The HOA President Painted My Fence While I Was On Holiday

I came back from ten days away to a fence that was the colour of a hospital corridor.

My fence had been brown. It had been brown for the eleven years I have owned the house. It was, as of that Tuesday, "Heritage Sage", which is a colour invented by a committee to punish people.

Taped to my door was an invoice. Six hundred and forty dollars. Payable to the association. For "restorative maintenance completed in the owner's absence".

I want to be measured here. I sat on my own step for about twenty minutes.

Then I did three things, in this order.

I photographed everything. I filed a police report for criminal damage, which the officer took extremely seriously and which the HOA had clearly not expected any homeowner ever to do. And I wrote to the board asking, politely, for the specific bylaw permitting entry to a private lot for cosmetic work without written consent.

There is no such bylaw. There has never been such a bylaw. There is a bylaw about maintaining fences "in good repair", and my fence was in good repair, and even if it had not been, the remedy is a notice, not a paint crew.