Three years ago, I applied to the HOA board for an ADA accommodation—a formal request to designate space 7, the spot nearest building C's accessible ramp, as my reserved accessible parking space. I submitted my VA disability rating, my doctor's letter, my prosthetics documentation. The board approved it unanimously. The spot got repainted. The sign went up. Done.
For three years, that was my spot.
Then there was Beverly Kratch.
Beverly had been HOA board president for six years when I moved in. She was 61, recently retired from the county clerk's office, and she had transferred every ounce of the institutional authority she'd spent thirty years accumulating into the Maplewood Commons Homeowners Association. She had business cards printed with her title. She wore her HOA lanyard to the mailbox. She had once issued a formal citation to a resident for a wind chime she personally measured and determined was a third of an inch too long.
I didn't have problems with Beverly at first. I stayed out of her way. I paid my dues on time. I kept my unit clean. I was, by any measure, a model resident.
But Beverly had a problem with my car. It was a black SUV, a 2019 Ford Expedition with a hand control modification on the brake and accelerator. Because on my worst days, my prosthetics don't go on at all, and my feet don't reach the pedals. That car was $3,800 in modifications, and represented something that most people take for granted: the ability to leave, to go to the pharmacy, to get to a VA appointment, to exist in the world outside these four walls.
Beverly had made comments twice at board meetings, once at the community barbecue, about whether the accessible space was being "properly utilized." She used phrases like "accommodation fraud" and "gaming the system." She never named me directly. She didn't have to. There were 42 units, and everyone knew whose black SUV was parked in space 7.
I heard about the comments. I let them go. That was my first mistake. Not because I was wrong to be patient, but because Beverly had mistaken my patience for weakness. And people like Beverly always eventually decide to test what they think is weakness.
The test came on a Tuesday morning in March. I wheeled out my front door at 7:45 a.m., coffee in my gut, keys in my lap, heading to space 7 like I had every morning for three years.
And she was already there, waiting.