5 ms·

HOA is a metaphorical termite. If you are planning on buying a new house buy into some old neighborhood. It i not worth dealing with them just for the sake of s

HOA is a metaphorical termite. If you are planning on buying a new house buy into some old neighborhood. It i not worth dealing with them just for the sake of someone cutting your grass once a week.

fixermark 8y ago
As with many things, it goes both ways. One of the neighborhoods in my town had a neighbor run a Nazi flag up the flagpole in his front yard, just because some homeowners are real-life edgelords. They would have appreciated having a blanket HOA rule about maintaining property values and "eyesores" to fall back on, because in the absence of such, it turned out to be pretty difficult in the American legal environment to find anything with which they could compel him to take the flag down. On the other hand, I've seen a different neighborhood try to use the local covenants to ban a backyard solar farm, because they argued solar panels are uniformly an eyesore. Tools are tools; people use them.
- driverdan 8y ago
  > it turned out to be pretty difficult in the American legal environment to find anything with which they could compel him to take the flag down. Pretty difficult? It should be impossible. Remember that pesky constitutional amendment that guarantees free speech? It applies.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - fixermark 8y ago
    It does apply, but it's unclear whether it leads to optimal outcomes. Germany has outlawed public displays of Nazi symbols; it doesn't have the problems of overt fascism that the US is currently struggling with. Perhaps it has merely replaced them with covert fascism, and perhaps this is merely correlation that doesn't imply causation. But I get the distinct impression that such is not actually the case; that legal disapproval of naziism in Germany re-enforces general disapproval. Plus, America's First Amendment doesn't uniformly guarantee freedom of speech. Hate speech, for example, and incitement to riot, are two categories that are generally not considered protected. I don't think flying a Nazi flag falls under either of those (though if one really squints hard, it could set a person up for much worse---the US negotiated a peace with Germany after World War II, but not with the Nazi party. One could make a claim that flying an enemy flag on American soil is tantamount to claiming that territory has been conquered, which opens the situation up to military intervention ;) ).
    - driverdan 8y ago
      > Hate speech, for example... Of course that's protected. The only thing that isn't protected is a clear and timely threat like your example of inciting a riot.
- greedo 8y ago
  Any HOA that tried to keep him from flying said flag would have a hard time defending its actions in court.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
octorian 8y ago
HOAs hire someone to cut your grass? I thought they just send you increasingly nasty letters and/or fines if you forget to cut your own grass. Or if you remember to cut it, a bit late, but forget to inform the HOA that you've done so. They might even find a half-dozen different ways to describe "didn't cut the grass" so they can have you in the queue for multiple escalating situations.
cgriswald 8y ago
I moved into a rental house with an HOA in a place where even the roads were private. Across the street lived the president of the HOA. Her daughters were off at college, but their cars were parked in front of their house for months without moving. The streets were small and parking was only allowed on that side of the street. Faster forward four years, I parked my car in front of their house for a period of two days because I had gotten a new car but had not yet sold the old one and had nowhere to put it. On the second day I got an unnecessarily nasty (it got strangely personal), unsigned (zero contact information; no names), non-letterhead letter from "the HOA" saying that police had been notified about my car and that it would be towed after 72-hours. This was a nice car, not an eyesore; and they had to know it was my car at that point. I briefly considered writing a letter to all the HOA members warning them about someone "impersonating the HOA". I also thought about having my lawyer draft a nasty letter to the HOA. Instead, I just kept my car parked on either end of their house every two days until I moved out (taking a photo each time, which at some point they must have seen me do), even though I had some other options. Had they simply knocked on my door and asked me about it, that wouldn't have happened.
Pulcinella 8y ago
I agree the HOAs are often completely terrible. There are, however, some benefits. For example, cities often require that HOAs for newly built subdivisions are responsible for certain types of utility and sidewalk maintenance because maze-like/fractal-like subdivisions mean maintenance of these things are incredibly expensive and cost more to maintain than what the city receives from that subdivision in terms of taxes.

