Trump Cutout HOA Civvie Warrrr
I need to vent because the sheer density of the hypocrisy happening on my block right now is giving me whiplash, and I literally just connected the dots of the timeline.
For context, I live in a townhome complex in SoCal. The actual President of our HOA is my next door neighbor. For the past DECADE this woman and her husband have left their garage door wide open about 90% of the time, displaying a giant American flag and a massive, life-size cardboard cutout of Donald Trump directly facing the driveway. Every time I’ve gotten in and out of my car or have retrieved my mail, I’ve made eye contact with Donald Trump, for the past 10 years! And tbh I hate him for all of the obvious reasons but I have never complained or criticized them. It is worth noting that when I was 20, and Obama was running for president, I had a poster of him in my window. A week after he won we received an anonymous complaint from the HOA and I had to take it down. Is the Trump cutout a long term retaliation? Perhaps…I can’t deny that it doesn’t mirror the entire sentiment of MAGA and Trump’s presidency. Also, full transparency; I am at the point in my life where I hate all American presidents including Obama and I see them all as warmongers. I’m a communist, duh.
But anyways, they also constantly double-park and actually physically extended their patio boundaries past their property lines - actually encroaching into the common pathway to both our front doors (I live right next door, ofc.) Like they literally moved the fence. All that being said, I do love my neighbors even if I don’t agree with their politics. I have no idea why they love Donald Trump, I never bring him up and nor do they, but they always make sure my packages aren’t stolen, they have a gorgeous butterfly garden and the wife is just generally incredibly kind and funny. I’ve known them for almost 30 years. She has only recently become the HOA president.
A few months ago, the life-size cutout disappeared and was replaced by a smaller, poster-sized printout of his face. Well, apparently a couple of weeks ago, a neighbor down the street snapped and tore it down. This is according to the HOA presidents husband. He flipped his shit, and apparently chewed the guy he suspected of doing it out. Within days, a new, even bigger cardboard Trump cutout was erected in the garage like a monument. With FU46 emblazoned on Trump’s chest.
But it gets better. Exactly two weeks after the poster was stolen, everyone in the complex suddenly received official notices slapped on their garages. Apparently, the impetuous for the crackdown is that the HOA has received a sudden deluge of complaints about garages “being left open all day.” The complaints were vague and didn’t mention exactly who. The notice claimed the board is doing a massive security sweep because "open garages invite burglars," and we are now officially banned from leaving our garage doors open for any reason if we aren't actively standing inside them. Mind you, another neighbor across the street has left his garage open 24/7 for two years, the President has done it for thirty, and we have had a grand total of zero burglaries. It’s complete BS.
So we go to the HOA meeting. Because everyone is now stressed about getting fined over their garages, the finger-pointing begins. An absentee landlord, panicking that her tenant (the 24/7 garage guy) is going to get targeted, decides she needs a scapegoat to deflect the heat. So she decides to complain about my unit, directly across from her’s, because I have a passive privacy tint on my bedroom window to keep people from staring in from the street.
Suddenly, the whole meeting devolves into this petty, toxic playground where neighbors are nitpicking each other's plant buckets and kid’s basketball hoops. It was beyond chaotic and pedantic. Like I don’t mean to be hyperbolic but it was like a mini bureaucratic civil war, neighbor against neighbor. At first, I was entirely on the defensive, ready to absolutely nuke and judge this landlord's property with retaliatory complaints. I hadn’t yet connected the dots. I hate to say that the cop within me (yuck,) swelled with ego.
I sat with it for a bit and realized that this entire drama, the sudden security panic, the garage notices, the complex-wide bickering, the administrative threats, all has got nothing to do with uniform community standards or safety. The board opened Pandora's box and weaponized the entire HOA infrastructure to throw a collective tantrum and punish the neighborhood because the general consensus on the block is that we are fucking tired of looking at an ugly orange cardboard politician every time we pull out of our driveways. Literally no one else flies political crap for the past 18 years, besides them.
Like actually the gall of someone who has been doing all of that to say I need to remove my privacy film bc it’s against the rules but Trump has been staring me down morning noon and night for over a decade ?! BS. I just don’t want anyone to see my tits??? And then I realized, hey we actually have privacy film on another window downstairs by the front door that’s been there for 30 years with ZERO complaints. So I dig in to see if that legally sets precedent and it does! In CA, there is a statute of limitations of 5 years for HOAs so if something has been up that long and they never communicated it as against the rules, they can’t fine us or make us change it. >:) there is actually a ton of info about it!
This is why knowing your rights is imperative!!!
And while the privacy film on my street facing window is a new addition, the HOA legally can’t make me take that film down because it would show as favoritism, as no one has asked us to take down the other older privacy film next to my front door. They can’t pick and choose whose windows are breaking the rules when a precedent has been set. And the cherry on top is that the HOA president sees that privacy film every day for 30 years because we share the same stoop!
Due to this situation I have now been researching putting together a tenants association to fight back against this ridiculous, petty tyranny. Like leave me TF alone ?!!! We need to unionize UP! Living in an era of flock surveillance cameras and Palantir tracking every citizens every move I think I can do without being policed by my neighbors.
They wanted to use me and my window film as a useful distraction so everyone would keep fighting each other instead of looking up at the giant, rule-breaking elephant in the room.
I’m hitting them back with an ironclad statutory legal response this week and completely bypassing their personal circus, but holy shit. You cannot make this crap up. I really almost blew my gasket today.
Fuck HOAs fuck fascist MONOCULTURE fuck uniformity !!!!!!