Our homeowners association, CROA, recently completed a community-wide inspection of covenant violations, followed by mailed letters to each owner who had a violation. Some of the owners took to the Front Porch to air their displeasure. I noticed a few interesting behaviors.

Some people acknowledged that they had clear violations but wanted to air grievances anyway. “Yes, I know the yard looks like crap but my something was something and the other thing was happening and…”

Others tried to deflect, as if the HOA only had a limited number of citations to hand out and why was I picked when there are worse houses on the block? “Sure, our porch handrail is a rotted-out eyesore, but WHAT ABOUT THE VACANT HOUSE NEXT DOOR? WHY WEREN’T THEY CITED?”

The people who had a legitimate beef were the ones who have had long-term modifications who weren’t cited before. For example, a non-conforming path to the mailbox. I don’t think these people should necessarily be exempt, but they should be given plenty of time to make the corrections without penalty.

For the record, we were cited for our mailbox, which seems like the default citation if nothing else can be found. In our case, the mailbox is probably borderline, so I’ll fix it without grumbling too much. Of course, I live next door to an abandoned home that looks like hell…