HOA is a metaphorical termite. If you are planning on buying a new house buy into some old neighborhood. It i not worth dealing with them just for the sake of someone cutting your grass once a week.

fixermark 8y ago

As with many things, it goes both ways. One of the neighborhoods in my town had a neighbor run a Nazi flag up the flagpole in his front yard, just because some homeowners are real-life edgelords. They would have appreciated having a blanket HOA rule about maintaining property values and "eyesores" to fall back on, because in the absence of such, it turned out to be pretty difficult in the American legal environment to find anything with which they could compel him to take the flag down. On the other hand, I've seen a different neighborhood try to use the local covenants to ban a backyard solar farm, because they argued solar panels are uniformly an eyesore. Tools are tools; people use them.

driverdan 8y ago
> it turned out to be pretty difficult in the American legal environment to find anything with which they could compel him to take the flag down. Pretty difficult? It should be impossible. Remember that pesky constitutional amendment that guarantees free speech? It applies.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fixermark 8y ago
  It does apply, but it's unclear whether it leads to optimal outcomes. Germany has outlawed public displays of Nazi symbols; it doesn't have the problems of overt fascism that the US is currently struggling with. Perhaps it has merely replaced them with covert fascism, and perhaps this is merely correlation that doesn't imply causation. But I get the distinct impression that such is not actually the case; that legal disapproval of naziism in Germany re-enforces general disapproval. Plus, America's First Amendment doesn't uniformly guarantee freedom of speech. Hate speech, for example, and incitement to riot, are two categories that are generally not considered protected. I don't think flying a Nazi flag falls under either of those (though if one really squints hard, it could set a person up for much worse---the US negotiated a peace with Germany after World War II, but not with the Nazi party. One could make a claim that flying an enemy flag on American soil is tantamount to claiming that territory has been conquered, which opens the situation up to military intervention ;) ).
  - driverdan 8y ago
    > Hate speech, for example... Of course that's protected. The only thing that isn't protected is a clear and timely threat like your example of inciting a riot.
greedo 8y ago
Any HOA that tried to keep him from flying said flag would have a hard time defending its actions in court.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

octorian 8y ago

HOAs hire someone to cut your grass? I thought they just send you increasingly nasty letters and/or fines if you forget to cut your own grass. Or if you remember to cut it, a bit late, but forget to inform the HOA that you've done so. They might even find a half-dozen different ways to describe "didn't cut the grass" so they can have you in the queue for multiple escalating situations.

cgriswald 8y ago

I moved into a rental house with an HOA in a place where even the roads were private. Across the street lived the president of the HOA. Her daughters were off at college, but their cars were parked in front of their house for months without moving. The streets were small and parking was only allowed on that side of the street. Faster forward four years, I parked my car in front of their house for a period of two days because I had gotten a new car but had not yet sold the old one and had nowhere to put it. On the second day I got an unnecessarily nasty (it got strangely personal), unsigned (zero contact information; no names), non-letterhead letter from "the HOA" saying that police had been notified about my car and that it would be towed after 72-hours. This was a nice car, not an eyesore; and they had to know it was my car at that point. I briefly considered writing a letter to all the HOA members warning them about someone "impersonating the HOA". I also thought about having my lawyer draft a nasty letter to the HOA. Instead, I just kept my car parked on either end of their house every two days until I moved out (taking a photo each time, which at some point they must have seen me do), even though I had some other options. Had they simply knocked on my door and asked me about it, that wouldn't have happened.

Pulcinella 8y ago

I agree the HOAs are often completely terrible. There are, however, some benefits. For example, cities often require that HOAs for newly built subdivisions are responsible for certain types of utility and sidewalk maintenance because maze-like/fractal-like subdivisions mean maintenance of these things are incredibly expensive and cost more to maintain than what the city receives from that subdivision in terms of taxes.