HOA Tried to Annex My Ranch Into Their Territory One Document Cost Them Their Entire Subdivision

Описание: HOA Tried to Annex My Ranch Into Their Territory One Document Cost Them Their Entire Subdivision

"This part of your little farm is now under the jurisdiction of the Oakhaven Estates Homeowners Association, effective immediately. We've annexed it." The words hung in the hot Texas air, buzzing with the same lazy menace as the horseflies circling her head. Karen, the HOA president from the sprawling subdivision next door, sat perched on a golf cart that was, at that very moment, parked ten feet inside my property line, its tires crushing a patch of bluebonnets my daughter and I had been tending. She was a woman built like a bulldog squeezed into a pastel pantsuit, her face a mask of smug certainty, holding a clipboard like a scepter. She pointed a perfectly manicured but sausage-like finger at a row of new, cheap-looking metal stakes driven into my pasture. "As you can see, the new boundary has been marked. You have an unpermitted structure"—she gestured vaguely toward my hundred-year-old barn—"uncut grass, and a non-compliant fence. The initial fines total three thousand dollars, plus a five-hundred-dollar annexation processing fee. You have thirty days to pay before we place a lien on your property." My property. The hundred acres my great-grandfather bought with cash earned breaking horses and clearing land a century ago. The land where I was born, where my father was born, and where I had hoped my own kids would one day decide their future. I looked from the ridiculous stakes to her golf cart, then to the sign at the end of my long gravel driveway, a sign carved from a solid piece of oak that read ‘Miller Ranch. Est. 1923.’ There was no mention of Oakhaven Estates. There never had been. I felt a cold, slow-burning fuse light somewhere deep in my gut, the kind of fuse the Army teaches you to control, to aim, to use. "Karen," I said, my voice dangerously calm, "you and your golf cart are trespassing. You have ten seconds to get back on your side of the fence before I call the sheriff and have you removed." Her painted-on eyebrows shot up. The smirk faltered for a fraction of a second. "I am the President of the Oakhaven HOA! I have authority here. This is legally annexed territory." She tapped her clipboard. "It's all documented." That was the moment I knew this wasn't just a misunderstanding. This was a declaration of war.
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