Dad leaves scathing letter to anonymous woman who forced him to tear down treehouse built for kids

A dad who built a treehouse for his son fought back with an angry sign after someone lodged a complaint with his Homeowners Association (HOA) – and the internet is on his side.

According to a viral post on Reddit, the treehouse was built during the pandemic, by someone who signed his name as Dave.

Based on the photo of the sign explaining what happened, a complaint was lodged to HOA demanding the child’s fort be taken down. The complaint was successful, and the father was ordered to dismantle it.

reddit

“Don’t worry, you’re safe now!” the sign reads. “Your act of casual cruelty was successful.”

“No longer will its presence offend your walk past my house,” the sign continues, referring to the treehouse. “Please enjoy your stroll free from the sound of my children’s play and laughter. They are safely back inside now, watching television I’m sure.”

“Enjoy the unobstructed view of my backyard,” it concludes. “I will try to keep it up to code.”

In the comments, Reddit users appreciated the sign’s directness, and shared stories of their own dealings with their HOA.

“I know we’re all joking here but the beauty of this is that it’s preserved in a plastic sleeve so it’s not ‘garbage’ and it’s just a paper sign so it’s also not some kind of new ‘structure’ so likely the HOA can’t say s*** about this unless they write some new rules,” one commenter wrote. “Dave even hung it with the sleeve upside down so water can’t drop into it from the top.”

Homeowners Associations are notoriously fickle, and some are known to enforce rules that negatively affect people of color and less wealthy residents in neighborhoods throughout the country. One user shared a way to stop bad HOA judgements at their root.

“I started participating in my communities HOA with three of my neighbors after some weird architecture rules they tried to implement,” the user wrote. “Come to find out, out of the hundred or so residences only about eight people show up to each meeting making us a good third of the votes. Of those eight two of them were fairly reasonable and one guy proclaims himself a libertarian and votes every new rule down.”

They explained that they simply joined the organization themselves, and voted against the rules they were hoping to address.

“If you cant beat em,” they concluded, “join em.”

This story was amended on June 23 to bring it in line with house style.