9 ms·

For the land of the free, some US rules are a shock to me. Like how in many places you are not allowed to have a brown lawn, or one with taller weeds instead o

• nickonline 8y ago
  8 inches of weeds is a pretty solid amount of weeds
  • joshuacc 8y ago
    Where I grew up (rural Southern US) weeds could shoot up to 8 inches within 3 days with the right mix of sun, rain, and warm weather.
• Spivak 8y ago
  The rules are a bit crazy but they're not born out of malice -- they basically exist to control negative externalities and protect the property values of the neighborhood. It's a very real fear that one of your neighbors will drive people away from your neighborhood, tank property values, and suddenly you have 20 families underwater on their mortgage. These rules are kinda dumb and often go way far because HoA members get a little drunk with power but they're essential for mobility in suburbia.
  • humanrebar 8y ago
    Family homes should have stopped being investment vehicles a long time ago. If we want affordable housing, housing costs must necessarily fall behind inflation, which is the thing brown lawn regulations are trying to prevent. I'm not saying brown lawns are the way to lower housing prices, but the whole point rests on the value judgement that expensive housing is better.
    • davidw 8y ago
      At least it's brown lawns people don't want in their neighborhoods these days.
      • monocasa 8y ago
        It's still both.
        • stronglikedan 8y ago
          It's still both everywhere, but not as much anywhere as some would like to believe. It's better now than it ever was, and as long as it keeps moving in that direction that's a good thing.
          • monocasa 8y ago
            I mean, schools are more segregated now then they were 40 years ago. So no, it's not better than it ever was, it's just more quiet. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/08/29/report-public-schools-more-segregated-now-than-40-years-ago/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/08/...
            • stronglikedan 8y ago
              That's just one data point in one area, and doesn't necessarily reflect racism. My general statement is still accurate - racism has been and still is on the decline.
              • monocasa 8y ago
                I provided data to back up my position, do you have any other than vague feels?
                • stronglikedan 8y ago
  • Shivetya 8y ago
    they may not be out of malice but you get little power tripping potentates enough to make us question the rules and how they are applied. While many bemoan HOA rules you can just have problems with cities that just increase revenues by fines [1]. For the most part I think just as many states have limits on how much of a budget in a city/county can come from traffic violations that such limits needs to be applied to all fines. these fines tend to hit the poorest the hardest and there is no remedy for them plus much of zoning still serves to discriminate against "undesirables" but now is masked behind feel good terms related to environment, pollution, quality of life, and historical. politicians and groups simply got the same results but learned how to dodge the courts and sway public opinion [1] https://reason.com/blog/2018/05/24/georgia-town-brags-about-fining-resident https://reason.com/blog/2018/05/24/georgia-town-brags-about-...
  • ghaff 8y ago
    >These rules are kinda dumb and often go way far because HoA members get a little drunk with power I'm sure that's often true. And I know that I mostly give nature relatively free rein on my country property. That said, I can at least appreciate the point of view of why suburban neighbors on fairly small land plots who keep meticulously neat lawns, gardens, and homes are going to have an issue with the person whose house has peeling paint, an unmaintained lawn, and generally looks abandoned.
  • rayiner 8y ago
    Many of the rules were in fact created out of racial animosity, as a way to deal with the fact that explicit discrimination in housing was made illegal. (You can tell this is true because Euclidian zoning arose long after industrialization. The common law of nuisance handled the "metal smelter next to the elementary school" negative externality situation just fine. What it didn't handle was keeping black people out of white neighborhoods.) That they may now have vitality beyond their initial racist origins is a different assertion.
    • gascan 8y ago
      The common law of nuisance handled the negative externality situation just fine Isn't specific standards of property care, basically a more formal codification of nuisance law? Subjective laws being a pain to apply consistently, I was under the impression we frequently did this- some objective rule is established under the rule of an existing subjective rule, to improve enforcement & fairness.
      • rayiner 8y ago
        No, because for nuisance law you have to prove that failing to meet some standard is in fact causing interference with the use and enjoyment of your own property. "I don't like tall grass it looks ugly" is not a cognizable claim under nuisance law. Nor is "the tall grass might cause a rodent or insect problem that affects my property.* Under nuisance law you have to prove that actual harm exists, not merely the theoretical possibility.
        • logfromblammo 8y ago
          I have literally seen in person the claim that grass tall enough for seedheads exacerbates grass pollen allergies. This was in a small town surrounded by farmland with some of the most fertile soil in the world. A person with grass pollen allergies would have to be a fool of the highest caliber to blame them on a neighbor's unmowed lawn rather than the wind blowing in from the sod farm, or the hay farm, or the wheat farm. Sometimes, I had to mow twice a week to keep the grass at a reasonable height. If I had a grass pollen allergy, I think maybe I could have been better off moving to Phoenix than becoming a lawn-height snitch--or as a UK person might put it, a grass grass.
  • logfromblammo 8y ago
    Property values derive mostly from: 1. Location 2. Location 3. Location 4. Fads and marketing When I shop for a home, counting the dandelions and measuring the grass height on the neighbors' lawns is the least of my concerns. These rules are 1% to do with protecting property values, and 99% to do with control freaks enforcing their prejudices and their version of order on other people. They are not born of malice; they are born of fear. The rules of the nearest HOA explicitly ban vehicles on blocks in the front yard. As though anybody around here would actually do that. They go to the neighborhood with the worst property values, and they note, cargo-cult style, all of its salient features. Then they write up their rules, banning all of those features in their neighborhood. In this manner, they reason, their neighborhood will never have the worst property values in town. In reality, their neighborhood will never have the lowest property values in town because the commute to the major employers is twenty minutes, there are four grocery stores and two pharmacies within a ten minute drive, and all the houses are single-family with at least 2 bedrooms and 1500 ft^2 of finished floor area. HOAs would mandate granite countertops and stainless steel appliances if they could come up with a decent rationale for it.
