‘This has to stop:' Residents blast San Jose HOA over excessive fines, seek board recall

For more than a year, residents of the Garden Park Village say they’ve endured a barrage of petty and excessive fines from the HOA board at their San Jose condominium complex, with some owing thousands in penalties and facing financial hardship. 

They say the board has gone to extreme lengths to catch people violating the homeowners association’s rules and regulations, blanketing the complex with surveillance cameras and sending workers up to rooftops in search of violations inside residents’ private patio areas, which are not visible from the street. 

“They’re charging us ridiculous fines and they have no respect for privacy,” said Liliana Alvarez, who purchased her Garden Park condo in 2009. “I think those two are the main concerns that we as residents there have. And it’s not only homeowners, it’s something that also affects the renters here.”

Even when issues are corrected, the residents say they still have to pay. They’re given opportunities to contest the violations in brief hearings over Zoom, but residents say they rarely, if ever, prevail. In all, they say the board has issued tens of thousands of dollars in fines to Garden Park Village residents over the past year or so at the 200-plus unit complex, causing some people to move out over the stress.

“It outrages me because this is supposed to be our home,” Alvarez said. “Some people are in the dilemma of either paying rent or paying thousands in fines.”

While the HOA’s current board has been in place for years, Alvarez said enforcement activity around the complex began ramping up towards the beginning of 2024, right around the time surveillance cameras were installed around the community.

Alvarez said she’s been fined a total of 10 times, mostly for parking violations but also for having a patio fence that was too high and a wood covering for her window-mounted air conditioning unit. The fence, she said, was already there when she purchased the unit. Each parking violation costs $175. A comparable ticket from the City of San Jose costs less than half that, only $70.

In all, she owes more than $1,800.

While Alvarez said she understands the HOA can’t allow people to leave unattended vehicles in the complex's fire lanes for long periods of time, she said the rules are overly strict and many residents are issued fines for briefly parking so they can unload groceries or tools. Street parking is hard to come by in the neighborhood and a long walk from many of the units in the complex.

“I have a truck, it does not fit in the garage,” Alvarez said. “So, I have to unload my groceries”

NBC Bay Area requested an interview with HOA’s board, but a board member wrote back saying they were declining the request and would not be providing a written statement, either.

While the HOA’s rules and regulations clearly state the board may impose fines for violations, community members say they’ve gone too far. 

For months, dozens of Garden Park residents have been holding weekly meetings to strategize about their potential recourse. They’ve since gathered enough signatures from homeowners at the complex to force a recall vote of the HOA’s board.

NBC Bay Area has attended two such meetings. When asked about who in the group have been hit with fines over the past year, nearly every resident raised their hand.

“We are stressed, we are mad, we are harassed,” said one resident in Spanish. “This has to stop!”

The attendees were a mix of both renters and homeowners, many of them immigrants who don’t speak English. 

“Many tenants have had to leave,” said resident Alex Lopez, also speaking Spanish.

Residents provided NBC Bay Area copies of violations for issues such as leaving their garbage bins out for too long, which are required to be brought inside by the morning after collection day. Other violations included umbrellas that were the wrong color or having an awning or canopy in your patio area. One resident said he was fined for having a tree that was already there before he moved in. 

Longtime Garden Park residents like Tai Ly say excessive fines never used to be a problem.

“Right now, I feel totally different than before,” Ly said. “[I was] happy with the neighborhood. I really liked it.”

But that all changed, Ly said, when the cameras started going up a year ago. Since then, he said, the Garden Park board has been using those cameras to issue fines. Screenshots from the cameras accompany many of the violations.

Ly said residents were not given any warning that the board would be ramping up enforcement.

In two instances, Ly said, he’s been issued $175 parking violations when somebody else parked in front of his garage. In one case, he even told the person they had to move their car, he said. Ly said he contested the violations, insisting the vehicles didn’t belong to him, yet the board would not rescind the fines. He’s now suing the HOA’s board in small claims court.

Resident Alberto Hernandez has accumulated more than $2,000 in parking violations alone, according to notices he shared with NBC Bay Area. In some cases, he said he left his car unattended while unloading groceries or bringing things into his unit. Like Ly, Hernandez said he’s been fined in some instances when someone else parked in front of his garage.

“They were not my cars,” Hernandez said in Spanish. “So, I thought it was unfair that they sent me the ticket just because I am the property owner.”

Alvarez said the HOA recently hired a new management company to take over operations at the complex and that the board has been more communicative in its latest newsletters about potential rules violations. 

The vote to recall the board is scheduled for March. Only those who own their units will get a say.

“I feel that this has brought us together as a community,” Alvarez said. “We’re working for the same cause to make change.”