COASTAL OBSERVER

Eyes lowered, hands pressed together, the angel stood between the twin garage doors in front of Elizabeth Gregg’s house in The Reserve for 15 years. It was a gift from a friend, a former Marine who put it there to watch over Gregg if he could not.

Her friend is no longer here, and it is Gregg who is looking after the angel, trying to get it back to where it stood watch until her homeowners association told her last year it didn’t comply with its rules.

Gregg has filed two complaints with the S.C. Department of Consumer Affairs about the HOA, the Reserve at Litchfield Community Association, saying its board has not been following its governing documents.

“They stepped over the line with what they did. I think everybody agrees on that,” she said. “But I’m not rolling over.”

Georgetown County has had the third highest number of HOA complaints per capita among the state’s 46 counties since the Homeowners Association Act became law in 2018, according to Consumer Affairs. 

While consumer complaints rose 79 percent between 2019 and 2024, the last year for which numbers are available, HOA complaints rose 191 percent.

The law requires Consumer Affairs to collect data from complaints and report it to the governor and legislature every year. Failure to adhere to and/or enforce covenants and bylaws had been the leading complaint about HOAs for five the seven years the department has collected data.

For Gregg, the issue began in June 2024 when she received a notice from Waccamaw Management, which works under contract for the HOA, that her angel was out of compliance with the architectural review board’s standards. She had 30 days to move it from the front of the house.

She discovered that a new rule had been added to the ARB standards governing “fountains, yard ornaments and statues.” As required by state law, the amendment to The Reserve’s design standards was recorded in the county courthouse. So were the amended HOA rules and regulations that created a compliance review process.

An “inspection team” appointed by the board would conduct two reviews a year.

Gregg’s angel wasn’t the only item out of compliance. 

“They started telling everybody they had to take down their bird feeders and their bird houses,” said Holly Poteet, a resident who served on the ARB for five years. That included the bird house that had been on a tree in front of her house for 15 years.

Melissa Levey had a concrete bird bath. It weighed 300 pounds and was hard to move. There were also small flags in front of her house, including a Marine Corps and NYPD flag that acknowledged her husband’s career. The items were all moved, but not before the couple had been fined $1,260.

The Leveys moved to The Reserve from Queens, N.Y., where they had seen their neighborhood change for the worse.

“My husband was adamant about moving someplace where there are rules,” she said.

He was upset about the flags, but didn’t mind seeing the other things go, Levey added.

Gregg argued before the HOA board that the existing items should be grandfathered.

“There’s nothing in our rules that say anything about grandfathering,” said Dennis Nesbitt, the association president. He has served on the board for five years, the last three as president.

Restoring compliance reviews was one of the goals of the board when he became president, Nesbitt said. A previous effort had faltered.

“It’s overall good for the community to have compliance,” he said. “We get more comments in regard to ‘we’re glad you’re doing this. That’s why we moved to the neighborhood.’”

Gregg moved to The Reserve in 2003 and has lived in her current home since 2006. While she supports the ARB standards, she sees the rules on yard ornaments as “micromanaging.”

“We’re not a cookie-cutter community,” Gregg said.

And if the ARB standards change, she argued that the HOA can’t apply those standards to existing houses. 

Complaint to state

After failing to get the association board to reconsider its position, she ran for a seat on the seven-member board. Along with Poteet, who said she was removed from the ARB for supporting Gregg, they were among eight candidates for three seats. They were unsuccessful.

Gregg filed her first complaint with Consumer Affairs in May. She said that in addition to requiring retroactive compliance, the association wasn’t enforcing compliance equally. There are four sub-associations within The Reserve that are exempt from the new ARB rules (they have their own boards and rules), and some homeowners received variances.

“The Reserve’s HOA Board is acting outside the authority granted by its governing documents,” according to the complaint. In addition, it “is acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and such actions have forced some of us to incur legal expenses.”

In response, the association board and its attorney said its governing documents, the “covenants, conditions and restrictions” created by the original developer in 1999, include ARB review of “exterior sculptures, fountains and similar items.” Therefore, enforcement is not retroactive.

