Plantation Lakes Discrimination, Harassment, Threats! DO NOT BUY HERE! Millsboro Delaware

This all started on September 2, 2024, with my wife and I asking the HOA manager (Joe Fulco) to inform dog owners not to use our personal lawn or the grass strip (Curb grass) in front of our home as a bathroom for their dogs and has since escalated into being retaliated against, discriminated against, threatened, harassed, intimidated, being told to suppress our freedom of speech, stalked and creating a hostile living environment. We have spent thousands of dollars on our lawn, and it looks like it! It is hard to grow grass in sand, but I figured it out, and now we have one of the best lawns here! Because these people can’t do anything else to us or our home (Cameras), this is what they do! Joe Fulco (Manager) and Jonathan Hodges, Resident HOA Board Member are directly responsible for creating and maintaining this unsafe environment of hate! 

Joe Fulco (Manger) told my wife and I “That area is common area, and the residents can let their dogs use it as a bathroom as long as they clean up the fecal matter.” Joe continued to tell us “That it is in the bylaws, so we should stop telling the residents to stop doing this.”  After continually asking Joe to see the bylaw where it states, “The grass strip is a common area which can be used for dogs”, he started to deflect by saying “The residents are complaining about you yelling and cursing at them” (A way to nullify our complaints). We told Joe that they are lying, and we have all the videos with interactions with the residents, but Joe refused to look at the videos!  Joe stated, “If a dog does this on your personal lawn, send me the video because we can find the owner by the dog.” Joe was helpful until we started asking for the violators’ names and addresses so we could report it to the town and the police. Joe then started telling us “I can’t find the residents.” When we told Joe that we were the ones being harassed and stalked, he didn’t say anything, just looked at us and remained quiet.

Now we have residents, a dog posse (4 men, three women and 3 dogs), a couple who stalks us coming from blocks away just to stand in front of our home, hide behind a nearby tree or hide in our next-door neighbor’s driveway to intimidate and terrorize us. We don’t know these people and have never met them! The couple only comes at night when it’s dark with two dogs and lurks suspiciously in front and around our house! On Friday December 27th my wife and I filed a (Stalking) police report against the couple on the video. The officer (Mullen) went directly to the couple’s home to speak with them. 45 minutes later Officer Mullen called us and stated, “I talked to the couple and the husband stated, they would not come over there again.”

Residents are coming over having their child jump up and down on the curb grass (Just to destroy it: video), making gestures towards our house or telling their children “They aren’t nice; video.” How do they know this, we don’t even know who they are! But this is the reputational damage that Joe Fulco and Jonathan Hodges have caused in our community!

We kept asking Joe for this bylaw stating that residents are allowed to do this because the only bylaw (Attached) states “Lennar owns the grass strip, but the homeowner is responsible for the maintenance of this area and if it’s not kept up, we would be fined.” Joe did not provide the bylaw we requested but instead told us to “Put in a bylaw change request,” a bylaw change request to a bylaw that doesn’t exist! OK! We didn’t hear back from Joe for about 3 weeks, so we reached out to Joe, and we were told “The board will meet on December 7th, 2024.”

On December 7th, 2024, we get an email from someone who we never spoke with or had any interactions with (Jonathan Hodges, HOA secretary). Jonathan told us “The board will not be amending any bylaw as it relates to this topic (The grass strip and dog owners).

On December 16th, 2024, we rebutted the HOA’s decision.  The same day Jonathan emails us “We have received multiple complaints of verbal harassment, and if you continue, we will discipline you.” We told Jonathan (Email), they were lying, and we had the video to prove it, but he showed no interest in viewing our evidence! We are on our property, but we harassed them, and we will be disciplined if it happens again! Funny, but when we told Joe (And later, Jonathan) that we were being stalked and harassed, we were told to go to the police, but they were willing to discipline us based on lies and no evidence!

After days of back-and-forth emails with Jonathan Hodges, he admitted (Email) that there wasn’t any bylaw but merely guidance and the residents were misinterpreting the guidance. That’s strange, because on the virtual Q4 HOA board meeting, a question from a resident was “Can dogs use the grass strip to pee or poop” and the answer from the HOA Board was “Yes, dogs are allowed to use this area to poop or pee” (PDF attached) That does not sound like guidance!   I told Jonathan their guidance was not a bylaw in the contract (Convenance) we signed when we purchased our home. Additionally, you can’t enforce guidance because it’s due to interpretation and not a rule or bylaw. We again were told “If you continue to harass the residents in front of your home and prohibit their dogs to use the grass strip as a bathroom you will be disciplined.”  

Jonathan continued to insult us (“Maybe you need to change your approach”), but not once asking to see our evidence (Even after repeatedly telling him we have videos that show they are lying) or asking us “What happened”, he automatically found us guilty! And again, telling us “If you are being harassed, got to the police.”   

On December 20, 2024, we received an email from the HOA board, A ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY (Attached)!  In this update it talks about a standard 5 step disciplinary process. Where is this 5-step disciplinary process written, because we cannot find it and why weren’t we afforded the opportunity to use it when we reported residents harassing and stalking us? But when the residents lied, we were automatically found guilty with no steps taken! The HOA Board never asked us what happened or asked us to see our evidence. If you look at the timing of this ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY, it is eerily reminiscent of what companies do after they have violated someone’s rights to try and cover their tracks! Where is the original 5 step process written in the bylaws? The same process that wasn’t offered to us when we made several reports that residents were stalking and harassing us but was used against us with multiple threats of discipline!

This HOA manager (Joe Fulco) and his secretary (Jonathan Hodges) are culpable for creating a hostile living environment for us, threats, trying to suppress our freedom of speech, right to be free from discrimination, equality in public places and the protections of due process, differential treatment, harassment, character assassination, intimidation and retaliation!

This is just a summation of the events, because there is so much! Please read the emails and attachments between us and the HOA and you can see it for yourselves!