17 ms·

Maryland law limits homeowner association control over eco-friendly yards

266 points by asimpletune 4y ago

walterbell 4y ago
2021 discussion, "Avoid buying in HOA neighborhoods", with 450 HN + 500 article comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348079
troad 4y ago
I’m glad every time I see a family win over an irrational and power-hungry HOA, and I’m doubly glad they get to keep their ecological garden. The new law is a start, but I would love for further state laws to eviscerate HOAs completely. I don’t see this as very likely, unfortunately - the NIMBYs wield far too many levers of power to be dislodged from their petty fiefdoms any time soon. I wonder if a collapse in house prices would postpone or hasten the fall of HOAs? On the one hand, it may weaken the power of landowners. On the other, it may make them all the more desperate to retain the control that HOAs do give them.
- Arainach 4y ago
  What other mechanism do you propose for communally-owned goals? A special assessment every time you want your private road plowed? No one wants to pay to maintain anything, but having an organization to do the maintenance on time is far cheaper than paying to repair neglected issues.
  - cardiffspaceman 4y ago
    HOA's then need to reduce their scope. Creating Disneyland-like tracts of grass and groomed plants, and other things that don't have to do with the longevity of the common hard assets, should be reduced or eliminated as an HOA bailiwick.
    - Arainach 4y ago
      It turns out that many people want such things
      - kelnos 4y ago
        And many people don't. What's your point? I generally think we should err on the side of fewer restrictions when there's disagreement around the existence of things like this.
        Arainach 4y ago
        You're not obligated to buy a home in such a community. Even in areas where it's not practical to find a home with no HOA, the vast majority of them are low maintenance and don't do or cost a ton. You just don't hear people complaining about those.
        heleninboodler 4y ago
        Yeah, it seems like if you want to form an association of homes where everyone has agreed that the houses must be beige, you should be free to do that.
        BeetleB 4y ago
        I think if a group of homes wants to enter into a voluntary contract that has penalties if they changed the color of their house, that's fine. The problem arises when that contract is binding on future homeowners. The even bigger problem is that if you are in a reasonable HOA, draconian rules can be enacted that you disagree with - as long as the majority agree.
        JoshTriplett 4y ago
        > Even in areas where it's not practical to find a home with no HOA Which is quite a lot of them; there are cities where you're unlikely to find anything reasonable in city limits. > the vast majority of them are low maintenance Most HOAs can become worse on a moment's notice depending on who has power in them, because most people (reasonably) don't want to spend the energy fighting in bitter ridiculous politics.
  - wtetzner 4y ago
    What private road? Why is an HOA needed when the house already belongs to a city and a county?
    - kelnos 4y ago
      In some municipalities, local governments have been requiring that new housing developments own and maintain more than you'd expect, like sidewalks, street lights, and even sometimes the roads. Note that this is in places where -- for example -- a new road is built off of an existing main road, and the new road is relatively short and exists solely to provide access to the homes in the new development. We're not talking about people who live on main roads that the local or state governments assume responsibility for.
      - jessaustin 4y ago
        In many cases the municipality has done the developer a huge favor by incorporating the subdivision and hooking it up to public water and sewer. Homeowners can hardly complain that they still have to plow their own community driveway.
        wildzzz 4y ago
        Hooking a new development up to new utilities is not paid for by the municipal government. The developer pays those costs. The utility companies will pay for maintenance using the income they receive from it's customers up to the property line but the initial cost is paid with private funds. The government may want to extend out utilities to land that developers plan to build on if there's sufficient reason to do so like if the government wants to turn a massive farmland into a new town.
        bombcar 4y ago
        At least around here the reason a development gets its own plow service is that they’d be far down on the list even if in the city. I’m only a block from a major road on an active side road and it only gets mildly plowed.
  - BeetleB 4y ago
    Most HOAs where I live do no maintenance.[1] They don't even claim to. They exist purely to enforce rules (no window ACs showing, front yard maintained etc). Oh, and also, the vast majority of houses under HOAs do not have private roads or communal property. The only useful thing I see in some HOAs in my area is snow ploughing because the city really sucks at that. [1] Unless they're for condos.
    - tdeck 4y ago
      Here's one thing I don't understand: how did it get this way? It seems like a generational thing, but I can't relate at all to people's petty concerns about neighbors' lawn maintenance and paint colors and AC units. It's waning now but evidently there were several decades in American culture where these things were of paramount importance to a vast swath of the population. Why? Has anyone read a good book about this phenomenon?
      - BeetleB 4y ago
        I honestly don't know. I always assumed racism was a significant factor at some point (let's make rules that seem innocent but target a particular demographic). From what I can find on the Internet, while they existed for over 100 years, they were rare. The main growth of HOAs has been since the 60's, as people moved to the suburbs.
        emodendroket 4y ago
        Suburban development requires new infrastructure to serve a relatively small number of homes so it is logical that we'd see more of them if more people are living in suburbs.
      - dangerlibrary 4y ago
        "The Color of Law" covers it a bit. HOAs became popular as a means to enforce racial covenants on property deeds after courts ruled that the only parties "harmed" (and therefore with standing to bring a suit) when a racial covenant was violated were the previous deed holders. Previous deed holders often were no longer around / didn't care if their house was now owned by someone with an incorrect amount of melanin in their skin. HOAs were a legal entity that could be a party to the lawsuit that suffered harm from the breach of the racial covenants, occasionally succeeding in getting courts to evict the new owners. This is why you so often hear that their purpose is "protecting property values" - the concern was that property values would tank when black and brown people moved to the neighborhood. This was a valid concern, not solely because of any racial animus on the part of the neighbors (though there was plenty of that to go around). When any black and brown people moved in, the Federal Housing Administration might redline the neighborhood, and then nobody could get FHA loans to buy a house there. Once the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned racial covenants and curbed the practice of redlining explicitly based on race, their usefulness in court rapidly declined. I assume dues were still collected and there were still meetings to attend, and so they started inventing new ways of harassing undesirable neighbors...
