CHAIN OF EVENTS 

JUNE 2, 2021 - 10/10/2022 

The history of $13,500 legal fees spent by the Esprit Board

Dear Fellow Esprit Owners.

There is a chance that we may be subjected to an approximately $112-560 special assessment by the HOA to repay non-budgeted legal fees unnecessarily spent by the Board recently. The Board requested that my husband and I reimburse the HOA $13,500 that the Board spent to pay an attorney to “deal with us”.


Here is the timeline and chain of events that began after April 2021 when we purchased unit #79.


  1. Our tenant's car was towed on July 2, 2021 with a notice stating“NO TAGS”. The car was displaying a blue tag with ESPRIT #XXXX on it.

  2. We disputed the towing with the HOA asserting that we were not provided with the proper parking RULES listing the current requirements of RED and GREEN parking tag colors and their application, during escrow or after closing. The parking tag requirements are still not posted on the bulletin boards nor contained in the Welcome letter which can be found on the website.

  3. Our tenant filed a small claims court action for the $350 towing charge, but he lost. The manager with the president sitting in the courtroom claimed that the tag colors are not part the Rules since “they change often”. One of us was at the hearing as a witness but could not argue the case.

  4. We requested an Internal Dispute resolution with the HOA where we were allowed to make a statement and it was then shut down by the attorney, instead of the model of having an open exchange.

  5. We wrote / emailed to homeowners, started monthly member Zoom meetings and found out how this Board is behaving oppressively towards others too. The number of sales in the Esprit were significantly higher than in similar HOAs in the area, during the last 12 months or so.

  6. A group of homeowners signed a Recall Petition that we later withdrew, in the hopes that new appointees would be more fair than those who had been on the board previously. Consequently the Board issued a Special Assessment that was in excess of the amount allowed by law without the vote of the membership, in the amount of $185 last year. (This was to cover all kinds of other legal fees.)

  7. The Board through its attorney wrote us that we are required to communicate with the HOA exclusively through its attorney. No further explanation was offered.

  8. One of us ran for the Board in 2022, getting only 1 vote less than a winning candidate. During the campaign and before we were sometime muted during the Owners' 3 minute Open Forum of the HOA's Zoom meetings, denied the membership email list, whereas it is part of the HOA records and is supposed to be shared with members.

  9. In the summer of 2022 I happened to find out that it is the Esprit Board's express decision not to include the colors of the parking tags in any HOA dislcosure to prospective buyers, nor post them on the premises and not mention them in the Welcome Letter or anywhere else after its initial publication, mailed to all owners on 2/22/2020.

  10. In April 2022 we accepted new tenants who requested an additional green parking tag and 2 codes programmed in the gate directory. It took this manager over 70 days to complete this request. We have sent numerous email reminders and pleas to speed up the process to no avail. This email exchange is attached here below.

  11. On 10/10/2022 we were sent the attached letter requesting a reimbursement of $13,500 payable in 30 days for the HOAs legal fees incurred by the Board because of us.


We believe that this HOA Board's majority is abusing its power, acting toward us in a discriminatory and retaliatory manner, denying us services that are provided to others and limiting our membership rights. Three of the currently known victims of the recent HOA abuse of power are of non North American national origin and their first language is not English. We can only speculate about the motivation or reasons behind these actions of the Board and management.


How can we turn this around?


We gave this a lot of thought. Anything we do to legally fight this HOA Board will cost all of us more money. The only way to stop this spiral is to organize ourselves and express our wishes to the Board at the next meeting.


We are scheduling a Zoom meeting on October 22, 2022 at 4 pm


Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85287998905


Meeting ID: 852 8799 8905

One tap mobile

+16699009128,,85287998905# US (San Jose)

+16694449171,,85287998905# US



Our email is julia92262@gmail.com

You can view more letters that we received from the HOA attorney on this blog


An attorney whom we contacted for representation suggested that only our legal fees could amount to double the amount that is being requested from us, 2x13500=27000

The total legal fees spent by both parties + the existing fees could possibly be expected to be 5X13500=67500 / 120= 562.5 per unit

Read this interesting article, so relevant in our situation:

 Common Homeowners Association Lawsuits | HOAManagement.com

We also created a private Facebook group called "Friends of Esprit"

Please add me to your friends so that I can send you an invitation to join this group and we can communicate between each other!


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