“The Association does not disagree with Gregg that a few isolated exceptions to the ARB rules do exist,” according to the response sent to the state.  It added that some received variances and some were removed after Gregg pointed them out.

It said the exclusion of the sub-associations from the community association rules “has always been the practice.”

Consumer Affairs marked Gregg’s complaint “Satisfied – adequate business response”  in July. The designation, assigned to more than two-thirds of HOA complaints, is applied when the response addresses the concerns and cites documents that support the business’s claim. It doesn’t mean that the complainant was satisfied.

Gregg said she wasn’t, but decided not to pursue the issue.

“I think the feeling in the community, how I read it, they were getting tired of the yard ornament discussion,” she said.

After attending an association board meeting last month, Gregg posed some questions about the compliance review of common areas and the two commercial areas in The Reserve, a marina and golf club.

In response, Waccamaw Management told her that since she had contacted an attorney “we will only communicate with you through our respective attorneys.”

“I don’t see how that’s legal,” Gregg said.

She filed her second complaint with Consumer Affairs, saying the decision “violates both the spirit and the letter” of the association’s governing documents.

She said the restriction on communications seemed “retaliatory” after her efforts to overturn the rules on yard ornaments. It would also prevent her from running for the board or participating in the HOA governance, she said.

Gregg also said it also “undermines the transparency and accountability” required of HOA boards. She cited other concerns about incomplete or limited information in The Reserve board’s meeting minutes.

Nesbitt, the HOA president, said he couldn’t discuss the complaint while it was still pending. Its status changed to “satisfied – adequate business response” last week.

The response from the association’s attorney noted that it was not her Gregg’s first complaint and that she “has been unhappy with the Association and its management company for some time, which has led to an endless series of inquiries to the Association.”

Requiring people who involve an attorney in their activities to communicate through their attorney is association “policy,” according to the reply. “There is nothing in the Covenants or State law that prevents the Association from taking this position,” it states.

Voicing concerns

The board gave Gregg and other residents an opportunity to voice their concerns, Nesbitt said.

“The lack of a community-wide vote is the sticking point,” he added.

The board is allowed to update its bylaws and rules with a majority vote, which is what it did, he said. The ARB standards were revised by that board and approved by the association board, in accordance with the covenants, he said.

“We’ve been very transparent, I think, about what we’ve set out to do,” Nesbitt said.

The goal was to maintain “curb appeal” for houses in The Reserve and help maintain property values. That led to the focus on yard ornaments.

“From a board perspective, it couldn’t continue,” Nesbitt said.

Of more than 400 homes, owners of four or five have complained about the compliance effort, he said.

“I understand the emotions of having something that you love in your front yard forever and now you’re asked to remove it,” Nesbitt said.

But he said the effort produced other positive results, such as identifying 50 homes without address numbers, which are required by the HOA and by county ordinance for emergency responses. “That was a pretty good thing,” Nesbitt said.

Gregg said she has also seen some good come from the dispute, she has built new friendships with the women who support her. 

Three are widows, like Gregg, whose husband died six months after they moved to the area in 2000. That is one reason the issue of ornaments resonates, she said.

“We’ve already experienced the biggest loss you could experience. Now, you’re taking our stuff,” Gregg said. “For no reasons other than you think you can.”

She also thinks their efforts made the board think twice about restricting holiday ornaments.

Calling for change

Gregg has contacted the candidates for governor in next year’s election, the state attorney general and local legislators about HOA governance. 

After seven years of fielding complaints, Consumer Affairs found more than a quarter of those favored some level of involvement by state agencies in enforcing HOA governing documents.

Gregg said it requires 70 percent of the votes to change the association’s covenants, but its bylaws and rules can be changed by a simple majority of the board. She thinks that needs to change.

But what she would really like is to go back to her quiet life in the neighborhood before yard ornaments became an issue.

“No one wants this to go away more than me,” Gregg said. “Trust me.”