Glen Oaks Square Homeowners Association

This place is the absolute worst and I am so glad to be out of there. My mom and I got our condo in May of 2007 and at first we thought it was great compared to our apartment we lived in down the street. My mother finally owned a place, and the neighborhood seemed nice enough. Looks however can be deceiving.
Don’t get me wrong, the place is kept up pretty nicely. The pool area is clean and so are the grounds for the most part, with the exception of the errant dog owner who does not know how to pick up after their pooches. But for the almost 3 years we were here it just felt… off. It never really felt like home, more like a place to keep our stuff.
The main problem I have is with the association. They have a very holier-​than-​thou attitude (those on the board do, anyhow) and they kept raising fees on things that my mother and I couldn’t even enjoy in the time we had there. For a long time the pool was in repair because the kids in the neighborhood threw rocks in there so they raised the fees like crazy in order to cover the cost. They also needed to put in another filter due to state laws, and passed the charge onto the homeowners. Not cool. We have to pay for a safety feature you should have had in the first place? Yeah okay. Want to know where you should have cut costs? By watering the freakin’ sidewalks. Their sprinkler system was ridiculous and coated the ground more than the actual grass which was extremely dangerous in cold temperatures and I almost split my head on the concrete more than once from these sprinklers being on at night and freezing over in the morning.
Another thing is the pet fees which I thought were grossly unfair. It is supposedly to cover the cost of maintaining the grass that gets «ruined». It is $ 25 a month PER DOG. We had two dogs when we moved in originally, then they passed away and we had one dog — a freakin’ chihuahua. There is no way that her pee could cause $ 25 worth of damage PER MONTH, especially with the aforementioned sprinkler systems the way they run and the fact that pet owners are required to pick up after their dogs. Oh and we have to keep them on leashes as well. Now I understand if your dog is violent toward other dogs or people, but it is a gated community with a lot of grassy areas and I wish my dogs could have played there but no. Anyway, this pet fee is unfair because not only is it expensive, but it does not cover cat owners. See unfortunately for us dog owners, a lot of us were getting blamed for poop being on the grounds and the association instigated a $ 100 fine for those who did not pick up. But most of the time, it wasn’t dog owners — it was cat owners who would let their cats roam outdoors and we saw quite a few of them on the grounds at any given hour. Either let all the pet owners pay the fees or let none of them pay fees, especially if they are sticklers about their pet’s remains not staying on the grounds.
Another thing was that the people there feigned friendliness all the time. No neighbors really talked to each other. When our home was broken into while I was still in the house mind you, and I ran out screaming at 2 PM, not ONE person came outside to see what was going on. I was home alone and could have been killed by these two men that broke in — in this supposedly secure «gated» community, and no one even bothered to look outside their precious condos. And if they did look outside, we might have caught the guys too. The people here just only care about themselves, period. Especially those with children. There are a group of kids in the neighborhood who play together on a daily basis and treat the complex like their playground. Even though the association banned things like riding your bike inside the grounds for pleasure (weird and uncalled for), they did not do anything about the children who would run around outside our condo, SCREAMING at the top of their lungs while playing. Even though it is the parent’s responsibility, this still happened constantly and it made living here a nightmare. There were so many other incidents, but I only have so much room here in this review.
This association seems nice at first, but that opinion quickly turns when you see exorbitant fees, ridiculous rules, no actual authority, and the complex itself lulls you into a false sense of security. I never felt this was home and I am amazed we made it out alive, sanity mostly intact. The «perks» of living in a gated HOA-​run complex highly outweigh what actually awaits you. Oh and P. S., there is no office either. Good luck getting any concern heard since there is no actual management.