The Affair of the Green House

I almost didn't write this entry, partly because the "so-called neighbor saga" is starting to bore even me, even as I'm living it.   But unfortunately the unpleasantness appears to have escalated.  Someone has actually been throwing rocks at our house.

I refuse to be victimized.  I'll post what I've written so far of the pathetic affair here.  If you're interested, read on.  I'll update as I get a chance.  Right now, I'm waiting for the police to arrive.

And to those who are accustomed to more cheerful fare--my apologies.  I have plenty of stories to share, but it has been hard to write about my children when I know a vengeful person, someone who knows where we live and who has already committed criminal  mischief, is reading my blog.

Skyrocketing property values (we live in the #4 most expensive housing market in the country) worked to our benefit: finally, my husband and I were able to afford a loan to improve our property: new landscaping, new irrigation, new driveway pavers, new fence, new hurricane shutters, and new paint. 

We found it difficult to choose a color for the house.  I wanted a bright color for the front door so that you could actually tell that we had a front door and not just a garage (in our snoutscape neighborhood).  My husband didn't care about the door, but he wanted an actual color for the house, anything other than gray, tan, or beige. We collected hundreds of paint strips, drove through other subdivisions, consulted with the painter, checked out books on home exteriors, and finally, after much dithering, selected two Sherwin Williams colors: green body (6444), red door (6607).  These colors were approved by our homeowner's association board.

When the color first went on two weeks ago, we were concerned by how vibrant it was.  We consulted the painter.  He said, "Relax! 80% of my customers don't like the color when it first goes on.  Why don't you wait and see how it looks when it is done."  He added that expensive home communities use bright colors like ours. We agreed to wait and see. 

Unbeknownst to us, two of our neighbors were less patient.  They drafted a petition demanding that the color be changed, and they began going house to house to collect signatures.

Days later, we still worried that the color overpowered our new landscaping.  We called the painter and said we were probably going to switch colors; we asked him to stop working and give us an estimate on repainting.  He said, "No problem.  I'll go paint my next house and you figure out what color you want.  Then I'll come back."  We pulled out the color strips again and tried to figure out how we would handle the additional cost.  (Painters do not offer "free do-overs"; nor should they.  Repainting would take the same amount of labor, and at least the same amount of paint, so we were looking at a bill of at least $2400 more.) 

That day, my husband talked to one of our neighbors and jokingly said, "How do you like our primer?"

That neighbor asked, "Is that your primer?  I thought it was your final color."

"It was supposed to be our final color," my husband admitted, "but we think we're going to change it.  So it might as well be very expensive primer."

Then, the petition arrived at the office of our hoa property manager and convinced us to stick with our original color choice.  ("The color of freedom," my husband calls it.)  The petition read [original misspellings and other errors preserved]:

We, the residents of . . . are firmly requesting immediate action to be taken to have the occupants change the exterior color of their home.

We ALL feel this pistachio looking green color:
1. reduces the value of our homes
2. renders the ability to sell our home more difficult
3. extreamly diminishes the beauty of this neighborhood AND is a sever eye sore.

We look forward to your response and appropriate action in the next few days.

And it was signed by 18 of my neighbors. 

We were hurt that these neighbors, to whom we have made an effort to be friendly, had secretly colluded on a mean, bullying petition.  Not one had the courage or courtesy to talk to us about their concerns, or to talk to us at all for that matter. If any of them had even said hello to us, we'd probably have started talking about the color ourselves.  Instead, they ganged up to try to force us to do what they wanted.  I didn't want to live in a neighborhood like that.  I decided to go to everyone's house and talk to them, face to face like an adult, about the petition. 

And that's just what I did, visiting 14 houses over several days.  The experience was occasionally awful, mostly good.  My neighbors were occasionally rude, mostly nice.  Two-thirds of them disavowed their participation in the petition, saying that they had felt pressured into signing.  The rest of them tended to justify their actions by saying something like, "I saw all the names on there.  Everyone agrees with me." 

I blogged many of these conversations, not identifying anyone but documenting the conversations through story-like vignettes, with setting, character and dialogue.  I did my best to be fair, and judging from the hits to my blog, the whole saga resonated with other people too.  I received many supportive comments; I wish I could have preserved the comments when I deleted the saga. 

Then one of my neighbors found my blog somehow (afaik I never gave the address to any of them, and I've never identified my neighborhood or address here) and delivered printouts to everyone's mailbox. 

Suddenly the anger erupted again, uglier this time, though fortunately  not as widespread.  We've heard directly from three of our neighbors. 

• One was very upset about being dragged into neighborhood politics again by my blog and asked to be deleted from the blog and left alone forever.  [We had no "neighborhood politics" pre-petition.  I am sad because I liked this neighbor and had hoped to get better acquainted, but I will respect this person's wishes.  Btw, this person granted permission to quote from that request.]
• One corrected my guess about who co-authored the blog and reiterated a strong dislike for my house color, emphasizing that it was an inappropriate color for the president of the hoa [me] to have chosen. 
  
• One has left an anonymous critical comment on my blog.  You can read it for yourself.

I was more sad about this turn of events than the original petition, because I was hoping that my conversations had cleared the air and left our block on more neighborly footing.  Now, people seemed to be interpreting my blog as a weird, passive-aggressive retaliation.  How it could be so, when I had only nice things to say about most of them, is still a puzzle, but I can't control what people think.  I deleted the saga as soon as I realized it had been used in such a hurtful way. 

