Commercial property.
Most HOA requests had been entered as common property.
The Homeowner’s own driveway was one.
That bothered him.
“How long has this HOA account been active?”
“Six years.”
“Who manages it?”
“Regional billing.”
The Homeowner owned three towing and roadside-service companies across the county.
Metro Recovery was the largest.
He did not dispatch trucks.
He did not review each HOA request.
Operations managers handled thousands of calls every month.
Property-management companies were ordinary clients.
The HOA’s account was tiny compared with commercial contracts, apartment complexes, shopping centers, police rotations, and roadside assistance.
He had never connected his neighborhood with the account.
That embarrassed him.
Maybe it should have.
The Tow Operator looked toward him.
“Want me to send the history?”
“Yes.”
“All six years?”
The Homeowner thought.
“Start with two.”
The Operator nodded.
Then:
“Boss?”
“Yes?”
“Are we in trouble?”
The Homeowner looked at his employee.
“Maybe.”
Not because the Tow Operator did anything malicious.
Because a company responsible for taking possession of vehicles needed to know whether clients were telling the truth about their authority.
If the HOA President had been abusing the process and his company had made that easy, he could not hide behind being unaware.
That evening, the Black Homeowner sat at his kitchen table with a laptop open.
His pickup remained exactly where it had been.
He had taken photographs anyway.
Wheel-lift marks.
Tow truck location.
HOA President’s printed notice.
Security footage.
Then he opened the account history.
Two years.
Seventy-one tow requests.
Forty-eight completed removals.
He stared.
The numbers were worse than expected.
He filtered by location.
Thirty-one occurred at neighborhood streets or clubhouse areas that were plausibly common property.
Seventeen listed addresses associated with individual homes.
That did not automatically mean wrongdoing.
Residents sometimes authorized vehicles removed from their own driveways.
Landlords occasionally requested removals.
Disabled cars.
Abandoned vehicles.
Family disputes.
The question was authorization.
He opened the first private-address job.
Customer certification:
HOA-controlled common property.
A residential driveway appeared in the driver photograph.
Second.
Same.
Third.
Side parking pad attached to a house.
Same designation.
The Homeowner leaned back.
His phone rang.
His Operations Manager.
“I got your message.”
“Tell me we verify ownership before towing from private residential driveways.”
Silence.
That silence answered too much.
The manager said:
“We verify customer contractual authority.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“If an HOA account certifies a location as common property, dispatch treats it as common property.”
“Without verifying?”
“We require the account holder to warrant authority.”
The Homeowner closed his eyes.
That arrangement made operational sense.
A tow company could not perform title research and property surveys before every job.
Property owners and managers certified authority.
But that system assumed honesty.
“What happens when driver photos obviously show a private driveway?”
The Operations Manager hesitated.
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Driver.”
“Dispatcher.”
“Whether anyone flags it.”
The Homeowner became angry.
Not at the manager personally.
At himself.
His company had a process gap large enough to drive a tow truck through.