Willow and Hearth

A tradesman who posts as @mikey_genchi on Instagram says his HOA has begun placing towing warnings on work vehicles parked in residents’ own driveways, including his. His caption ties the dispute to a named HOA, Trestle Management Group in the Phoenix area, and tags #plumbing, #hvac and #construction, confirming he’s a working tradesman caught in a conflict over where he’s allowed to park the very vehicle his livelihood depends on. His account focuses on his own vehicle directly, so while he frames it as a wider crackdown, the broadest version of that claim — that neighbors’ vans were targeted too — comes from his telling rather than something independently confirmed here.

For tradespeople like plumbers, HVAC techs, electricians, and contractors, a marked work van or truck isn’t a luxury vehicle choice, it’s a rolling toolbox and office that has to be parked somewhere between jobs, usually at home overnight. A towing threat aimed at that vehicle isn’t just an aesthetic slap on the wrist the way a typical HOA parking complaint might be — it’s a direct threat to someone’s ability to show up to work the next morning with their tools, which is exactly why this kind of story raises the emotional temperature well above a garden-variety HOA gripe about an unmowed lawn or a paint color.

Whether an HOA can actually enforce a ban on commercial vehicles parked in a resident’s own driveway depends heavily on what the community’s governing documents, usually the Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&Rs), actually say, and on state law, which varies considerably. Many HOAs do have the legal authority to restrict or ban commercial-looking vehicles, oversized trucks, or vehicles with visible business signage from being parked in driveways or on the street, provided that restriction is written into the CC&Rs the homeowner agreed to when buying into the community. These rules are typically justified on aesthetic grounds, the idea being that a community of similar-looking homes with cars in driveways shouldn’t start to look like a commercial parking lot.

That said, several states have pushed back on how far HOAs can take these restrictions, particularly for homeowners who rely on a vehicle for self-employment income, and some state legislatures have specifically limited an HOA’s ability to ban vehicles solely based on business signage or commercial registration when the vehicle otherwise meets size and condition rules that apply to everyone. The enforceability question also frequently comes down to whether the rule was applied evenly — an HOA that selectively targets specific residents’ commercial vehicles while ignoring similar vehicles elsewhere in the community opens itself up to claims of selective or discriminatory enforcement, which can become a legal vulnerability even where the underlying rule itself is valid.

For a homeowner facing a towing threat, the first practical step is almost always pulling the actual CC&Rs and any parking-specific rules or amendments on file, since HOA boards sometimes overreach past what their own governing documents actually authorize, and a surprising number of towing threats don’t survive a resident simply asking the board to cite the specific rule being enforced. Where the restriction is clearly and validly written into the CC&Rs, though, a tradesperson’s options generally narrow to requesting a variance, parking the vehicle off-site, or, in states with protective statutes, raising the business-vehicle carve-out directly with the board.

Stories like this one strike a nerve because they put a face on a conflict that’s really about livelihood versus aesthetics, and homeowners who work with their hands tend to see their own situation reflected immediately in a case like this one.