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Can we ban HOAs? You never see a good story about them posted. At best it seems like they lead to boring cookie cutter neighborhoods.
Many people choose to live in neighborhoods with an HOA and I don’t see why they should be forbidden to do that. “I know what’s good for you better than you do” ought to require a high burden of proof.
I still have compassion for those who live a HOA and then go on to complain because choosing to live there is a complex decision involving many factors. In some parts of the country, there might be no options to practically avoid a HOA.
“I know what’s good for you” is precisely the ethos of the HOA. I’d have less compassion if housing wasn’t such a tight commodity. In that case, it’s a choice. But I think in the current market it doesn’t always feel like one.
I don’t think an outright ban is the right answer either.
All fine and dandy until HOAs are all that’s available and you’re paying $100s per month to one of the handful of major developers in the country that built the neighborhood and coincidentally still controls the HOA. Ever been to Florida?
Fuck no, who would willingly go there? Being born there, stuck there, I get it. But traveling/vacationing? My God
I know what’s good for you better than you do
Isn’t that kind of the definition of what an HOA does?
Not necessarily. I know a guy who lives in a rural area and still somehow managed to find a house with an HOA, because he wanted access to shared amenities. Beyond that, HOA rules would ideally be like an agreement that I won’t be a bad neighbor to you if you won’t be a bad neighbor to me. It does seem like HOA boards attract petty people, but only the very worst will get in the news while the normal ones quietly do their thing.
(Also, it appears that the lemonade stand in the article wasn’t actually violating the HOA rules.)
Technically an HOA is grassroots community derived governance to establish and maintain shared interests related to the neighborhood.
Problem is they do serve a purpose. Good for home values (in theory). Bad if you actually want to live in your home.
I’ve actually seen that HOAs fared the worst after stuff like the 2007 crash and took much longer to rebound versus non-HOA properties.
I’ll never understand how banning shit like pickup trucks in driveways has any effect on property values. It’s not like they’re permanent fixtures that persist from one owner to the next.
It’s a mistaken belief that cookie cutter housing is something people actually want as opposed to being something forced upon them since that’s all that’s built nowadays.
Can’t be cookie cutter if you can see differences in the front yard.
Every time I see a good deal on a house, I notice it is in an HOA. It turns out that people calculate the HOA fee into what they can afford so houses in HOAs have to go for less than a comparable one without one.
I have. I’ve lived in HOAs where utilities, gardening/lawn care, parking lot upkeep, trash/recycling, community center, were taken care of by the HOA.
You only hear about bad HOAs because people in those HOAs only care about property values from aesthetics. In reality, a good HOA is like a properly run union - taking care of its members by providing cheaper, common services via collective bargaining.
I’ve lived in HOAs where utilities, gardening/lawn care, parking lot upkeep, trash/recycling, community center, were taken care of by the HOA.
Aside from gardening, aren’t those all things a city would be taking care of?
If we live in a system where the bad ones are allowed to exist, maybe we shouldn’t have them at all.
I think that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
People who live in an area should be empowered to push back against outside interests coming in and changing things to the detriment of the residents, like the HOA posted earlier that protected their forest and watershed.
The problem is that this power is often turned back onto the residents. This sounds to me like hyper-local politics - and so the answer is to get involved and vote out the assholes in power, not ban the existence of the political body!
(Edit) I didn’t realize this, but some HOAs are controlled by outside developers, rather than local residents? That I can get behind banning!
My aunt lives in an HOA that was formed because the city wanted to cut down a big forested area to make a cookie-cutter neighborhood. The forest protected a watershed and was home to many native animals.
So the few people who lived there formed an HOA to gain all rights to the area; sold a few more properties to developers with strict rules so the houses built didn’t impact the wildlife or water, and set a large chunk aside as a ‘community park’ that really is a forest with a few walking trails and a nice pond.
The HOA fees mostly go towards maintaining the forest; planting natives, paying top-grade arborists to care for the trees, setting up bird boxes, stuff like that.
That being said, I’m well aware that hers is an outlier, and most HOAs are just excuses for bratty busybodies to harass their neighbors.
I currently live in an HOA townhome neighborhood, and I’ll be the first to say that I’d abolish it if I could
That said, mine isn’t too bad.
They have some nitpicky bullshit, doors have to be painted a certain color, trash cans have to be out of sight from the front of your house, we can’t have hot tubs, fire pits, or tiki torches, etc.
But they do handle the lawn mowing, snow removal, trash service, have a playground in the neighborhood, and do the roofing and siding for the homes every X years (I forget exactly how often off the top of my head.) and they require you to get your fire place inspected every year if you’re going to use it, which I appreciate since I’m connected to my neighbors houses.
