We all know HOAs suck, but as with all things that suck, Florida HOAs are on another level. An HOA in Florida contracted with a tow company to tow vehicles with expired registration out of people’s driveways and, predictably, this is pissing people off.
This mess belongs to the Lone Star Ranch HOA located right outside of Tampa in Shady Hills, Florida, ABC’s Tampa Bay affiliate WFTS reports. The HOA contracted with local tow company A-1 Recovery to enforce parking laws that just aren’t the business of an HOA: towing peoples vehicles out of their private driveways over expired registration. That’s exactly what happened to resident Brennan Wells in October at 2 a.m.
Security footage shows a stranger lurking outside Brennan Wells’ home at 2 a.m. “Someone came up into my driveway,” Wells said. He observed the man take a picture of his license plate and haul it off his property. “My registration was out of date by a month,” Wells said. “This happened in October, my registration went out in September. When Wells woke up that morning, he thought his truck had been stolen. But a tracker he installed on the vehicle showed it had been towed to the A-1 Recovery impound lot in New Port Richey 14 miles away.
Wells’ girlfriend took him to pick up his car. Two hours and $200 later he had it back. He ended up missing his aviation mechanic training classes because of it. “That’s my grocery money for the month,” he told ABC.
A couple nights later, another A-1 truck, this time with two employees in the truck was up to no good again, except this time they were confronted by the vehicle’s owners.
“You’re gonna come out here and harass people who live here?” a neighbor asked the driver.
“You’re harassing us. We are doing our job,” the female employee responded.
“You’re not doing your job. This is in the middle of the night,” Allison Shaw said.
Like Wells, Shaw’s security camera had caught one of the A-1 workers walking up into his driveway and taking pictures of his family’s Tesla. The driver already had the Tesla hooked up and was prepared to tow it even though the car was still plugged in and charging. Shaw confronted the driver. “You need to drop it,” Shaw told the driver. The driver fired back saying there would be a $75 drop fee. “We can take card or cash,” he said. Shaw said hell no of course and that’s when the driver threatened to call the cops.
An attorney for the HOA told ABC that “she believes the HOA has a right to send vendors onto private property to enforce rules outlined in the HOA’s covenants and declarations.” However even she admitted that what the tow company is doing probably isn’t the best way to go about things.
While A-1 declined an interview request, whoever is in charge of the HOA has been busy and watching residents; one of the residents that was threatened with a tow says the driver told them that they were given a list of cars with expired tags and that they had already taken 10 of the 31 cars on the list.
As for Shaw and her Tesla, she called the driver’s bluff the night of the attempted tow and instead called the police on the driver. In video provided by Shaw, Pasco County Sheriffs arrived on the scene and confronted the driver, asking him for his company’s authorization to tow. When he said he didn’t have it, the sheriff told the driver he had no business being there. “You have no authority to be here whatsoever. If you hook up to a vehicle and take it, it’s considered vehicle theft. You will be prosecuted,” a deputy told the tow truck driver. “The next time you try to take another vehicle, our supervisor said you will be prosecuted for vehicle theft,” the sheriff told the driver.
Two days later, a cease and desist sent directly from the HOA president suspended towing activities in the neighborhood.
