Girl’s Pink Playhouse Incites Georgia Homeowners Association to Embark on Legal Crusade

A homeowner’s association is a lot like the Wu Tang Clan in that it ain’t nothin’ to fuck with, an inconvenient truth that a little girl from Georgia named Aubree is learning pretty early in life. According to Augusta’s NBC affiliate, Aubree’s grandmother, Becky Rogers-Peck, ran afoul of her homeowners association not when she erected Aubree’s spacious backyard playhouse, but when she painted it especially offensive shades of pink and purple. After a few initial skirmishes over the playhouse’s hue dating back to April, certain members of the HOA has decided that it’s time to flex their legal muscles and sue away the odious pink playhouse.

Though Rogers-Peck is understandably nonplussed by this litigious twist in her ongoing struggle with the HOA over her granddaughter’s playhouse, HOA president Susan Bradley explained that Rogers-Peck knew full well that pink was verboten for playhouses, presumably because it reinforces gender stereotypes, but also because the HOA has strict rules dictating that a shed or garage be painted the same color (in this case, brown) as the main house. Becky-Rogers, for her part, thinks that, first of all, we’re talking about playhouses, which are not the same as sheds and garages, and second of all, the color of a playhouse is no cause for a lawsuit. Beside, the playhouse isn’t even visible from the road. As she said during Today interview on Friday, sometimes you just have to resist authority:

The general reaction is, ‘Are you kidding me?’ They’re suing you over a pink playhouse?’ They’re policing us like we’re in a communist country, and it’s just ridiculous. Every once in a while, you’ve got to stand your ground.’

If only she’d watched more HGTV, Beck-Rogers would know that being at the mercy of a homeowner’s association is pretty much as close as anyone in America can get to living in a communist country, if that communist country was obsessed to the point of lawn-measuring madness with maintaining a deathgrip on its property values.

Some of the more laid-back HOA members (only three or four have complained about the playhouse) are a little ticked off that their money is being used to muster the seemingly frivolous lawsuit, which is being handled deftly by a former congressional candidate named Wright McLeod. McLeod came within centimeters of answering in the affirmative when an NBC reporter asked him if a lawsuit over the color of a little girl’s playhouse wasn’t “dumb,” but, in the land of homeowners associations, a few centimeters is the difference between a sheered lemon tree and a glowering nextdoor neighbor waiting for an excuse to use his hedgetrimmers.