About

Our community does not have a website and I was an unknown community member running for a board position. Since my family is very technically inclined, making a website felt like a great way to show that we could contribute meaningfully. We did a fantastic job in a short amount of time and made sure to include a site footer that warned people that it wasn't an official HOA site. Despite the rumors, the narrative has never been that we were the voice of the HOA.

When we were done with the first pass of our site, we decided to use our already built platform to share a hard truth about the negative experiences we had, none of which was refuted by anyone involved. We had reason to believe that there were other families that had been treated in a less than neighborly fashion by the HOA and we thought our platform would be a good way to start a conversation. Part of my decision to run was because I thought I could address these issues in a productive manner.

We sent a link to the communication committee as my candidate profile. They copied the content from the page and didn't distribute the link. We then sent the link to the Facebook group.

Our site did not go over well. People made quick, incorrect, mostly uninformed, assumptions and the social media reaction, in typical social media form, looked something like this...

With every new perceived concern, we made changes to the site to try to calm the hysteria but it quickly became clear that no amount of changes would matter. The loud voices had identified us as an enemy and they were going to continue to push the narrative that we had done something wrong and we were outsiders that needed to be attacked. None of which was true.

We respectfully attempted to take on some of the bullies. We leaned on our neighbors to be empathetic that our experiences should not be the way ANY of our members are treated and that we should rally together to do better.

Different and diverse opinions result in a sum greater than its parts. An HOA that contains bullies is not going to do any of us any favors. We thought it was very important for the community to have many voices, not just the small group of members that all agreed with each other.

There was no attempt to reach out to us for a conversation. Our only insight was the untamed fear-mongering in the unofficial Facebook page. The false narrative that was being pushed emboldened some neighbors to add to our already negative community experience. Someone even went so far as to run google ads and create their own site targeting me specifically, presumably an effort of intimidation. We eventually received a baseless and embarrassing cease and desist letter that did not cite any broken laws or inaccuracies in our content.

So here we are.

• We have a site
  
  • It's still pretty great
  • We haven't done anything wrong or with malice in mind
  • Our goal for the site has always been to be super useful and informative
  • The HOA still doesn't have a site although there is reason to believe that they will be putting one together
• We're going to keep working on our site
  
  • Have you seen our Curbside Collection page?!
• We are still not the outsiders that some people would have you believe
  
  • We still believe that we should rally against bullying
• We believe that the board should be encouraging respectful communication instead of falsehoods and strong armed action
  
  • Maybe the goal of "togetherness" and "community" can be extended to everyone
  • We will continue to try to come from a place of understanding even when approached with fury and vitriol
• Calling out the bad behaviors and problematic interactions is not the problem, having an HOA that feels toxic and divisive is