RIVERVIEW, Fla. — We’ve received a strong reaction to the story of Irena Green.
The I-Team reported she spent a week in jail over what started out as an HOA complaint about her lawn.
“To be taken to jail and to be treated like that for brown grass at my own home... that’s horrible,” Green said.
Now we are following through... exposing ways this homeowner's association is using its power.
Green owes thousands of dollars in legal fees and is facing foreclosure.
But she’s not the only homeowner in her neighborhood served with a foreclosure lawsuit.
“The president lives here. This young lady’s on the board,” Shonia Cruz Munoz said, showing us around the Creek View neighborhood in Riverview.
She has owned a home in Creek View for the past decade and even served at one time as President of the HOA board.
Property manager and lawyers enforce 67 pages of rules
Her community’s HOA has lots of rules about everything from putting away trash cans to maintaining lawns.
The Creek View HOA board hired a property manager, Ron Trowbridge of the Trowbridge Company, Inc. and a law firm, Friscia & Ross, to implement 67 pages of covenants, conditions and restrictions.
Neighbors say Trowbridge aggressively enforced those rules.
“He would ride through here really slow in his truck. He had his clipboard on his lap. And if he was gonna write you up, he’d stop in front of your house,” neighbor Roshie Sumner said.
“We got a violation on a Sunday for having a toy wagon outside,” said Crystal Brown.
Irena Green received notices for dead grass, dents in her garage door, a dirty mailbox and having a commercial van.
The HOA sued her and she was arrested for failing to show up for a court hearing to prove she corrected the violations.
“There was no bond. So, I couldn’t even go home to my family. I sat in there for seven days. Seven days in the jailhouse. Like a criminal,” Green said.
A neighbor who wouldn’t go on camera told us Trowbridge demanded that he replace his sod three times in two years.
David Lehr, who represents homeowners in cases against HOAs, says appointing third parties to enforce rules can bring down morale.
“If there is a situation where the board is really handing the keys to the property manager, I think that’s where you tend to run into problems because you’re not dealing with someone who lives there, who’s a neighbor, who maybe really understands the people who live there in the community,” Lehr said.
“What foreclosure?”
“It was like he was running the show,” Shonia said.
Shonia says she was involved in a years-long battle with Trowbridge over her home’s exterior paint.
She said she has painted her house three times since 2015.
“Nobody paints their house that many times,” Shonia said.
She says her trouble with the HOA started shortly after she moved in.
“I got a first notification that my house had some fading. And all he said was I need to touch up the faded spots. So I did,” Shonia said.
Shonia says she sent Trowbridge proof she repainted and thought her issue was resolved.
“Then maybe seven months later, I get served,” she said.
She got notice of a lawsuit which said, “The home appears to have been partially painted; however, the painting of the home was not ever completed. The paint is badly faded on the sides and rear.”
“I'm calling. Nobody returns my call. I email. Probably the fourth email in, somebody replied back and said oh we see that you painted the house, but you need to touch up some more things on the driveway,” Shonia said.
Shonia says she repainted the rest of the house and notified Trowbridge.
“Some more months went by, I didn’t hear anything. Then I started getting these letters in the mail saying let me help you with your foreclosure. I said what foreclosure? I called my bank, they said no, and I said what is it? Can’t possibly understand. Find out it’s my HOA. They had put a lien on my house,” Shonia said.
She emailed Trowbridge and he responded in an email saying, “We know nothing of a message or foreclosure. A lawsuit has been filed against you by the HOA. You should respond as instructed in the lawsuit. Your communication regarding this matter must be with the Attorney, not the HOA office.”
Thousands owed for legal fees
The foreclosure action was for the HOA's attorneys’ bills.
“Every time they go down to do something, they just add another fee on it because as of December, it was $4,100. By the time we were done, it was at $5,100,” Shonia said.
We emailed and called Trowbridge, but he didn’t respond.
We also called and dropped by the HOA president’s home but didn’t hear back from him either.
Attorney Francis Friscia, whose firm sued Shonia, also filed a foreclosure lawsuit against Irena Green which alleges she was behind on her $65-a-month HOA dues.
Green responded in a court filing that she lost her job, was caring for her sick mother and sent a wire payment to pay her delinquent HOA dues.
Green said she tried to pay the rest of her $780 annual dues but couldn’t.
“My third year, they locked me out of the account. I was reaching out to them. And if you contact Trowbridge the company, they always send you straight to the answering machine, the voicemail,” Green said.
A court filing in February showed she owed $12,295.
Of that, $9,400 represented legal fees.
We recently asked HOA attorney Francis Friscia, who also sued Green over her HOA violations, about the foreclosure case.
He said he did not know if his firm was still foreclosing against her, but said he sued her on behalf of the association.
“She owes assessments because she hasn’t paid her homeowners assessments. And she has a legal obligation to pay those so she’ll be foreclosed,” Friscia said.
He later wrote in an email, “The fees and costs awarded in the enforcement action are not a part of the assessment foreclosure suit.”
His law firm canceled a hearing on her foreclosure case days after her arrest.
“I guess it’s at a pause for now because the day that we were supposed to go to court they actually had put in for it to not happen. So they put in for that day to be canceled at this moment in time,” Green said.
Green owes at least $3,300 in additional legal fees for that HOA case.
Shonia agreed to settle her foreclosure lawsuit by paying those legal fees in monthly installments.
“If you go to court, he’s just gonna keep tacking on because every time he has to say anything, be anywhere, file any paperwork... who knows how high this could have gone,” Shonia said.
Hillsborough County crews work six days a week to improve stormwater drainage
The ongoing restoration work is part of a larger effort by Hillsborough County Public Works aimed at mitigating flooding risks throughout the area. Officials are hopeful that these improvements will provide a sense of safety during this hurricane season.