  - kelnos 4y ago
    Ensuring that common areas and infrastructure are maintained does not need to lead to scope-creep around allowed paint colors, window treatments, yard maintenance requirements, etc. HOAs in neighborhoods of single-family homes should be restricted to only collecting dues to support maintenance of shared infrastructure, and nothing more. I'm a little more sympathetic toward HOAs that govern multi-unit dwellings, but even then, many of them go way too far. I think it's fair to set reasonable nighttime quiet hours, and prohibit people from turning their unit into a short-term rental, but I've seen HOAs where they require everyone in the building to have window curtains of certain colors, and that's just ridiculous.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > I've seen HOAs where they require everyone in the building to have window curtains of certain colors, and that's just ridiculous. I would call it tyrany, but apparently you are only allowed to use that word if its the government. If its a private company or some other organisation, then its called freedom
      - c22 4y ago
        It's only tyranny (in both cases) if there is no mechanism for you to join the board, run for office, or form a coalition with your neighbors to affect desired change.
    - gwd 4y ago
      > I've seen HOAs where they require everyone in the building to have window curtains of certain colors, and that's just ridiculous. But if you're moving into a house with a HOA with a total of 8 houses; and it has a certain "look" in part because everyone has white frilly curtains in their windows; and most of the people in that area want to maintain that look... then, what's the problem? Surely not every HOA in a city will have people who all want white frilly window curtains, so you can find some other HOA? Unless, of course, the problem is that the rules are set up so that a minority can impose their will on the majority; and in that case, the problem isn't so much the existence of the HOA itself, but the bylaws which let it happen. Similar, in a lot of ways to the government: Either the government really does represent the will of the people, in which case people complaining about "the government" are really complaining about their fellow citizens; or, the government doesn't represent the will of the people, in which case the voting system &c needs to be fixed so that it does. I do agree that there is a larger societal value to having limits on what kinds of rules there are; just as we have state laws which limit what a city council can do, and federal laws limiting what a state can do, and a constitution limiting what the federal government can do. "HOAs may not outlaw pollenator-friendly plants" seems like a good rule; "HOAs may not require frilly white window curtains" I'm not convinced of.
  - bmelton 4y ago
    My home sits in a weird zone in Maryland that has a somewhat antiquated voluntary HOA. Because I'm well aware that joining an HOA is effectively signing over legal rights, I am not a member and refuse to join. Roughly a third of the neighborhood is not a member, but most of the older neighbors are. Occasionally the HOA will send out snarky letters, chiding those who maybe left their trash cans out for too long or had a tree removed but left a stump, that sort of thing. One of the neighbors at the entryway to the neighborhood, who is technically in the adjacent neighborhood, not subject to our HOA -- nor even eligible to join it, received a letter complaining about the somewhat scraggly looking trees on the edge of her property. She, a lady of few words, went out and ripped out the trees, prompting the HOA to send her another letter about the unattractiveness of the lot's now-barren edge. She responded back with some variant of "I did what you asked. If you want to plant some trees there, go ahead." They responded back with some version of "Well, it has come to our attention that the property in question is not associated with the HOA, so we cannot allocate funds for this effort." The neighbor across the street from her is friendly with all parties, but has the misfortune of having a property that looks out onto her lot, which is now significantly less attractive than it was when he moved in just a couple of years ago. Because his and her homes bracket the entryway into the neighborhood, he went door to door, asking for donations of $20 in a flyer promising to "beautify the entryway" (but while making plain his actual stance in person to non-HOA members.) I donated $214 (which was how much money I might have paid to the HOA had I been a member for the years I'd lived here) and in exchange, he put me in touch with his arborist that he'd negotiated an extremely discounted rate on trees for, so we're now lining our lot with a couple of trees for the low price of $20. Unrelated to the above story, the vacant lot across from mine is also across from the neighbor who sits caddy-corner from me. It's a green-space, effectively, but requires some occasional mowing and leaf-blowing, which he and I alternate taking turns to maintain. I have no idea if he's a member of the HOA or not, but that has never had any bearing on either of our willingness to keep the space that we look out onto looking attractive. So, to the answer of the question "how do you achieve communally-owned goals without an HOA?" I posit that the answer might be to just work as a community, whether or not there is an HOA monetarily binding you into acting neighborly.
  - JoshTriplett 4y ago
    By all means, create a voluntary association of people who want to share a common area and pay for its maintenance, or similar things. Do not give that association 1) the ability to regulate people's private properties (paint color, plant choices, garbage-can handling, and other such matters), or 2) the ability to attach obligations to house deeds such that a new owner is stuck with them. And if enough new owners don't want to pay for common area maintenance or similar, the neighborhood doesn't get to keep having a maintained common area.
    - ip26 4y ago
      create a voluntary association of people Yes, it’s called “the people who voluntarily bought property in this HOA”
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    This is like the "what about the children?" defense: it's taking an extreme case and using that as a general statement. An HOA that only maintained common property would not inspire the level of vitriol that I see on Twitter daily. So let's leave that out. HOAs can maintain sidewalks and private roads and plow snow all they want, and no one will mind much. It's the busybody Karen restrictions on what you can do with your house that set passions aflame: your window treatments, the color of your doors, the length of the pole holding up your flag. And, of course, your lawn. I heard about someone whose car was towed away by the HOA because the registration had expired. A state law limiting the jurisdiction of HOAs would go a long way to fixing all that.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      Are you saying that taking a sampling of complaints from Twitter is avoiding taking extreme cases and generalizing from them?
  - coffeefirst 4y ago
    Easy: 1. Give the HOA the jurisdiction to spend the money in collects. It can plow roads, cut grass, and plant trees. 2. Everything else it wants to do requires a majority vote. Any adoption of a rule that affects private property requires a 3/4 majority vote. 3. Require a judge to sign off on fines etc. 4. No sequential terms of office. The capability to do maintenance stays, you can still have some rules, but the petty tyranny over paint colors becomes nearly impossible.
    - c22 4y ago
      Or, you know, let the individual organizations in charge of running local areas decide on their own rules for voting, collecting, and spending funds. Democracy tends to work best when decisions are kept as local as possible and not shoehorned into some generic framework pushed down from up on high.
