The compliance manager told me the violation was for an unauthorized flag, even though our covenants specifically allow the American flag and one decorative flag. I asked which of the two flags was the problem, because the letter never said, and she couldn’t answer me. The fines ran all summer and eventually reached four hundred dollars. The following year I photographed every flag in the subdivision for an entire week, and there were eleven decorative flags that violated the same vague rule, including sunflowers, a Clemson tiger, two lighthouse flags, and one that said “HEY Y’ALL.” None of those homeowners received a violation.
I filed a records request for the complete violation log for both years because I wanted to know whether I was imagining the difference in enforcement. The records showed two violations against my house over two years, both submitted through the resident portal. Then I looked at the submission details and realized both had been entered directly through a committee member’s account rather than through the normal resident reporting system. The same person had submitted both complaints, and the timestamps showed she had filed them within minutes of photographs being uploaded to the portal.
I asked why a committee member was submitting resident complaints anonymously when she already had authority to report violations through the board. The compliance manager wouldn’t answer, but she did tell me that the committee member had been the person responsible for organizing the Fourth of July decorations both years. I requested the committee’s emails and found messages discussing which houses had American flags, which houses had decorative flags, and which residents “needed to be reminded about the rules.” Then I found the message that explained everything: the woman had specifically asked the committee to document my flags because she wanted the board to “build a history” against my property before the next election.
