He called me on a Tuesday evening, voice careful and measured in the way that lawyers get when they're sitting on something significant. "Garrett," he said, "I need you to look at something."
Before I tell you what Franklin found, let me tell you what Beverly did in the same week, because she wasn't sitting still.
She called an emergency board meeting and pushed through an amendment to the Maplewood Commons parking policy. The amendment, written in language so deliberately confusing that it had to have involved at least one phone call to someone with a law degree, stated that all accessibility accommodation designations were subject to annual recertification. Every resident with an ADA accommodation had to resubmit full current medical documentation to the board within thirty days, or their designation would be considered expired.
The notice was mailed first-class—no certified mail, no signature confirmation. The same day Beverly sent it—a day she knew, somehow, that I was at a specialist appointment in Columbus—so I didn't receive it for six days. I now had 24 days.
Beverly also launched what I can only call a social media campaign in the Maplewood Commons Facebook group, a group she moderated, meaning she controlled what got removed. She posted a series of messages about accommodation fraud, about residents who exploit federal protections, and in one post that made my stomach turn when I read it, about how some veterans' disability claims are exaggerated or outdated. She never used my name, didn't have to.
The comments under that last post got ugly: people she knew from her county clerk days, people who had never set foot in Maplewood Commons, weighing in on the character of a disabled combat veteran they'd never met. A neighbor of mine named Warren Taft, a former middle school principal from building A who had been watching all of this quietly and with increasing fury, screenshotted every post, saved every comment, emailed the whole archive to Franklin Oaks with a subject line that said: "This needs to be part of the record."
I didn't respond to any of it publicly. I got a Ring doorbell installed on my unit. I bought a dashcam with 24/7 recording pointed at space 7. I kept parking in space 7 and kept documenting every tow, every notice, every interaction.
And I pulled the Ohio Revised Code on HOA amendment procedures. Under Ohio law, ORC section 5312.06, any amendment to HOA governing documents that materially affects a resident's rights requires a vote of at least 67% of all unit owners—not just the board, all homeowners. Beverly had pushed her recertification amendment through with three board votes out of 42 units. She needed 28 votes to make it legal. She had three. The amendment was void, unenforceable, a piece of paper with no legal standing.
The takeaway: HOA boards cannot strip resident rights by internal vote alone. A supermajority of all homeowners is required under Ohio law, and most states have similar provisions. If your HOA tries to change the rules on you, pull your state's HOA statute and check the amendment threshold.