  - doktorhladnjak 4y ago
    > What other mechanism do you propose for communally-owned goals? A special assessment every time you want your private road plowed? This is exactly what happens where my parents live. They live in a subdivision in an unincorporated part of the county. The county doesn't maintains any of the roads in the subdivision of hundreds of homes and there is no HOA. Every few years, some motivated neighbors get a quote to repave the street then convince everyone to pay their fair share. I can’t imagine that everyone complies, but overall it works and supposedly is less expensive than an HOA. The streets are not great quality but it’s also in the sunbelt where there’s no snow or freezing weather.
  - topkai22 4y ago
    In my area there is a difference between a maintenance association and a homeowners association. The maintenance organization maintains community property but does not encumber the property with any Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs.) An HOA does. My current neighborhood has a community maintenance organization, which frankly does a great job. They keep the landscaping very nice and have gotten a park constructed. I didn’t have to sign anything with them when I bought my house other then a single piece of paper acknowledging that I’d pay the annual dues. Beyond there aren’t any rules. My previous house had 20+ pages of rules. I could get in trouble for painting my house the wrong color, changing my landscaping without permission, having more than 3 chickens (actual rule), or any such thing. Fortunately, sane people basically controlled the board and acted largely with benevolent neglect, but there were always a couple obnoxious people who made trouble for others. On top of that, they did a worse job at keeping community property and spent far more on administration, although admittedly both were pretty cheap. All that’s to say you can have a sub-governmental community organization or tax unit without the onerous rules the HOAs generally carry.
    - yardie 4y ago
      I think this is what my parents have for their neighborhood. Unlike other developments in their neighborhood, they have no HOA, no security gatehouse, no amenities like a pool. But they do have common areas like the street median and street lighting that need attending to. And for that they pay $50/year.
    - CogitoCogito 4y ago
      > Fortunately, sane people basically controlled the board and acted largely with benevolent neglect, but there were always a couple obnoxious people who made trouble for others. Did they ever have the (political and procedural) power to vote to remove the crazy rules?
      - topkai22 4y ago
        Late reply, but the nature of the HOA is self perpetuating. It takes 75% of homeowners providing in writing that they want the HOA desolved, and it has to happen in a window that is only available every 5 years. That’s not 75% of votes, it’s 75% of all homeowners- if 74 homes vote to dissolve, and 26 forget to send in their wish to dissolve, legally the HOA sticks around. It’s not that the people on the board generally want the HOA dissolved though, they will enforce the rules if the property is getting egregious (weeds all over the place, painting by your house bright orange, starting unapproved construction), but they mostly let small stuff slide.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > What other mechanism do you propose for communally-owned goals? Ideally, line items in the property taxes to address those needs. That is how it works in my neighborhood. No HOA needed. For something like a private road, you can also have a maintenance fund which has a sole purpose of maintaining that road. It can be set up so it has the authority to collect those fees and nothing more than the authority to maintain the road, full stop. A friend lives in a remote area where a private road is shared among a handful of homes and that's how they have it set up. Again, no need for an all-intrusive HOA when all that is really needed is a common pool of road maintenance funds.
- walterbell 4y ago
  Some collective organization is unavoidable, but perhaps HOAs could be encouraged to evolve in more homeowner-representative directions, balancing intrinsic motivations of board members. At a minimum, positive precedents and case studies could be amplified. How about open-source reference contracts/clauses for HOA best practices and their most debated requirements, tested in multiple jurisdictions over time? Edit: HoA anecdata, , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348079
  - lokar 4y ago
    I have lived in 8 different single family homes in California. None had a HOA.
  - wtetzner 4y ago
    > Some collective organization is unavoidable Town? City? County?
    - walterbell 4y ago
      There's always a new dystopia. Decentralized rental homes owned by private equity, where all interactions between the legal owner and renter are done by "AI" self-service computer portals and IoT sensors. Policy uniformly applied by computer, few paths for escalation to human management. https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7eaw/robot-landlords-are-buying-up-houses https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7eaw/robot-landlords-are-b...
      - fragmede 4y ago
        Other than, y'know, knocking on their door that you're neighbor to.
        walterbell 4y ago
        For renters to organize collectively for negotiation with management? That's one reason for remote owners to buy standalone homes, since the "AI landlord" doesn't require local clusters of homes, as they can contract local maintenance on demand.
- briHass 4y ago
  On the contrary, local governments typically require HOAs for new housing developments, at least here on the East Coast. Those cul-de-sacs & neighborhood streets need to be plowed and maintained, common areas need maintenance, and often large chunks of the infrastructure (e.g. storm sewers, shared propane tanks) are also the responsibility of the HOA. The local governments don't want those new maintenance costs on their books, so they make it a requirement for the builder (and later the homeowners) to cover that in perpetuity. Of course, there's no break on local taxes; so you pay the same local taxes as established, non-HOA developments, plus your HOA dues. None of that requires the HOAs to establish draconian rules on paint colors or maximum-grass-blade heights, but the builder usually establishes some rules upfront (they want to sell all the lots quickly), and the residents inherit that structure. Personally, I hate them, but I'm always surprised to see how some people seem to defend their HOAs. It's like Stockholm syndrome: it's always the same, tired line about 'neighbors with junk cars in their front yard blah blah'.
  - analog31 4y ago
    The streets can be plowed and maintained by the city. That's how it works in my locale. If the city needs aesthetic standards, they can enact them city-wide. Good luck. In my neighborhood, front yards range from fully wooded, to manicured grass, and everything in between.
    - ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
      Completely ignoring the brokenness that is HOAs, it makes logical sense to have hyper-local taxes for infrastructure in places which vary in population density: dense neighborhoods will have lower per capita infrastructure maintainance costs, and it would be regressive to burden them with the costs of the (likely richer) sprawl.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - analog31 4y ago
        That's fair. One issue is that the collection of city taxes is severely constrained by the state (at least where I'm at). Maybe the richer sprawl is paying on a higher valuation, but I don't know if that's enough to even things out.
