June 13, 2026 | Mark Luis Foster

Last year in our chapters and on this blog we featured a growing (or sinking?) problem in HOAs that seems to be plaguing the south. In our chapters we ran a case story about an Atlanta-area HOA that suddenly had sink holes appearing, with the board there treating them like whack-a-mole to get them filled, only to have more pop up somewhere else. We did learn that some Minnesota HOAs have experienced this too.

Now in Tennessee, a Clarksville HOA is experiencing a similar sinking feeling. Nashville’s NewChannel 5 Reports:

Kimberly Starr says her backyard used to be her happy place. “We like sitting out here in the evenings,” Starr said. “We like watching the deer come up and feed and play.”

But the starry nights were interrupted by what was going on under their feet.

But several deep holes have formed in the yard of her Clarksville home, and she says she’s now too afraid to go outside. “We have this big crater here — then we have this one,” Starr said. “Then all these holes just keep getting bigger and bigger.”

We explored in our chapter case studies last year how HOA boards might deal with such issues. It does come down to treating the source of the problem, and not the symptoms.

Starr believes the holes are the result of sinkholes that originated on a strip of land behind their lot owned by their homeowners association. She says there were no signs of sinkholes when they bought their home in 2021. “It’s coming up into our yard with these sinkholes and they’re getting deeper and they’re spreading out and getting wider,” Starr said.

Call in the engineers.

Starr says she’s more than willing to hire her own engineers to fix her yard, but worries it could be a waste of time and money until the source of the problem on the HOA owned land is addressed. “Until I know this is fixed, then I’ll take care of mine,” Starr said. “Your backyard and your home is supposed to be your sanctuary. If you can’t walk out in your backyard, then what do you do?”

Sinkholes are an expensive, perplexing problem that could certainly pre-date the HOA, pointing clearly at the developer. But all things are unknown until the experts figure out the source — and fix it.

Watch and read the story HERE.