• noelwelsh 8y ago
  Our grass is quite a bit taller than 8". It's been uncut since spring as we're trying to get a bit of an ecology going instead of the usual ecological desert that is the modern lawn. Good thing we don't live in Minneapolis. (We have planted native meadow flowers as well, though they haven't fared so well.) Also, it hasn't rained for weeks in our part of the UK. Our lawn is very brown, as are most of our neighbours'.
  • Apylon777 8y ago
    Minneapolis does have an exemption to the 8" height for "managed natural landscapes".
  • CalRobert 8y ago
    Thanks for doing that. The UK (and Ireland for that matter) have turned in to little more than sponges soaked in pesticides and covered in monoculture agriculture or the odd green field to please the tourists. There's a lack of understanding that almost nothing "natural" remains. Relevant: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/29/natural-world-disappearing-save-it https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/29/natura... "... farmers have sent me images of verdant monocultures of perennial ryegrass, with the message: “Look at this and try telling me we don’t look after nature.” It’s green, but it’s about as ecologically rich as an airport runway..."
  • logfromblammo 8y ago
    I think if I lived in Minneapolis, I'd rip out all the grass and put in white clover. The neighbors can then poise their hands over their snitch-phones, waiting in vain for a plant to grow past 8".
• wil421 8y ago
  This has nothing to do with zoning in most cases and has to do with neighborhood HOA or municipal rules. Why shouldn’t a city be able set a specific image based on what their voters want? Same things happens in Europe, I doubt Rome would allow some massive modern looking building right next to the Colosseum. If you have a problem move to the country (rural area). Shoot guns, grow your lawn, live in a trailer or don’t, no one cares.
  • sweettea 8y ago
    Unfortunately, the IBC specifies a maximum height of grass, and while I live in the country my county enforces grass height. The country is not a panacea for freedom.
    • wil421 8y ago
      You could still vote against it. I was only implying that generally rural areas are less stringent. I was think more like people living near farm land than rural areas where folks live in town.
    • imgabe 8y ago
      The IBC? As in the International Building Code? Where is grass height in there?
• njoro 8y ago
  > For the land of the free, some US rules are a shock to me. The emphasis on freedom in the US, like many things around the world (like religion), is mostly a result of the conditions then the other way around. What would you do if you find yourself in a disorganized country of inequality and insecurity? You build the most available home construction of the most available material on the most available land. So if the economy crashes, you get sick with poor coverage or the government goes haywire you can still, in theory, live a decent life. It doesn't have that much to do with "everyone do whatever they want".
• criley2 8y ago
  >For the land of the free, some US rules are a shock to me. A few things. 1. We are the Land of Liberty, and liberty is described by our founders as "Freedom from onerous government intrusion", not anarchy. People get hung-up on 'freedom' and don't understand that Liberty is the core American value, which is called "freedom" but which is really Liberty. 2. US Freedom is misinterpreted to mean individual freedom at all costs. US Freedom is not just individual freedom, it's local rule and local soverignity. People often don't realize that the US has a dual-sovereign system where States and the Federal government share soverignity. This is a critical factor in "freedom". Going further, counties, towns and local governments have a lot more freedom to rule as they please than you might think. You'd think, it should all be top down federal law to ensure equity, but in reality, every county is it's own fiefdom, especially in more lax states, as it is states that reign in local governments, not the feds. So, when you consider American liberty to mean respecting individual, local, state and federal authority, and not just individual total freedom, you can see a system designed to put lots of power in the hands of local governments, which actually creates localized zones of not-so-freedom! After all, the US is free enough where counties and cities can enforce a lot of silly things!
  • tetrep 8y ago
    > US Freedom is misinterpreted to mean individual freedom at all costs. US Freedom is not just individual freedom, it's local rule and local soverignity. Not even that local. With the few exceptions from the Constitution, U.S. states wield supreme power and can override any actual local attempt at governing. Freedom is freedom for the States, not the people.
    • squirrelicus 8y ago
      This is correct. Or was, until article 1 section 8 and the 14th amendment were reinterpreted to mean the 10th amendment de facto obsolete. Which is crazy btw. I hear a lot of people saying "I'm not a tenther". Like, oh really, I didn't know I could own slaves again just by being "not a thirteenther" Humans are weird.
    • kodablah 8y ago
• sandworm101 8y ago
  >> For the land of the free, some US rules are a shock to me. US-style freedom isn't only the individual freedom of action that people commonly believe. US freedom is also about allowing people to organize communities however they want. The US is the land where people can form neighborhoods of like-minded people and enforce their own local rules. Strata boards, neighborhood zoning, water control boards, "home rule"... it is all about little collectives organizing themselves in different ways. The individual's freedom is the right to move amongst these collectives. Don't like the neighborhood? Move.
  • nicky0 8y ago
    Very interesting. I quite like the UK form of freedom where I can grow my grass as long as I like.
• jandrese 8y ago
  I doubt that ordinance is enforced very heavily, but it does have a legitimate purpose. When you have tall grass rodents will move into the neighborhood and then chew their way into the nearby houses. They can cause considerable damage to nearby homes.
• dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Like how in many places you are not allowed to have a brown lawn, or one with taller weeds instead of grass. That's a fire protection rule. Both tall and dry grass/weeds are fire hazards and dangers to surrounding properties.
• csomar 8y ago
  > Like how in many places you are not allowed to have a brown lawn, or one with taller weeds instead of grass. Living in a place where there is no control, I'd say the US is right on this. If these laws are not enforced, the place will look like a 3rd world dump in a few years.