- bigtex 4y ago
  Back in 2007/8 during the financial crisis they jacked up the rate the max 10% because people weren’t paying their dues so I figured what if we all stopped paying housing prices would collapse and the hoa board would be in for a world of hurt. We eventually moved to the country where hoas are a no no
- emodendroket 4y ago
  I've lived with and without an HOA and, besides common area maintenance, which I think could easily become a nightmare if you're going it alone, I appreciate how now there's someone to complain to if my neighbor strews garbage everywhere and it starts blowing to my front door. The world is full of horror stories because an HOA just doing its job is boring stuff and there are things that make sense to take out of their hands but I don't think it'd be a net-positive to just eliminate them all.
  - 64bittechie 4y ago
    You do realize that you can just call the city and complain?
  - jjav 4y ago
    > appreciate how now there's someone to complain to if my neighbor strews garbage everywhere and it starts blowing to my front door Littering onto your property is rarely allowed, so you can call the non-emergency local police number. There's no need to impose the radical restrictions of HOAs to solve problems that already have simple solutions without any of the downsides.
    - bluecalm 4y ago
      You can complain but they won't do anything about it more often than not. You need small local government to care about those things. I live in a country without HOAs and it's a nightmare. Everyone does how they pleases: noise, polluting junk cars, garbage in common areas, illegal parking on pedestrian paths etc. I am lucky enough to be able to afford a large land area to put my future home on and fence the rest. If I ever wanted to allow others to build their houses there I would certainly want a set of rules - that is HOA.
      - watwut 4y ago
        I live in country without HOA and it is no hellhole like you described. Pretty clearly seems to me, HOAs are really not required for any of that.
- verdenti 4y ago
- mind-blight 4y ago
  The only time HOAs really make sense is with condos. We have twelve units over 2 in my HOA, and the dues all go to water, garbage, and a little set aside for future maintenance of the building. It wouldn't name sense to manage this individually, and the whole thing is pretty light touch
thelastgallon 4y ago
https://archive.vn/5tlBD https://archive.vn/5tlBD
m463 4y ago
> and when part of a tree fell in his yard, he and his wife left it there for critters to use as habitat LOL, I too would find great pleasure watching the entropy show from my recliner.
- defrost 4y ago
  We farm and intersperse native corridors and habitats. I, for one, enjoy watching visiting pythons drink in the back yard [1] [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-15/thirsty-python-wa-midwest-snakes-harmless/101651156 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-15/thirsty-python-wa-mid...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
    I love this sort of news article! In a world with grand, sweeping historic moments - war, disease, love, triumph and tragedy, where humanity is preparing to build an interplanet colony, this one snake - and the fact that it took a drink - has been acknowledged by many humans around the globe. We've taken the time to marvel at this creature having a sip of water. And it's none the wiser, it's just going about its life. There's no angle, no promo, no agenda, just here's a snake, it took a drink. Beautiful.
- bigbillheck 4y ago
  We had to have a big mostly dead tree in our backyard cut down a few years ago, I insisted they leave the debris. Some of the branches are re-establishing themselves, as well as the stump, and it looks like we'll get multiple trees out of it. The places in between the branches I let grow wild, and we're getting birds I've never seen coming to visit. It's great, and I have no regrets.
chiffre01 4y ago
There's a great comment on the NYTimes article about a conservative, elderly,flag waving couple who are more than willing to let a local politburo tell them what they can and cannot do with their property.
ryan93 4y ago
I have to imagine a neighborhood full of lawns like this might have some downsides. Not to mention the property values. Plenty of rural places you can do this.
- barbazoo 4y ago
  In most markets, I'd be surprised if the property value was affected by whether it has a pristine lawn or not. > I have to imagine a neighborhood full of lawns like this might have some downsides I can't imagine any, what do you have in mind?
  - ryan93 4y ago
    How many neighborhoods have you been in that look like a post apocalyptic waste land?
    - barbazoo 4y ago
      None but I don't think that's what we're talking about. Have you seen the pictures in the article?
- nitwit005 4y ago
  A number of areas encourages changes to lawns to save water. There doesnt seem to be an obvious effect on property values.
gnabgib 4y ago
Posted 15 hours[0] ago too. There was a very similar story in the last year, although maybe not for Maryland... the .garden tld makes it impossible to find. (The case for leaving the perfectly manicured lawn behind, 5pts)[1] (So Long, Traditional Lawn. Conventional grass is costly, high-maintenance, 28pts, 11 comments[2c])[2] (Replacing grass lawns with native plants, 159pts, 191 comments[3c])[3] (Set Your Garden Free: Start By Rewilding One Half, Says ‘Reformed’ Landscape Designer Mary Reynolds, 3pts)[4] (Blooming Essex garden points to future of horticulture in a heating UK, 1pt)[5] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33982234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33982234 [1]: https://www.cbc.ca/life/home/the-case-for-leaving-the-perfectly-manicured-lawn-behind-1.6449477 https://www.cbc.ca/life/home/the-case-for-leaving-the-perfec... [2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/so-long-traditional-lawn-the-new-turf-trendsfrom-wildflowers-to-fescue-11630087268 https://www.wsj.com/articles/so-long-traditional-lawn-the-ne... [2c]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28341708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28341708 [3]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/opinion/ct-sta-slowik-pandemic-garden-project-st-0530-20210528-2kklpxumlrfnhecwr2ljx7e2qe-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/opini... [3c]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27392558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27392558 [4]: https://www.gardenista.com/posts/mary-reynolds-we-are-the-ark-rewilding/ https://www.gardenista.com/posts/mary-reynolds-we-are-the-ar... [5]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/aug/01/blooming-essex-garden-rhs-hyde-hall-future-horticulture-heating-uk https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/aug/01/bloomin...
dougSF70 4y ago
They Faught The Lawn and The Lawn Lost is a headline writer's dream.
- throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
  The song ends with "and the law won", and they turn it around to be "lost", and now it doesn't match the song it's mimicking. Seems lazy.
  - nonameiguess 4y ago
    The Dead Kennedys version at least changed it to "I fought the law and I won."
danielodievich 4y ago
Some neighbors of ours on the island have a creek behind them and a little pond and hundreds of NW native plants and a little coy pond. It is an absolute delight to visit any time of the year, it teems with bees in the summer and still does lovely things in the winter. Now mind you there is no HOA, just the city, but the city is so happy they are maintaining it so. I love seeing that, I'll take that any time over the desert of the flat green grass...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
eduction 4y ago
I’m glad HN rewrites headlines. It usually works out. But, wow, if there’s ever an example of how a pedantic, literalist engineer type can ruin a piece of good writing, this job on NYT’s headline is it. And I say that as a pedantic, literalist engineer type. But one who listens to The Clash. (At least put a comma after “wins.”)
