A Non-Profit Gifted a Disabled Mentor 8-Year Old a Swim Spa for Physical Therapy. It's Now Become the Center of an HOA Dispute

The Christners’ Premium Leisure swim spa in their backyard in Mentor, Ohio. Their eight-year-old daughter, Harper, has been using it for physical therapy since last September. This year, the spa’s been the subject of tension among the Christners, their neighbors and their homeowner’s association. Credit: Ray Christner

Ray Christner had sought for years to find anything to help relieve his disabled daughter’s pain.

Harper, an 8-year-old, has McCune-Albright syndrome, a rare bone disease that softens her joints to the point that metal rods are needed to provide stability. A doctor at the National Institute of Health recommended aqua therapy. Harper could, they said, experience at least a temporary stay outside of her wheelchair with the benefits.

This was in September 2022, and while the recommendation was welcome news, the pricetag wasn’t.

“I mean, that would be $1,000 a month, just on aqua therapy trips for her,” Christner recalled. “We were just like, ‘Oh, we can’t do that.’”

That September, the Christners were the beneficiary of a gift. The Special Wish Foundation, a non-profit group based in Northeast Ohio, reached out to Ray to see how Harper might be helped. At-home aqua therapy in the backyard would be a blessing.

A month later, A Special Wish split the cost with Northeast Factory Direct on a Premium Leisure ES-14 swim spa, a jet hot tub with a sticker price of $16,000.

Because Ray and his wife Darci Christner lived in Newell Creek, a middle class subdivision on the southern edge of Mentor, they were bound by the rules and regulations of its homeowners association. The HOA doesn’t allow pools, and Ray needed a permit, for both a concrete slab and new electrical wiring.

A teacher, Ray drafted up the plan to submit using Google Earth and “drew the thing with a paint tool.” He used the largest hot tub he could find—eight foot by nine—and submitted it.

“I was, like, ‘Okay, this is good enough for now,’” Ray told Scene. And, on October 25, 2022, “the management company approved it.”

Two years later, the management company has brought a series of accusations against the Christners, insisting that they’ve been using Harper’s swim spa for uses outside the bounds of her McCune-Albright syndrome, that it’s the source of “loud noises” and a “nuisance” to neighbors, and that Ray and Darci might be fined if their Premium Leisure ES-14 isn’t enjoyed by anyone save for Harper, her family, “one friend” or her physical therapist.

The entire situation at Dovegate Circle in Newell Creek, which is “mind-blowing” to Ray, carries with it a long-simmering disgust with HOA policies.
But rarely are disputes involving HOAs centered on young children and their life-threatening bone illness.

“It’s just wild to me,” Eileen Beudert, the executive director of A Special Wish who helped secure the swim spa for Harper, told Scene.

“It’s wild that an HOA is acting like they have all this power and this authority,” Beudert added, “to tell the family who can dip their toes in the water of a swim spa that’s in their own backyard. It’s baffling. I have never heard of anything this outrageous.”

Although Harper, her parents, her 11-year-old brother Chase, and some friends enjoyed the spa trouble-free throughout last winter and spring, the first instance of tension came after a neighbor complained, in March, that its users were too loud during a birthday party. But the summer passed without further controversy on Dovegate.

Then, on August 15, Ray and Darci received a letter from Continental Management, the Rocky River-based company that oversees the dos and don’ts of Newell Creek’s homeowners.

In the letter, Scott Sauter, Continental’s chief, told Ray that the original tub plans were “smaller than what was installed.” (By about five feet.) He reminded Ray that the HOA is allowing the larger spa—swimming pools aren’t permitted in Newell Creek, its bylaws read, but hot tubs are—solely because of Harper’s bone disease. Not, he wrote, “for parties.”

“Your compliance will be sincerely appreciated,” Sauter said.

Ray was flabbergasted. He saw Sauter’s reminder as the not-so-veiled drumbeat from bureaucracy in the face of real needs. He wrote Sauter back in a fury. “You realize you gave me special approval, and are now grandfathering in rules that never were there before,” he said, “and you’re just kind of telling me, like, who’s allowed to play with my daughter in this swim spa? What?”

Needing to defend his daughter’s health needs, Ray posted the letter on Reddit and Facebook. He was interviewed by a Newsweek under a pseudonym, which only, after Continental discovered Ray’s complaints, ruffled even more feathers.

A letter dated October 8 clarified what Sauter had been demanding for two months. Ray now needed “an accurate plan” for the swim spa. It could only be used “by those living in the home,” “one friend” or Harper’s “therapist.” And, if the Christners were ever to move, the swim spa “shall not be listed or sold with the home.”

“Failure to comply with these guidelines,” the letter read, “will result in penalties”—up to $400—“including the removal of the swim spa at the owner’s expense.”

It concluded with a crack at sympathy. “The board understands and is empathetic toward the unique medical condition and needs of your daughter,” it reads, “but it is imperative that the swim spa be used in the manner for which it was approved.”

In an interview with Scene, Sauter pointedly insisted on numerous occasions that the issue with the Christners’ swim spa was solely a planning issue, despite letters suggesting neighborly tension: That the Premium Leisure ES-14 is five feet longer than the hot tub Ray originally sent the architectural committee last October, not anything specifically to do with Harper.

“Just to ask you clearly, again—this is not about a noise complaint, or is it about a noise complaint?” Scene asked Sauter in a call Wednesday. “And has the Board of Directors addressed that with you?”

“The issue that we’re trying to resolve is what was installed did not match the original request,” Sauter said. “And we’re trying to make sure that what is there fits and or is part and fits in the guidelines of the Association. So all they’re attempting to do is, they’re saying, ‘Hey, we received this request. We approved it.’”

“So this is an issue of size.”

“That’s one of them, yeah. Because it wasn’t what was approved.”

“So if Ray and Darci currently possessed a hot tub or a swim spa of the dimensions that were originally approved by the Board, would there be any problem with how it was used?”

“I can’t speak for the Board, but I don’t believe so,” Sauter said. “I’d have to say, if it was the original size, it would most likely be fine, because that was the only reason that the letter was written.”

Yet the situation at Dovegate, and the tension with Continental, seems to have not brought a lot of sympathy from neighbors.

“This is the first I’m hearing about it, so I can’t help you much,” a man living on Walcott Way told Scene, then hung up. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” a 69-year-old woman on Overton said, sternly. “Thank you. Bye.”

Ray feels hamstrung.

“It doesn’t feel like they’re understanding any of this,” he said.

“If they understood, they would understand that the swim spa is more than just a place for my daughter to kick her legs,” he added. “It’s a place for her to feel like a normal kid for an hour or two throughout her day.”