Because some of you people think I am making things up let me give you the timeline

[DebJ]

9. My mind is still struggling to grasp the concept that a neighbor owning a cat in a condo

would somehow be a problem for someone.

I just don't get it at all.

Unless you are living in the middle of a bird sanctuary in a huge area where cats from other areas somehow can't get in, and I doubt that's the case.

What in the world can a little kitty cat do to cause trouble for other members? I met a woman one time who was paranoid about animals. She was an elderly neighbor who was very kind. We had lots of squirrels in the neighborhood, and they terrified her. She used to ask my son to walk her out from her apartment to the curb some 40 feet away to her daughter's car because she was so afraid. But she is the very rare exception, not the rule, and clearly must have had some traumatizing incident in her past. She herself knew her behaviors weren't normal.

Is this a condo association dominated by old lonely farts with nothing better to do than try to control the lives of other people?


I ask that because I used to live in a place like that...this was in the late 1980s When I was a single parent, my Mom gave me a down payment for a condo. One came up for sale across the street from my apartment, a first-floor unit with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and nicely large rooms, so I bought it. A short while later the annual meeting for all owners came up, and I went with my two children, then ages about 8 and 5. Before the meeting began, a group of the old bags standing near to me spoke loudly, so I could hear, and spoke of me as if I was some 'thing' on exhibit. They were angry that I had bought a condo in a place that was supposed to be for retired people only. Apparently that was how the condos were originally marketed (apartments refurbished and sold as condos). Well, heck, I had no idea. The woman who owned the unit I bought had been renting it for about 10 years and put it on the market without a word to me about the original marketing drive to seniors. Needless to say I was disturbed by the fact that these people, my new neighbors, were expressing clearly and loudly how they detested me because I wasn't retired. And it's not like my children were acting out or something, disrupting the meeting or anyone, because they were not. And I didn't know anyone there at all.

Things didn't get any better over time. We had plenty of parking at the condo; there were usually 10 or so empty spaces in the area immediately adjacent to the parking for my building. One time my old beat up car was out of commission for a week, and I parked it in that area while awaiting the next paycheck to get it fixed. Within 72 hours, I had an enormous, ugly, orange sticker firmly affixed to the windshield (and it did NOT want to come off) saying my car was going to be towed. I called the office, and was told that all cars must be moved once every 48 hours or they will be towed. WTF? Now, this certainly was BS, as many of the retirees there didn't go out every single day. They had no jobs, bad weather, or simply just nothing to go out and do. I said you know, I live here. I pay the condo fees. I have a right to a parking place. I am only using one space, whereas someone owning a 3 BR could quite rationally need two or even three spaces. They insisted I move the car every 48 hours or it would be towed. They suggested I move it from one space to another. The problem was, that for a week, the car wasn't movable. I couldn't pay to have it towed to a shop until I got paid again. I was really angry and told the woman in the office this was nuts, and was harassment. I peeled the sticker off the car, which was incredibly difficult to accomplish, and just held my breath. Fortunately it took them a few days to put a new sticker on it, and then, I got paid and got the car to a shop. But I was sick to my stomach about it the entire week. I couldn't afford to lose my car, nor could I afford to get it from a towing company. We all know how THEY work. A week in storage would have cost more than the car's value.

The crap these people pulled was just ridiculous. The roof in my building was replaced three times in three years, and leaked for three years... filling my unit with mold. Meanwhile, every year I was assessed some enormous fee to pay for this shoddy work, like $500 or more in addition to the condo fees, and was given like 60 days to somehow come up with the money. When they finished that fiasco, they decided to put some kind of recycled rubber pieces down on all of the steps and landings of the three story units, that had been nice clean simple concrete (the stairwells were covered with a roof, but no outside wall.) I was assessed another several hundred dollar fee one summer for that. I was never advised of any of this stuff; there was no means to vote on it; the board just did it and assessed us. The next year they said, oops, guess what, we have to pay several hundred dollars per year per unit to spray some chemical on the rubber to preserve it, we didn't know about that, fork up several hundred bucks in 60 days. Next project was that all the mail boxes were to be replaced with ones that were three or four times larger, and again, I was to fork up several hundred dollars. it was just ridiculous. Someone suggested that board members' family likely owned a towing company, a roofing company (I'm pretty sure that was true), etc., and their position on the boards was being used to benefit family businesses and/or to get kickbacks.

I hope I never live in a condo again. People are too crooked, selfish, and crazy, and just plain mean as hell.