- dang 4y ago
  We've taken a crack at a more neutral headline. (Submitted headline was "Maryland couple fights home owners assoc. and wins ushering in new state law".) The submitter did have the right idea, because the NYT title was linkbait—Clash/Bobby Fuller references notwithstanding—and the HN guidelines ask submitters to rewrite those. (Mind you, the linkbait headline is so good that we could probably just go with it. Borderline call.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Kaibeezy 4y ago
    I’d already read the original “Fought the Lawn” article and clicked on the link for this post because I thought it meant there was a follow-up article. So I got clickbaited by un-clickbait. And then I, rules nerd, rabbit-hole scrolled all the way down however-many comments to find out whether anyone noticed or cared. I believe I will go paint my house purple now.
fortran77 4y ago
I hate HOAs and would never, ever buy a house that existed within a HOA-mandated community. (This, however, is difficult to do. Many localities mandate that new developments have HOAs.) However, I also think the government shouldn't step in and invalidate legal contracts that two parties entered in to. When you buy real estate, both sides have representation, and both are fully informed. There's a formal closing process and everyone has ample time to read everything. If someone is foolish enough to enter into a contract that isn't in their best interest, the Government shouldn't invalidate it. I lived in Florida (outside of an HOA) when the State invalidated CC&Rs and HOA contracts to explicitly allow a person to fly an American Flag, and to permit solar panels. I happen to like both of these things, but I'd rather the market make these restricted properties worth less money because of these restrictions and let the market fix the problem. I would have no problem if courts ruled or state government passed laws restricting what newly formed HOAs and CC&Rs could restrict. And I'd certainly love it if government mandates of HOAs for new construction was made illegal.
- SaddledBounding 4y ago
  The government didn't invalidate a legal contract; the contract is simply no longer legal. If your position is that the government should never make laws that contravene existing practices, then I have to disagree. In practice, that would mean the government could never make any laws, or could only make laws that have no practical effect, because everyone was already obeying them of their own accord. Also note that in this particular case, "in 2011 they’d been told there was no issue with their gardens, and also that before 2017, they’d received no violations for their yard despite regular inspections", and note that the legal dispute between the couple and the HOA was settled outside of court; that is to say the parties came to an agreement outside of the formal legal system.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hosh 4y ago
It's good to see that things are turning for those who want to practice r/NoLawns, create a wildlife refuge, or practice permaculture design.
kodah 4y ago
They could've done the easier, and more correct, thing and just abolished HOAs. Very few people with good intentions want these around.
dusted 4y ago
HOAs are one of the weirdest things I've learnt about the USA.. Land of the free, hates tax, loves guns, because freedom.. But the freedom to decide what color your fence is ? Nah, that doesn't matter ?
- throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
  We don't actually like freedom here. It's really just a dog-whistle for conservative values.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    And even "conservative values" is a dogwhistle for a certain shard of radicalism. Conservatism in the sense of just generally being resistant to change is a valuable social function. It slows down change, lessening the social shock and upheavals, and allows for the consequences of changes to be better predicted and understood as they happen. If you oppose everything you'll be right some of the time, and catch things others miss when making case-by-case decisions. And this is in tension with and balanced by others who try to make changes before they're fully understood, because if we wait until we know everything we'll never do anything. The american conservative movement is mostly not conservative in that sense, and in some ways is one of the most radical ideologies extant right now. They are fine with and support swift, sweeping changes across large parts of american life: socially, politically, legally, towards certain ends. To the extent they are motivated by the state of change it is to undo change we have already gone through, and already experienced the unknowns and social consequences of. Trying to walk back large-scale social change has other names: reactionary, revanchism.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    The signalling and actual actions is always so weird for me. Like the stimulus checks. To me those sound exactly like socialism. Such that would not have really flown in one of these socialist European hellholes.
- rat_1234 4y ago
  This is my number one argument against HOAs: They are fundamentally un-American. Truly in every sense they are for collectivism over individual rights and it's insane. I live in a neighborhood where if you want to cut down a tree more than 10" in diameter you have to get all of your neighbors' buy-in. It's my tree! And your trees are your trees!
ilamont 4y ago
We live in an older suburb that has never had HOAs in a state (Massachusetts) that rarely has them (condo boards are a different story). One thing I see, however, are new people from other parts of the country who used to live in HOAs trying to impose voluntary codes of conduct on everyone in the neighborhood as if it were an HOA. The most recent one: don’t put your trash barrel out for pickup until after 4 pm the previous day. Related: Are HOAs and condo associations basically the same idea?
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  In a condo you have communal property you all have to maintain (the elevator, the roof etc, if they break you're all screwed). HOAs usually don't have that (maybe some roads that should be adopted by the local government...). Instead their rules are specifically about lifestyle and appearances.
  - bradleyankrom 4y ago
    In subdivisions, they’re also responsible for maintenance of common areas like parks and other green spaces within bounds.
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      Sorry I wasn't very clear. In a condo, you have shared assets like a roof and stairs and a front door and elevators. If they fail is a huge problem for everyone. In an HoA, you don't really share any VITAL components. You might all contribute to the upkeep of a park or a pool. But if the park or the pool are neglected, you can still live in you're home. You're actual home is self contained and yours alone.
  - wintermutestwin 4y ago
    >maybe some roads that should be adopted by the local government... Government won't "adopt" roads behind a gate...
    - deleted 4y ago
bigbillheck 4y ago
The direct victors in question--leaving aside that eco-friendly yards are a victory for all--live in Columbia MD. Back in the 00s I lived in a town not too far away, and went to Columbia regularly for shopping and restaurants and to visit friends. I have never seen such a plastic-y repulsive town as Columbia, it's the Stepford of the mid-Atlantic, and god willing I'll never have to go there again.
unity1001 4y ago
This 'yard' thing with cut grass covering VAST tracts of land around the houses in the US and that being enforced this strictly is literally crazy when seen from overseas. SO much space lost, doing nothing but having grass on it, with a lot of money, effort, water and energy being spent to keep it that way. Eco-friendly yards look like a revolution compared to that delirium.

