forced entry into my yard and I remembered the security camera system.
I went inside and pulled up the footage. My driveway was open to the street with no gate, so accessing the boat didn’t require trespassing through any locked barriers. The boat was just sitting on its trailer on the side of the driveway. I watched as a flatbed tow truck arrived mid-morning, loaded my boat and trailer onto the bed and drove away. The whole thing took about fifteen minutes. I got screenshots and saved the footage to a USB drive.
I immediately called the police non-emergency line and explained that my boat had been taken from my property without my permission. An officer came out about an hour later and took a report. He seemed skeptical that an HOA could legally tow someone’s property from their own driveway without notice. He filed a report documenting that my boat had been taken without my permission, but advised me that recovering it would likely require a lawyer since the HOA was claiming authority to do it. Still, having the police report on file would be useful documentation.
The next morning, I found a letter from the HOA in my mailbox. It had been hand-delivered, not mailed. The letter informed me that because I had failed to comply with the violation notice, my boat had been relocated to appropriate storage, and that I could retrieve it by paying the associated fees. The letter included an itemized bill.