I didn't go door to door again, though.  I didn't have the heart to reach out to everyone again, plus, I don't know who got the printouts, plus I am sick of discussing the whole thing.  I figured people would do what I do when I don't like a house color: for a couple of weeks I tell my husband I dislike it, and then I find myself saying, "Hey, that looks pretty good after all."  And really.  So we have a green house.  Who cares?

Today, we noticed that someone has been throwing rocks at the house, hard enough to damage the paint.   Someone who was with us at the time told us that one of our neighbors had called him, slandered us at great length, and made vague threats such as, "People are angry about that house and someone might DO something to it.  You never know what people will do." 

"I didn't want to repeat that to you," he said, "because I thought it was just talk.  But now I'm not so sure.  You need to know what is being said."  He offered to testify about those threats if needed.  And we called the police.

You know, before all of this happened, I liked our neighborhood a lot.  And I thought we lived on the friendliest block in the whole place.

Comments

[Lisa]

My goodness gracious. I read the whole saga before it was deleted and thought it was very well written...not derogatory towards any of your neighbors at all.

I can honestly say that it's absolutely ridiculous that it has gone this far. I think you and your husband have done everything that you can (even more, really) and that you shouldn't have to go back to all those neighbors. I think we've all seen different colors on houses...and wondered what in the world they were thinking. But, the main thing is that it's not my house - if you own it, do with it what you want!

I hope that the whole mess can resolve itself somehow - and that there won't be too many hard feelings all around.

Take care - and be proud of your green house!!

[N.]

Wow, Beth. This is just so horrible. It's too bad that your neighbours can't understand this. Yeah, so your house is a bright green - at least it's not lime green, lol!

Maybe you could repaint after all because you really don't like the color. And then write a letter to the entire neighbourhood about your feelings on the matter and reminding them of all the rules, etc of the HOA. It's not a matter of you being right (which you know you are) and your neighbours being unreasonable. It's a matter of preserving neighbourhood harmony and it doesn't sound like it's going to happen, unfortunately, because everytime they step out of their house, your neighbours will always see the house as a sore point. Maybe write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper too. I'm so angry for you!

[Christi]

*hugs*

I wish I had some encouraging things to tell you; my own faith in humankind has been pretty shaky lately. But I think you and your family are just wonderful, and I'd love to get together, either with the kids for a playdate or without them (for another long lunch :-D).

I feel bad that I've been away from your blog for so long. I'm looking forward to catching back up.

[fausto]

Guess you'll have to prime those damaged spots.

What a shame if your primer color shouldn't be an exact match. Maybe if you left the primed spots to weather for a few years the colors might fade together by the time you can afford to repaint again. In the meantime, your neighbors might have time to consider the impact of vandalism on property values.

I don't think you did anythong wrong by writing about this on your blog, by the way. You didn't identify anyone personally or betray any confidences. your neighbors didn't like what they saw when they stole a peek at themselves in your mirror, that's their own problem.

Are you considering running for re-election when the term of your HOA presidency expires?

[rochelle]

Good gawd! It gets worse! Your neighbors sound like villains from a Roald Dahl novel--titled something like Revenge of the Vanilla Brigade. Are your neighbors aware that there are other things going on in the world, like the loss of a great American city and the resultant displacement and homelessness? I am very angry on your behalf. And surprised by the small-minded, mean-spiritedness by some of those in your immediate community. Just a few blocks from me, in an historic district, a lovely old building is being painted Pepto Bismo pink, with green trim, and I couldn't be happier.

[Cal Shepard]

I highly recommend you get the children's book "The Big Orange Splot" by Daniel Pinkwater. It's available in paperback. It is about exactly this subject - and will make you feel better! I promise!

[Desirea]

I am going through this too! My husband and I painted our home a clayish color to match our brick. Looks great in a neighborhood of grey and beige.

Now the builder of our 5 year home is harrassing us over CCR'S. I read them to include building construction and fence construction. Not personal color choice.

Did you hire legal aid to keep them from forcing you to re-paint? Don't know if mine will escalate to that. But I will fight to keep my color choice, as well has my personal freedom in America.

[Beth]

Good for you, Desirea! We don't anticipate needing legal aid because our colors were legally approved, and we have the full support of our hoa board. Though I have considered seeking legal aid to stop the slander, and if we catch the moron rock-thrower, we'll definitely pursue whatever options are available to us.

How is it that your builder is still involved in your community after 5 years? I'd love to hear more. You can email me privately if you like from my "about" page.

Best wishes to you.

[Michael Reardon]

You are Presidnet of your HOA?

Lucky you.

If you were just a simple resident, without wielding any of the enormous powers of the HOA, your life would be far more complicated.

Rather than just being 'upset' by your neighbors attitudes, you would most likely find yourself finacialy ruined in the process of a 'banana republic' type persecution.

You would be summarily fined. Perhaps forclosure would result because of your husbands reluctance to knuckle under to the power of public opinion (a fatal quality in HOAs)

Forget due process, forget fair procedure, you would understand how horrible it is when the accusor is also the judge.

HOAs are aberant to our understanding of American Democracy.

So my advice to you, as unsolicited as it is, is to hold the reigns of power tight in your community.

You have a tiger by the tail.