A mom from near Kansas City, Missouri, Marla Stout, has gone to war with her local homeowners’ association about a purple-colored playground set she erected in her backyard for her children, and a court date looms to determine if she will face fines – or worse, jail.
“It’s been there for two years,” she said on “Fox & Friends” on Friday, of her children’s playset. “We’ve gone back and forth, we’ve asked [the HOA] to give us suggestions for other colors.”
But to no avail, she said. The HOA maintains the purple color doesn’t fit the neighborhood, and they’ve told her repeatedly to take it down, even fining her at one point. And the punitive measures could include jail, if any standing fines aren’t eventually paid, according to homeowners’ association contracts.
“We go to court next Friday, August 21, before a judge and we’ll see what happens,” Stout said. “In order for us to ever go to jail, obviously, we would have to be found to be wrong and we would have to refuse to pay. Right now, we don’t owe the homeowners’ association anything … they originally fined us, we appealed that fine, it was overturned.”
In previous media interviews, Stout said the HOA rules don’t refer to colors that must be used for play sets.
“What it says,” she told WDAF-TV, “is it has to be harmonious with the community and with nature and there is nothing that dictates the color of the swing set.”
Stout said purple was “harmonious” because it blends with tree leaves in the fall.
She said she also suggested gray as a replacement color, but “they don’t like gray either,” she said, on “Fox & Friends.”
“We got very frustrated,” she said, of the long-running ordeal.
Reason magazine reported the HOA’s letters to Stout included references and warnings of imprisonment if the color wasn’t changed.
“[They] said that if we didn’t remove the swing set from the subdivision in a couple of weeks, we go to jail,” she said, the magazine reported, citing KMBC-TV.
Another letter reportedly warned any HOA lawsuit would cost Stout’s family “greater than any principle you are trying to prove,” Reason reported.
