debnroo’s personal blog
We live in an unincorporated corner of Fort Collins that we often refer to as the Suburbs of LaPorte. We live in an HOA called Poudre Overlook. The HOA is possibly one of the worst HOAs in Colorado, and this blog page is a perfect example of how a “neighbor” can try to run another person out of the neighborhood as though it is a Country Club Gated Community.
Previously, this domain was used for a retail business we ran from 2004-2015, and when that ended, we continued to use it for our personal email. Therefore, it is necessary to have some website up.
In our first 10 years of living in Poudre Overlook HOA, we didn’t really get to know many people in the neighborhood. A few interactions early on made us cautious, including one time right after moving in when a “neighbor” anonymously left a plastic bag of poop on our doorstep. No, really. They decided it was a good idea to send us a message about keeping our cats indoors, including by putting a pamphlet about the American Bird Conservancy, which advocated for all cats to be kept indoors – and weighing it down on our doorstep with the bag of purported cat poop.
Her accusation was that our cats were pooping on her lawn. Except cats don’t do that. She left a bag of Fox poop, probably, and of course didn’t leave her name or contact info. Imagine that kind of “welcome” into a neighborhood.
So, we mostly kept to ourselves after that incident in 2008, and arguably lived in peace.
We had family and friends visit over the next 7 years who always remarked that staying with us was like going to a bed and breakfast – because we would feed them food made from our vegetable garden. Oh, and we learned good hospitality in our years living in Telluride. So, “debnroo bed and breakfast” became kind of a running inside joke.
When it came time to put a different face on debnroo.com, we decided to post about a dream of maybe one day having a bed and breakfast. So, in a single blog post, wrote about it as kind of a fantasy. You can tell it wasn’t serious, from a web design point of view because the URL was literally “sample page”. We didn’t expect ANYONE to actually go looking for it.
We did look into creating an airbnb, but the combination of unfavorable regulation by Larimer County, and vague HOA rules that might be enforced caused us to quickly abandon the idea. But, we never updated the page because, the real purpose was unseen – it was just a host for our domain-based email accounts. And, again, we never expected anyone to go digging for it. There was never any advertising, and there was no way to book/schedule, take payments, or really anything. It was (and until 9/26/23) nothing but a standing sample page.
In 2017, we learned that one homeowner was going around the neighborhood accusing us of violating the HOA rules, so we posted an update to that fantasy-page, making abundantly clear that until and unless the regulations changed, our dream had no chance of coming true. Even if it was a far-flung fantasy that we put no energy into that should have been obvious to anyone, like the person putting poop on our doorstep, once again anonymous folks that want to pretend they are “nice neighbors” were actually looking to create basis for forcing us out of the neighborhood and our home.
In December of 2018, I was on the Poudre Overlook HOA Board, and one of my fellow Board Members, Irve Denenberg, sent me a nasty email accusing me of running an “illegal” air bnb. I pointed out to him the disclaimer that had been up on the website, and didn’t hear back from him again on the subject, but apparently he continued badmouthing us around the neighborhood. It escalated into a Hostile Environment Harassment HUD/FHA claim that went to Colorado District Court and the Colorado Civil Rights Division – as he would harass us over our back fence regularly from the drainage ditch behind our house.
We ultimately had to settle without protection from the courts or our HOA, and he still hangs around the front and back of our house all the time when he lives a block away. It’s creepy, and I am uncomfortable when my wife is home alone.
Fast forward to 2023, after serving on the Board again in 2022-23, I had the opportunity to review the email account for the HOA while researching a new law banning HOAs from regulating parking and traffic. In a simple search for “parking”, I found the emails below from our neighbor two doors down:
23-0915 Montero Accuses Mowerys of AirBNB
Basically, this woman found our website, and tried to get the HOA to fine us for operating a bed and breakfast – in spite of the disclaimer posted clearly on the site. .
Fortunately, the Board at that time refused to send a violation notice or issue a fine based upon hearsay, acknowledging that the website had a clear disclaimer. The Board challenged this homeowner to provide any actual proof, which you can see upset her.
But, she then went and started stalking our house, taking down “out of state” license plates of cars parked on the street near our home. The email thread ends there, but we know from the account of other neighbors she tried to involve in this that what she actually did was take down the license plates of cars that belonged to the children, and their friends, of our next door neighbor. Kind of blew up in her face.
As you can see, the Board also pointed out that due to the fact I was in the process of litigating a complaint against the HOA (for not following the governing documents and state/federal law), if they tried to fine us without evidence, it might be viewed as retaliation for the lawsuit.
And, while this occurred in 2020, and the suit was theoretically settled in 2021, the retaliation has actually continued with this group that thinks that they are the membership committee for a gated community or country club. They have told people to sell their homes and move if they don’t them. And, as you can guess, the “other” is always a different protected class.
Recently, this same group has tried to give us a violation and threaten us with fines for . . . a garage/yard sale. A sale where we were selling tomato and pepper seedlings. The justification arises from the same basis – that the HOA has some power to regulate the public rights-of-way to prevent excess traffic or parking. The problem is, the Colorado Legislature passed HB22-1139 in 2022 prohibiting HOAs from regulating the streets, yet these same folks still wish they can control – by stalking, threats, intimidation, or even retaliation, those who have visitors that they do not get to interrogate.
In the Summer of 2023, we had one of our best friends visit from Illinois with her dog. We are in our mid-50s, and she came out to kayak with us and her dog. While walking her dog in Poudre Overlook, she was confronted several times by “neighbors” that wanted to know who she was and where she came from. I’m certain that some backchannel communications shared this information to “check us out”, particularly to see if they could gather evidence of a bed and breakfast.
MESSAGE TO POUDRE OVERLOOK STALKERS: You can stop it now. We’ve moved the prior home page to be a secondary page to preserve evidence, should we ever wind up in court again. You know that you are engaging in retaliation with this behavior, and let us be abundantly clear: You need to stop. Now.
If you are interested in following the documentation of how an HOA can be truly detrimental to a community and home values, please follow www.poudreoverlook.com