Mom Furious About ‘Revenge’ After HOA Fined Her $100 a Day and Placed a Lien on Her House – ‘War’ Started With a Single Complaint

A HOME daycare owner is stuck fighting for her business after being reported to her home owners association.

Erin Moots is in a bitter battle with her HOA, receiving $100 daily fines and liens on her property.

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Moots, a resident of the close-knit community of Josephine Crossing located south of Billings, Missouri, has lived in the community and operated Kreative Kids daycare out of her home since 2014.

Your daycare has served as a crucial, affordable lifeline for many young neighborhood families by offering reliable daycare close to home.

For five years, his daycare center operated well, with the approval and support of neighbors.

But in 2019, everything changed.

A retired couple moved in next door that year and, shortly after moving in, filed a complaint with their area HOA about noisy children playing in the park and toys left on the sidewalk.

This complaint marked the beginning of a dispute that went from a few complaints to full-blown revenge, Moots told the local newspaper, The Billings Gazette.

And that complaint started a snowball effect that shook the entire community.

“Kreative Kids daycare has been operating in violation of the Josephine Crossing Cottages bylaws for over 5 years,” the homeowners association board wrote in a statement.

“The HOA Board is tasked with enforcing these bylaws, which do not allow businesses to operate in the cottage section of Josephine Crossing.”

Moots said he had previously worked with the HOA to resolve minor issues, such as removing a shed from his yard and ensuring toys were picked up.

And in 2015, the HOA gave him a bonus to operate his daycare, which was formalized in 2018.

However, the council that granted the variance was not the same council that contacted Moots in 2019 following the retired couple’s complaint.

The new council, adopting a stricter interpretation of the statute, declared the previous variation invalid due to the lack of a full council vote.

Laura Lauer, a former HOA board member and mother of a child at Moots Day Care, expressed her own frustration with the board’s “inconsistent” handling of the issue.

“The council’s biggest problem is that there has been no transparency with pertinent information,” she said.

Moots’ right to operate his daycare was eventually put to a vote among the HOA and required at least 75% approval to change the bylaws.

But only 29 of the 42 members voted, with just 11 voting in favor of the change.

Lauer believes the ambiguity of the election language was what contributed to the low support and suggested that if the language had clearly focused on Moots’ daycare, the outcome might have been different.

Parallels across the country

Moots’ struggles with his daycare and HOA mirror Thomas Leonzal’s situation in Minnesota.

In 2019, Leonzal and his wife faced a similar situation when their HOA enforced a new rule that limited the number of children they could care for at daycare.

While caring for 14 children, they were suddenly restricted to just two.

Despite fighting against this rule, and even citing state laws that allowed daycare, they were forced to move to another neighborhood to continue their business.

Following the July 2020 ruling, which found his daycare operation violated HOA bylaws and city zoning, Moots began receiving daily $100 fines and even a letter threatening to cut off his water supply in the coming months. .

Cameron Parker, a nurse and mother of two children at Moots daycare, described the situation as “really unfortunate” and “mean.”

She highlighted the importance of having reliable childcare, especially during the pandemic.

Moots supporters even organized a rally, holding signs to draw attention to what they see as an unfair move by the HOA.

In light of all the controversy at the local level, the HOA board suggested another vote, stating, “If Ms. Moots and her supporters are able to collect enough signatures, they can propose a bylaw change to allow business.”

But the HOA said, “so far, that hasn’t happened.”

In Minnesota, Leonzal’s case sparked legislative changes, with lawmakers recognizing the child care crisis and passing a bill to prevent HOAs from restricting home day care operations.

“It’s important because we are facing the child care crisis,” said State Rep. Amanda Hemmingsen-Jaeger.

“I don’t think it’s very fair that we have these arbitrary HOA restrictions shutting down family child care operations when we need all the child care providers we can get.”

It is currently unclear whether Moots’ daycare remains.

The US Sun has reached out to the HOA in question for an update.

What is an HOA?

One in five Americans lives in an area with a Home Owners Association – or HOA. But what exactly do they do?

• An HOA is a homeowners association – an organization that aims to maintain a clean, cohesive place for its residents to live.
• Entire neighborhoods, subdivisions, condominiums, single-family homes or townhouses within “a planned development” will often constitute an HOA.
• They also serve as a regulatory body for the tenants, who manage and finance the HOA through monthly fees.
• Its main goals are to keep the community functional and visually appealing and maintain property values.
• They focus primarily on a neighborhood’s common areas, like roads, parks, and pools — but they can also stipulate what residents can do with their property, like yards and sidewalks.
• These restrictions often impose uniformity on properties, for example, ensuring that most houses look the same and that all sidewalks are free of weeds.
• An HOA Rule Book of Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&R) is distributed to all residents, and an elected volunteer board of directors enforces these regulations.
• Violating these rules can result in penalties such as fines and even litigation – as most HOAs are incorporated and subject to state law.
• HOAs are often the subject of controversy, with some members feeling that the rules are too punitive and restrictive, or that the leadership has too much power.
• But other HOAs like this give communities the power of self-government and can ensure a degree of harmony among residents.