My mother lived in her home from 1995–2013. When she purchased the house there was no HOA. Around 1999 she received an invite to a neighbor “meeting" the next day at a time she could not possibly attend, because of her work hours. Skip forward to 2009: she received a bill for 10yrs of HOA dues (1st and only contact referencing HOA since the 1999 invite), the letter claimed she had 1 month to pay in full or her house would be seized and sold to cover both the dues & all associated legal fees. Turns out every home/family that did not attend that meeting got the same letter *approximately 50 families. My mother & her neighbor both chose to fight it and spoke to a lawyer. He requested documentation of previous notices, invoices, bylaws, ect….

Some people paid the back dues scared by the letter, many did not, no one's houses were sold.

Turns out the HOA never notified anyone (other than those at the meeting) that they existed, what the dues were & what the fees covered. The lawyer essentially got them to “reset" everything & in January of 2010 all homeowners started paying HOA dues, knew the restrictions of the neighborhood and the HOA started keeping better records than just who was paid in full.

The only other notice my mother ever received from them was due to the “crazy cat lady” that lived across the street. The letter claimed a fine was due & stated that my mother needed to stop leaving plates of cat food on her sidewalk. My mother fortunately had filed complaints both with the city and the HOA about this behavior (it had been going on for at least a yr) so fid not end up paying a fine.

She would place plates of cat food on the sidewalks of other people's houses ‘so stray cats wouldn't have to cross the road’ to get to her house to be fed. I was home on vacation so I took a copy of the letter and the plates of food to the neighbor's house. I explained the problem and told her she needed to stop.

The lady never stopped, she would put out cat food just after sunset, but started retrieving them around 5am.