Commercial Vehicle Violation Banners

That's a tough one.

But your violation sticker sounds like a good idea. It shows he's a jerk and also can deter others from becoming non-compliant.

I don't know how residents enter your premises. If using a fob from their car, perhaps disabling it and forcing him to get in and out of his car every time he drives through your entrance might annoy him enough to follow you rules.

NpS,
Sounds like you may be on to something with the sticker thing. I am imagining a very sticky not that does not just peel off similar to the ones Law Enforcement does with cars left on the roadway. They usually put them on the driver side window. Not sure if that is a rule or just so they get noticed. My first thought was to put it on the front wind shield so it would delay him leaving every morning having to remove this notice. The biggest problem I see is who gets to put it on his vehicle? If the board does not want to escalate the situation I doubt they are going to volunteer to be the bad guy and put the notices on the vehicle.

So, apparently, you do allow commercial vehicles and you do allow for commercial vehicles with signage and ladders, with a waiver, So what is the requirement to obtain a waiver and why wouldn't this person qualify, because they aren't on the board, or maybe they are too close to the front entrances.

Most HOA's in the US don't allow commercial vehicles. That is just boilerplate language put in decades ago. My criteria would be if this person is paying their assessments. Coming out of this pandemic, I think we're c=going to more shifts in our how our economy works. HOA's have to adapt along the way.

Great comments. Thanks everyone.

Kerry - We are not gated. No amenities. No fobs.

Michael - My expectation is that violation banners will not be placed on vehicles for a first violation. Number of passes a resident gets before banner is applied to be determined. Whatever number that it, for sure it will be standardized.

We are in a strange position where, for the last 5 years or so, we only fined a few households, and all were for chronic violations. All of the fining decisions were initiated by homeowner complaints - not by HOA inspections. As a self-managed HOA with no employees, we did not want to reinforce the negative stereotype of Board members as people who desire to assert power over their neighbors.

Mark - We realized that we needed to nudge the enforcement pendulum in the other direction, but not that much, because we don't want to lose the goodwill we built by our policy of minimal Board intrusiveness. In our 2021 annual survey, 85% of owners are happy with our current level of enforcement, 13% think we don't enforce enough, and 12% think we enforce too much. We're very happy with that balance. We'll see if things change in the 2022 survey.

When we decided to step up enforcement, we hired an experienced individual, paid hourly, who will perform inspections, communicate directly with owners, and will be authorized by the Board to enforce HOA guidelines on HOA rule violations. Board members will not communicate directly with owners (except in the event of an appeal from the decisions of our independent contractor).

Our independent contractor will place the banners. We are currently in a heavy debate over how sticky the banners should be. Some want it to be difficult to remove the glue from the banners. Others don't.

John - Many of violations involve vehicles parked on HOA-owned streets. We don't know anything about towing. Some are afraid of potential damage to vehicles and price gouging by towing company. Word of a bad incident would spread like wildfire. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who can talk from experience about towing. Also, wondering if any towing companies do booting as an alternative to towing.

Max - My description wasn't too clear. Our definition of commercial vehicles in our docs is more than what I provided. The point that I was trying to make is that there are two areas - ladder racks and commercial signage - that (1) are in our docs, and (2) are universally recognized as commercial. So we focus on those 2 things. Signs and ladder racks.

Also note that the waivers came about as a means of grandfathering households that got away with no enforcement from prior Boards. The waivers are narrowly designed to severely limit parking of vehicles with ladder racks or commercial signs on the basis of (1) appearance, (2) location, and (3) proximity to points of entry into the community.

As we see things, you can no longer call an F-150 commercial just because it's a truck, so we stay away from the gray areas. I believe that most HOAs have or should have made the shift.

Let - See comments to Max. Also, you raise an interesting point about putting stickers on vehicles on driveways. I'm sure we will have an lively discussion about it.

PA regulations tend to be HOA friendly, except in the area of personal protections under ADA and comparable statutes.

Thanks again. Would appreciate further thoughts.

Another correction - This time survey percentages.

85% happy with current level of enforcement. 8% say not enough enforcement. 7% say too much.

Interesting question Jeff.

The Board did discuss placing something under wipers, but decided against it because of potential damage to wipers or claims of damage to wipers.

Would messing with wipers constitute vandalism? I don't know.

Certainly, there is less risk of damage to a vehicle if we use sticky banners rather than notices under windshields.

And we do need some means of putting something on the glass that will survive being out in the elements.

No, there is no specific authority for sticky stuff. Do you think our docs need to be that specific?

Vandalism in most states does necessarily require traditional damage. If someone spray paints your windshield there is no more damage than a sticker (requires scraping off) but I'm sure it would be considered vandalism in all states.

I say sticky sticker away.

I agree John.

3 options will be discussed at the next meeting: 1. stickers; 2. notices placed under windshield wiper; 3. nothing place on vehicle.

Will let you know which gets chosen.

I'm not suggesting making empty threats . . . instead, I'm saying you need to create a process whereby at a certain point, the automatic next step is engaging your HOA lawyer to begin legal action against the homeowner to collect the fine monies owed. Engaging the lawyer WILL result in legal fees that WILL also become money owed by the violator. Ignoring letters from the lawyer and money owed WILL result in a lawsuit that WILL result in court costs, time in court, and (if the HOA's case is as cut and dry as it should be) result in a judgment in favor of the HOA. Violator will owe all fines, interest, lawyer fees, and court costs. They'll do that once, realize they can't win, and start complying . . . unless they have money to burn and simply don't care.

Until the threat of legal action pending or happening most will ignore letters/fines from the BOD. You need to bite them to get them to pay attention.

We can lien based on fines. That gets their attention.

If, as you say, this violator will scoff at having a legal lien placed against his property, do you really believe placing stickers on his truck is going to discourage his violation activities? I don't.

All I can say Mike is that it doesn't work the same in PA as it does in LA. Here, mortgage companies might get involved if we initiated a judicial foreclosure, but we would never foreclose over unpaid fines.