HOA of my rental has sent me to collection

[Amy Martin]

I'm running into some problems with my rental property in GA, and I wanted to see if anyone here would be willing to provide some advice/suggestions on how to handle this situation regarding HOA fines.

I purchased this property in early 2016 and my tenants moved in shortly after. These tenants seem great (i.e., rarely bother me, always pay rent on time) and they renewed their lease in 2017. Two weeks go, I received a call and letter from a debt collection agency, saying there have been $3000 fines on my rental property due to various types of HOA violations, and they intend to file a lien on my property if I don't pay the fines within 15 days. Most of these violations are about weeding/leaving trash cans out/not applying fresh mulch, etc.

The issue is I had no idea of any of these HOA violation notices and apparently they've been sending these notice letters to the rental property address since May 2016. Upon renting out this house, I did inform the HOA that these tenants will be living in the house. However, I didn't ask the HOA to mail all future written letters/notices to my personal address. I called the tenants to verify if they have ever received any letters from the HOA, and their answer was "no". I'm not sure if the tenants just threw out these letters because the letters had my name on the letters.

Couple of questions I have regarding this issue: 

1- Should I bill my tenants back for the violations? I did not receive any notice of these violation due to the HOA letters were sent to my rental property, but I'm not sure if my tenants actually received notice either, if they never opened any of these HOA letters.

2- In an attempt to prevent future violations, I asked my tenants to hide their trash cans inside the garage or in the backyard. However, the tenants said they use the garage as an office and therefore can't put the trash cans inside. They said they absolutely cannot put the trash can inside the garage and will only be able to put it behind the side door of the fence. However, the iron fence door doesn't block the view from the street and therefore unable to hide the trash cans very well. I'm guessing in order to prevent any future HOA violations, I will have to pay to install a wooden fence door that can block the view from the street. I'm not sure if I want to incur these unnecessary expenses though, since this is not my fault as a landlord. Should I ask the tenants to pay for the wooden fence door?

I know many folks here are very seasoned landlords. I would greatly appreciate advice from you guys!

- Amy