HOA Demands Homeowners Take Down Their Disabled Foster Son’s Wheelchair Ramp | YourTango

Written on Oct 18, 2024

Ask pretty much anyone who's had to deal with one, and they'll tell you that Homeowners' Associations, or HOAs, are completely out of control. Often, their overreach comes in ways that make you think, "This HAS to be illegal."

But an incident from 2016 that has recently resurfaced takes HOA insanity to an entirely different level — one that is not just astonishingly cruel and mind-bogglingly obtuse but also outright discriminatory.

If you're slack-jawed just reading that, you're not alone. But the details of the story make it even more astonishing than it already is on its face. Julie and Irl Copley of Olathe, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, are parents to 10 children, some of whom are children they cared for as part of the foster system.

In January 2015, they took in a new foster child, an 11-year-old boy with cerebral palsy who also has hearing and visual impairments. As he is in a wheelchair, the Copleys had a local church group help them build a wheelchair ramp in front of their house.

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None of this should have been controversial. But as quickly became clear, the Copleys' HOA, the Mill Creek Grande Homeowners Association, is not just strict and intrusive but sociopathically so. Soon, a battle ensued.

Julie Copley told the Kansas City Star that no more than 24 hours after the ramp was completed, they received the first complaint from their HOA.

"They said that it hurt the beautification and flow of the neighborhood,” Irl Copley told the paper. "They can’t have anything that’s not perfect in this neighborhood."

"He's 11 years old he weighs 75 pounds," Julie Copley said, explaining the obvious reasons they needed the ramp in the first place. "[The] garage was not an option for us either," she added. "We both have businesses, and there's just not enough square footage."

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As for the landscaping, with 10 kids to care for, two of whom have special needs, who has the time? That's aside from the fact that the mere request is offensive — the HOA demanded that they landscape simply because it found the necessary accommodation for the child to be an eyesore.

"They would like us to totally landscape the ramp in and just block it all off to the view of the rest of the neighborhood," Julie Copley explained.

The HOA's response to the ramp is bad enough. But its president's comments in emails to the Copleys and to the Kansas City Star are downright diabolical.

The flap over the ramp came on the heels of years of petty, ridiculous citations from the HOA for everything from weeds to having had a kiddie pool in their yard. Julie Copley was once cited for parking a trailer in the driveway while she loaded it for her business.

“It seems like every year we have something come up," Julie Copley admitted, "but we’ve always obliged and done what they have asked."

That didn't stop the HOA from taking a truly shocking course of action — placing a $2000 lien on the Copleys' property. Their infraction? Their mailbox wasn't properly enclosed in bricks like the HOA demands. The HOA has made similar moves against other residents whose homes were built before Olathe's laws even allowed brick mailboxes.

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In a shockingly condescending email to the Copleys, then-HOA President Don Payne lectured them about their ramp as an issue of "goodwill vs ill will."

"Goodwill is one of those things that you build up over time with your neighbors," the email snidely read. "Ill will is the reciprocal, it grows when you generally ignore the agreed-upon rules and proceed without any concern for neighbors."

Payne then blamed the Copleys for the ramp dust-up, writing that, "you choose to have a business in the garage that disallows that path as an access point" for the wheelchair ramp as if they'd gone rogue by using their home the way they choose.

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He continued this finger-wagging by writing, "You also choose to invite a child into your home that would require a ramp… your accumulative choices have caused you to ignore your covenants and neighbors to further your own choices."

Imagine sitting down and fixing your fingers on a keyboard to type those sentences about people taking in a disabled, wheelchair-bound child who desperately needs care. It is truly unfathomable.

For his part, Payne told the Star that the issue ultimately came down to the Copleys having agreed to landscape the ramp but having failed to do so.

"The reason we have been so patient is because we are very sympathetic to their situation," he patronizingly told the Star, "but what do you do as an HOA when a party performs in this manner?” Oh, I don't know. Have some empathy, get over it, and find a hobby. That would be a place to start.

It's not known what came of the Copleys' situation, but Julie Copley told the Star at the time that she and her husband were hoping to move to a different neighborhood to get away from their HOA's tyranny. They are surely not alone in that sentiment.

Given that HOAs originated out of Jim Crow-era racial covenants and practices like "redlining" designed to keep minorities out of certain neighborhoods, it's not exactly surprising that they've become toxic to the extent of regarding a literal human being, a child with disabilities, as a poor "choice" to be finger-wagged about. Mr. Payne, if you're still with us and reading this, go to therapy.

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John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.