266 points by asimpletune 4y ago

2021 discussion, "Avoid buying in HOA neighborhoods", with 450 HN + 500 article comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348079

troad 4y ago

I’m glad every time I see a family win over an irrational and power-hungry HOA, and I’m doubly glad they get to keep their ecological garden. The new law is a start, but I would love for further state laws to eviscerate HOAs completely. I don’t see this as very likely, unfortunately - the NIMBYs wield far too many levers of power to be dislodged from their petty fiefdoms any time soon. I wonder if a collapse in house prices would postpone or hasten the fall of HOAs? On the one hand, it may weaken the power of landowners. On the other, it may make them all the more desperate to retain the control that HOAs do give them.

Arainach 4y ago
What other mechanism do you propose for communally-owned goals? A special assessment every time you want your private road plowed? No one wants to pay to maintain anything, but having an organization to do the maintenance on time is far cheaper than paying to repair neglected issues.
- cardiffspaceman 4y ago
  HOA's then need to reduce their scope. Creating Disneyland-like tracts of grass and groomed plants, and other things that don't have to do with the longevity of the common hard assets, should be reduced or eliminated as an HOA bailiwick.
  - Arainach 4y ago
    It turns out that many people want such things
    - kelnos 4y ago
      And many people don't. What's your point? I generally think we should err on the side of fewer restrictions when there's disagreement around the existence of things like this.
      - Arainach 4y ago
        You're not obligated to buy a home in such a community. Even in areas where it's not practical to find a home with no HOA, the vast majority of them are low maintenance and don't do or cost a ton. You just don't hear people complaining about those.
        heleninboodler 4y ago
        Yeah, it seems like if you want to form an association of homes where everyone has agreed that the houses must be beige, you should be free to do that.
        BeetleB 4y ago
        I think if a group of homes wants to enter into a voluntary contract that has penalties if they changed the color of their house, that's fine. The problem arises when that contract is binding on future homeowners. The even bigger problem is that if you are in a reasonable HOA, draconian rules can be enacted that you disagree with - as long as the majority agree.
        JoshTriplett 4y ago
        > Even in areas where it's not practical to find a home with no HOA Which is quite a lot of them; there are cities where you're unlikely to find anything reasonable in city limits. > the vast majority of them are low maintenance Most HOAs can become worse on a moment's notice depending on who has power in them, because most people (reasonably) don't want to spend the energy fighting in bitter ridiculous politics.
- wtetzner 4y ago
  What private road? Why is an HOA needed when the house already belongs to a city and a county?
  - kelnos 4y ago
    In some municipalities, local governments have been requiring that new housing developments own and maintain more than you'd expect, like sidewalks, street lights, and even sometimes the roads. Note that this is in places where -- for example -- a new road is built off of an existing main road, and the new road is relatively short and exists solely to provide access to the homes in the new development. We're not talking about people who live on main roads that the local or state governments assume responsibility for.
    - jessaustin 4y ago
      In many cases the municipality has done the developer a huge favor by incorporating the subdivision and hooking it up to public water and sewer. Homeowners can hardly complain that they still have to plow their own community driveway.
      - wildzzz 4y ago
        Hooking a new development up to new utilities is not paid for by the municipal government. The developer pays those costs. The utility companies will pay for maintenance using the income they receive from it's customers up to the property line but the initial cost is paid with private funds. The government may want to extend out utilities to land that developers plan to build on if there's sufficient reason to do so like if the government wants to turn a massive farmland into a new town.
        bombcar 4y ago
        At least around here the reason a development gets its own plow service is that they’d be far down on the list even if in the city. I’m only a block from a major road on an active side road and it only gets mildly plowed.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  Most HOAs where I live do no maintenance.[1] They don't even claim to. They exist purely to enforce rules (no window ACs showing, front yard maintained etc). Oh, and also, the vast majority of houses under HOAs do not have private roads or communal property. The only useful thing I see in some HOAs in my area is snow ploughing because the city really sucks at that. [1] Unless they're for condos.
  - tdeck 4y ago
    Here's one thing I don't understand: how did it get this way? It seems like a generational thing, but I can't relate at all to people's petty concerns about neighbors' lawn maintenance and paint colors and AC units. It's waning now but evidently there were several decades in American culture where these things were of paramount importance to a vast swath of the population. Why? Has anyone read a good book about this phenomenon?
    - BeetleB 4y ago
      I honestly don't know. I always assumed racism was a significant factor at some point (let's make rules that seem innocent but target a particular demographic). From what I can find on the Internet, while they existed for over 100 years, they were rare. The main growth of HOAs has been since the 60's, as people moved to the suburbs.
      - emodendroket 4y ago
        Suburban development requires new infrastructure to serve a relatively small number of homes so it is logical that we'd see more of them if more people are living in suburbs.
    - dangerlibrary 4y ago
      "The Color of Law" covers it a bit. HOAs became popular as a means to enforce racial covenants on property deeds after courts ruled that the only parties "harmed" (and therefore with standing to bring a suit) when a racial covenant was violated were the previous deed holders. Previous deed holders often were no longer around / didn't care if their house was now owned by someone with an incorrect amount of melanin in their skin. HOAs were a legal entity that could be a party to the lawsuit that suffered harm from the breach of the racial covenants, occasionally succeeding in getting courts to evict the new owners. This is why you so often hear that their purpose is "protecting property values" - the concern was that property values would tank when black and brown people moved to the neighborhood. This was a valid concern, not solely because of any racial animus on the part of the neighbors (though there was plenty of that to go around). When any black and brown people moved in, the Federal Housing Administration might redline the neighborhood, and then nobody could get FHA loans to buy a house there. Once the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned racial covenants and curbed the practice of redlining explicitly based on race, their usefulness in court rapidly declined. I assume dues were still collected and there were still meetings to attend, and so they started inventing new ways of harassing undesirable neighbors...
