‘I have to pay them to help sue myself’: A Florida woman says her HOA is charging her $1,000 to fund its own lawsuit against her

A 28-year-old Florida woman says she’s being pushed out of the 55-and-over community she inherited from her late father. The HOA is charging every resident $1,000 to help pay for a lawsuit aimed at removing her. According to the New York Post, Bethany Michel shared the situation in a TikTok video.

“There is a 55-plus community that is so eager to get rid of one of their non-55 residents, myself, that on Wednesday, in order to sue me out of my own home, they’re asking 155 residents on fixed incomes to do a mandatory $1,000 assessment,” Michel said, referring to the Arbor Mill retirement community in Jacksonville. She said the assessment was approved by only five board members, despite the vote appearing to represent the whole community.

“They allowed 155 people to think that they had a decision in the vote,” Michel told News4Jax. “But it was the five board members who spoke for the whole community.” Residents who don’t pay the assessment outright will instead be charged $100 a month over ten months, according to Michel. Michel moved to Florida in 2020 to care for her terminally ill father during the pandemic and inherited the home after he died in 2023.

Then came the letter saying she had to go

She said she received a letter three months after his death informing her she no longer met the community’s guidelines. She has since lost access to certain shared amenities while the lawsuit against her plays out. “I 100% am being forced out,” she said. “They’re trying to rip my office away from me, too.” HOA disputes over rules and residents have made headlines before, including a California family that was ordered to take down a flag it had displayed for two decades.

Michel didn’t hold back on how the arrangement felt to her personally. “So not only do I have to pay my own attorney to defend me against these [expletive] trying to sue me out of my own home, but I also have to pay the thousand dollar assessment,” she said. “I have to pay both sides. I have to pay them to help sue myself.” Some neighbors have pushed back on the board’s approach.

“As a person who has kids, I don’t believe that this is the right thing to do, to just kick her out and take her out,” neighbor William Baltazar said. “The majority of the people here disagree with this. There are very few people that are really pushing it.” Other residents said they were uncomfortable with the situation but still wanted the community’s age restriction upheld.

According to documents cited by the New York Post, the HOA’s covenants require at least one occupant per home to be 55 or older, with no residents 19 or younger permitted in the neighborhood. The rules do allow ownership to transfer to someone under 55 if certain requirements are met. The governing documents state that nothing restricts the transfer of title itself, only occupancy without meeting those conditions.

The community’s age restriction is structured around the federal Housing for Older Persons Act, which permits qualifying communities to legally limit residency by age. Michel said her father had arranged for her to be “grandfathered in” before he died, and she has no plans to back down. “How many people between the age of 20 and 30 can actually become a homeowner these days?” she said.

“It’s nearly impossible to become a homeowner, and the fact that he worked to set me up with a situation where I own a home, and I was told I would be allowed to stay.” She added, “Love y’all, even the ones who don’t like me. You will live the rest of your life watching me thrive, whether you’re happy with it or not. I ain’t going nowhere.”

The HOA board has not publicly commented on the dispute, and it is unclear whether they were contacted for a response.