Do you like or hate HOAs? Share your experiences.

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The frantic cry still haunts Monica Meeker.

It punctured the darkness as she and her husband lay in bed at the end of a fun-filled day celebrating daughter Camilla’s third birthday last October.

She rushed to her daughter’s bedroom and found her hanging from a window, the cord from the blind wrapped tightly around Camilla’s neck.

“She was gasping for air and crying and coughing,” Meeker said. “She had purple ligature marks on her neck for a week.”

The couple took down the blinds that night, replacing them with curtains.

Within two weeks, a letter arrived from the property manager for their homeowners association. The gray curtains they’d put up violated the association’s standards.

And so began the Meekers’ foray into homes association hell — a drama that has played out in homes across the country. Outlandish rules — from the farcical to the frightening — are being enforced by other homes associations.

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But a recent online survey by the Coalition for Community Housing Policy in the Public Interest, formed last year to take on the industry and prevent HOA abuse, found just the opposite: 70 percent said they had been involved in a difficult-to-resolve dispute with a condo or homes association, and 84 percent said a lack of transparency and poor communication was a “very serious problem.”

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In Ogden, N.C., Peter Carl Darius was involved in a dispute with the Planters Walk Homeowners Association over infractions that included a fluorescent yellow shed with green trim, a 5-foot windmill and a white picket fence. The HOA began fining Darius $100 a day, then put a lien on his home and filed a lawsuit.

The fines continued to mount, and even though he’d paid nearly $50,000, the association eventually foreclosed on his home, saying he still owed more than $24,000. In August 2010, just days before he was to be evicted, Darius doused his house with flammable liquid and set it on fire. He perished in the inferno, and his death was ruled a suicide.

And in 2015, Sergey Peklun took his life during a battle with his condo association in Florida over owning an emotional support dog. Peklun, who suffered from numerous medical problems, had earlier received permission from the association board, but a new president pushed for the dog’s removal.

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In northern California, one couple learned the hard way how far homes associations can go to collect late dues. The couple failed to pay the $120 they owed but said they had been sick and distracted and never knew about the problem until the association foreclosed on their $300,000 home and they received a notice saying they had three days to move out. The HOA had sold the home at an auction for just $70,000.

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