- kelnos 4y ago
  Ensuring that common areas and infrastructure are maintained does not need to lead to scope-creep around allowed paint colors, window treatments, yard maintenance requirements, etc. HOAs in neighborhoods of single-family homes should be restricted to only collecting dues to support maintenance of shared infrastructure, and nothing more. I'm a little more sympathetic toward HOAs that govern multi-unit dwellings, but even then, many of them go way too far. I think it's fair to set reasonable nighttime quiet hours, and prohibit people from turning their unit into a short-term rental, but I've seen HOAs where they require everyone in the building to have window curtains of certain colors, and that's just ridiculous.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > I've seen HOAs where they require everyone in the building to have window curtains of certain colors, and that's just ridiculous. I would call it tyrany, but apparently you are only allowed to use that word if its the government. If its a private company or some other organisation, then its called freedom
    - c22 4y ago
      It's only tyranny (in both cases) if there is no mechanism for you to join the board, run for office, or form a coalition with your neighbors to affect desired change.
  - gwd 4y ago
    > I've seen HOAs where they require everyone in the building to have window curtains of certain colors, and that's just ridiculous. But if you're moving into a house with a HOA with a total of 8 houses; and it has a certain "look" in part because everyone has white frilly curtains in their windows; and most of the people in that area want to maintain that look... then, what's the problem? Surely not every HOA in a city will have people who all want white frilly window curtains, so you can find some other HOA? Unless, of course, the problem is that the rules are set up so that a minority can impose their will on the majority; and in that case, the problem isn't so much the existence of the HOA itself, but the bylaws which let it happen. Similar, in a lot of ways to the government: Either the government really does represent the will of the people, in which case people complaining about "the government" are really complaining about their fellow citizens; or, the government doesn't represent the will of the people, in which case the voting system &c needs to be fixed so that it does. I do agree that there is a larger societal value to having limits on what kinds of rules there are; just as we have state laws which limit what a city council can do, and federal laws limiting what a state can do, and a constitution limiting what the federal government can do. "HOAs may not outlaw pollenator-friendly plants" seems like a good rule; "HOAs may not require frilly white window curtains" I'm not convinced of.
- bmelton 4y ago
  My home sits in a weird zone in Maryland that has a somewhat antiquated voluntary HOA. Because I'm well aware that joining an HOA is effectively signing over legal rights, I am not a member and refuse to join. Roughly a third of the neighborhood is not a member, but most of the older neighbors are. Occasionally the HOA will send out snarky letters, chiding those who maybe left their trash cans out for too long or had a tree removed but left a stump, that sort of thing. One of the neighbors at the entryway to the neighborhood, who is technically in the adjacent neighborhood, not subject to our HOA -- nor even eligible to join it, received a letter complaining about the somewhat scraggly looking trees on the edge of her property. She, a lady of few words, went out and ripped out the trees, prompting the HOA to send her another letter about the unattractiveness of the lot's now-barren edge. She responded back with some variant of "I did what you asked. If you want to plant some trees there, go ahead." They responded back with some version of "Well, it has come to our attention that the property in question is not associated with the HOA, so we cannot allocate funds for this effort." The neighbor across the street from her is friendly with all parties, but has the misfortune of having a property that looks out onto her lot, which is now significantly less attractive than it was when he moved in just a couple of years ago. Because his and her homes bracket the entryway into the neighborhood, he went door to door, asking for donations of $20 in a flyer promising to "beautify the entryway" (but while making plain his actual stance in person to non-HOA members.) I donated $214 (which was how much money I might have paid to the HOA had I been a member for the years I'd lived here) and in exchange, he put me in touch with his arborist that he'd negotiated an extremely discounted rate on trees for, so we're now lining our lot with a couple of trees for the low price of $20. Unrelated to the above story, the vacant lot across from mine is also across from the neighbor who sits caddy-corner from me. It's a green-space, effectively, but requires some occasional mowing and leaf-blowing, which he and I alternate taking turns to maintain. I have no idea if he's a member of the HOA or not, but that has never had any bearing on either of our willingness to keep the space that we look out onto looking attractive. So, to the answer of the question "how do you achieve communally-owned goals without an HOA?" I posit that the answer might be to just work as a community, whether or not there is an HOA monetarily binding you into acting neighborly.
- JoshTriplett 4y ago
  By all means, create a voluntary association of people who want to share a common area and pay for its maintenance, or similar things. Do not give that association 1) the ability to regulate people's private properties (paint color, plant choices, garbage-can handling, and other such matters), or 2) the ability to attach obligations to house deeds such that a new owner is stuck with them. And if enough new owners don't want to pay for common area maintenance or similar, the neighborhood doesn't get to keep having a maintained common area.
  - ip26 4y ago
    create a voluntary association of people Yes, it’s called “the people who voluntarily bought property in this HOA”
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  This is like the "what about the children?" defense: it's taking an extreme case and using that as a general statement. An HOA that only maintained common property would not inspire the level of vitriol that I see on Twitter daily. So let's leave that out. HOAs can maintain sidewalks and private roads and plow snow all they want, and no one will mind much. It's the busybody Karen restrictions on what you can do with your house that set passions aflame: your window treatments, the color of your doors, the length of the pole holding up your flag. And, of course, your lawn. I heard about someone whose car was towed away by the HOA because the registration had expired. A state law limiting the jurisdiction of HOAs would go a long way to fixing all that.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    Are you saying that taking a sampling of complaints from Twitter is avoiding taking extreme cases and generalizing from them?
- coffeefirst 4y ago
  Easy: 1. Give the HOA the jurisdiction to spend the money in collects. It can plow roads, cut grass, and plant trees. 2. Everything else it wants to do requires a majority vote. Any adoption of a rule that affects private property requires a 3/4 majority vote. 3. Require a judge to sign off on fines etc. 4. No sequential terms of office. The capability to do maintenance stays, you can still have some rules, but the petty tyranny over paint colors becomes nearly impossible.
  - c22 4y ago
    Or, you know, let the individual organizations in charge of running local areas decide on their own rules for voting, collecting, and spending funds. Democracy tends to work best when decisions are kept as local as possible and not shoehorned into some generic framework pushed down from up on high.