Now as far as I’m concerned, my lawn is the size of a postage stamp, I could practically mow it with a weed wacker (which I own because the landscapers do a shitty job around my deck) and I’m perfectly happy to shovel out the 2 parking spaces in front of my house and my like 20ft of sidewalks and front walkway. I also think trash pickup should be on the city government paid for by my taxes, but alas, that’s not the case in my town and residents have to figure out trash service by themselves. And I don’t give a rats ass if there’s a playground in my neighborhood, there’s a perfectly fine park about a 5 minute walk away. And for what I pay in HOA dues I could just save up for my own roofing and siding instead and probably get better and longer-lasting stuff.
My HOA manages communal property (trails, playgrounds, the pool and tennis/basketball courts) and does grounds keeping. They have some rules I find annoying but most of their rules are sensible (like don’t build a fire pit below your deck and don’t block your neighbors driveway with your cars). Ultimately, my HOA is just not that big of a deal. You don’t hear about HOAs like that because they are not interesting enough to post about online.
They have some rules I find annoying but most of their rules are sensible (like don’t build a fire pit below your deck and don’t block your neighbors driveway with your cars)
Everywhere I’ve ever lived, both of those are actual laws. This is like saying the HOA has rules against burglary.
But maintenance of communal property makes sense, and I’d join an HOA that had in its bylaws that it will never do anything other than that.
Authorities say that HOA members first summoned police due to reports of “children running an illegal lemonade stand on county right of way.”
When the sheriff’s deputies arrived, they “found that the children were not blocking the roadway but did ask them to move back from the road a few feet for their safety.”
Thinking the matter was resolved, the officers then moved on to other calls about parking issues in the area, only to head back to the scene of the stand when the “original reporting parties came out and began yelling at the children claiming they were on private property.”
As the refreshment row reached fever pitch, the officers discovered that the children running the stand themselves lived within the HOA and that the lemonade pushers “had a right to be there” on the association’s communally held property, leaving the wayward youths to continue their street war against scurvy.
Assholes.
Run for your local HOA to dismantle and disband it if you have one. Make it your platform and every person who’s ever gotten a petty ticket from a nosy nobody will vote for you.
This right here is the answer. HOAs usually have fairly complicated rules, but they’re absolutely are and are required to be bylaws that dictate the operation of the HOA, how board members are elected, what responsibility is the HOA has to the residents, etc. A big part of why HOAs get out of control is because the only people who bother to serve on their boards are the busybodies you least want in charge of your HOA. So simple solution, run and get yourself and your friends elected. Then then when you have power over the HOA, push through a bylaw amendment that significantly restricts the HOA’s authority and makes it very difficult to get it back. IE, The HOA may not create any new rule or regulation or penalty governing what people do on their private property without an in-person vote at a meeting where at least 90% of the residents personally show up and vote yes, however the president or board may remove any such regulations or penalties at will.
Or if you have support, just push through a charter amendment that says the HOA ceases to exist on some specific date and releases all CC&Rs for all governed properties.
This right here.
Figure out how to get elected. Get elected under the 'if you don’t like the way the HOA is run, vote for me, my friend, and their friend!’ platform, and then change the fucking rulebook to your liking.
I’m on my local strata council and from the earliest meetings discovered my nemesis who is there for exactly the opposite purpose of me. I want a permissive atmosphere that doesn’t look for trouble and only responds to actual problems instead of nitpicking to create unnecessary trouble.
My nemesis, on the other hand, is somebody who I believe can only get an erection by covertly causing another human being frustration and torment. By getting myself on council he cannot get rid of me nor can he use his power to abuse me. I have a small but dedicated power base that hates this guy and they all give me their proxy votes at the AGM specifically because I am supposed to sit on him and keep him down as much as possible. If I ever move than someone else will need to take over the job of sitting on him so he doesn’t think he has power.
Sounds exhausting. I would give my vote to you though, were I apart of that HOA. Good luck!
Losers whose entire identity is defined by the tiny amount of power they have.
street war against scurvy
I can just hear the guy laughing his ass off while writing this story about the most petty individuals on the face of the fucking planet.
Honestly, if some dick cheese were harassing my kids about their lemonade stand, they would be unwittingly be subscribing to a life time supply of a burning paper bag full of dog shit on their doorstep.
Why do some people just wake up in the morning and go “I hate fun. Time to go be a villain in a Disney Channel show today!”
I’m guessing the cops came and shot the kids’ dog.