- doktorhladnjak 4y ago
  > What other mechanism do you propose for communally-owned goals? A special assessment every time you want your private road plowed? This is exactly what happens where my parents live. They live in a subdivision in an unincorporated part of the county. The county doesn't maintains any of the roads in the subdivision of hundreds of homes and there is no HOA. Every few years, some motivated neighbors get a quote to repave the street then convince everyone to pay their fair share. I can’t imagine that everyone complies, but overall it works and supposedly is less expensive than an HOA. The streets are not great quality but it’s also in the sunbelt where there’s no snow or freezing weather.
- topkai22 4y ago
  In my area there is a difference between a maintenance association and a homeowners association. The maintenance organization maintains community property but does not encumber the property with any Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs.) An HOA does. My current neighborhood has a community maintenance organization, which frankly does a great job. They keep the landscaping very nice and have gotten a park constructed. I didn’t have to sign anything with them when I bought my house other then a single piece of paper acknowledging that I’d pay the annual dues. Beyond there aren’t any rules. My previous house had 20+ pages of rules. I could get in trouble for painting my house the wrong color, changing my landscaping without permission, having more than 3 chickens (actual rule), or any such thing. Fortunately, sane people basically controlled the board and acted largely with benevolent neglect, but there were always a couple obnoxious people who made trouble for others. On top of that, they did a worse job at keeping community property and spent far more on administration, although admittedly both were pretty cheap. All that’s to say you can have a sub-governmental community organization or tax unit without the onerous rules the HOAs generally carry.
  - yardie 4y ago
    I think this is what my parents have for their neighborhood. Unlike other developments in their neighborhood, they have no HOA, no security gatehouse, no amenities like a pool. But they do have common areas like the street median and street lighting that need attending to. And for that they pay $50/year.
  - CogitoCogito 4y ago
    > Fortunately, sane people basically controlled the board and acted largely with benevolent neglect, but there were always a couple obnoxious people who made trouble for others. Did they ever have the (political and procedural) power to vote to remove the crazy rules?
    - topkai22 4y ago
      Late reply, but the nature of the HOA is self perpetuating. It takes 75% of homeowners providing in writing that they want the HOA desolved, and it has to happen in a window that is only available every 5 years. That’s not 75% of votes, it’s 75% of all homeowners- if 74 homes vote to dissolve, and 26 forget to send in their wish to dissolve, legally the HOA sticks around. It’s not that the people on the board generally want the HOA dissolved though, they will enforce the rules if the property is getting egregious (weeds all over the place, painting by your house bright orange, starting unapproved construction), but they mostly let small stuff slide.
- jjav 4y ago
  > What other mechanism do you propose for communally-owned goals? Ideally, line items in the property taxes to address those needs. That is how it works in my neighborhood. No HOA needed. For something like a private road, you can also have a maintenance fund which has a sole purpose of maintaining that road. It can be set up so it has the authority to collect those fees and nothing more than the authority to maintain the road, full stop. A friend lives in a remote area where a private road is shared among a handful of homes and that's how they have it set up. Again, no need for an all-intrusive HOA when all that is really needed is a common pool of road maintenance funds.
walterbell 4y ago
Some collective organization is unavoidable, but perhaps HOAs could be encouraged to evolve in more homeowner-representative directions, balancing intrinsic motivations of board members. At a minimum, positive precedents and case studies could be amplified. How about open-source reference contracts/clauses for HOA best practices and their most debated requirements, tested in multiple jurisdictions over time? Edit: HoA anecdata, , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348079
- lokar 4y ago
  I have lived in 8 different single family homes in California. None had a HOA.
- wtetzner 4y ago
  > Some collective organization is unavoidable Town? City? County?
  - walterbell 4y ago
    There's always a new dystopia. Decentralized rental homes owned by private equity, where all interactions between the legal owner and renter are done by "AI" self-service computer portals and IoT sensors. Policy uniformly applied by computer, few paths for escalation to human management. https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7eaw/robot-landlords-are-buying-up-houses https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7eaw/robot-landlords-are-b...
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Other than, y'know, knocking on their door that you're neighbor to.
      - walterbell 4y ago
        For renters to organize collectively for negotiation with management? That's one reason for remote owners to buy standalone homes, since the "AI landlord" doesn't require local clusters of homes, as they can contract local maintenance on demand.
briHass 4y ago
On the contrary, local governments typically require HOAs for new housing developments, at least here on the East Coast. Those cul-de-sacs & neighborhood streets need to be plowed and maintained, common areas need maintenance, and often large chunks of the infrastructure (e.g. storm sewers, shared propane tanks) are also the responsibility of the HOA. The local governments don't want those new maintenance costs on their books, so they make it a requirement for the builder (and later the homeowners) to cover that in perpetuity. Of course, there's no break on local taxes; so you pay the same local taxes as established, non-HOA developments, plus your HOA dues. None of that requires the HOAs to establish draconian rules on paint colors or maximum-grass-blade heights, but the builder usually establishes some rules upfront (they want to sell all the lots quickly), and the residents inherit that structure. Personally, I hate them, but I'm always surprised to see how some people seem to defend their HOAs. It's like Stockholm syndrome: it's always the same, tired line about 'neighbors with junk cars in their front yard blah blah'.
- analog31 4y ago
  The streets can be plowed and maintained by the city. That's how it works in my locale. If the city needs aesthetic standards, they can enact them city-wide. Good luck. In my neighborhood, front yards range from fully wooded, to manicured grass, and everything in between.
  - ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
    Completely ignoring the brokenness that is HOAs, it makes logical sense to have hyper-local taxes for infrastructure in places which vary in population density: dense neighborhoods will have lower per capita infrastructure maintainance costs, and it would be regressive to burden them with the costs of the (likely richer) sprawl.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - analog31 4y ago
      That's fair. One issue is that the collection of city taxes is severely constrained by the state (at least where I'm at). Maybe the richer sprawl is paying on a higher valuation, but I don't know if that's enough to even things out.
bigtex 4y ago
Back in 2007/8 during the financial crisis they jacked up the rate the max 10% because people weren’t paying their dues so I figured what if we all stopped paying housing prices would collapse and the hoa board would be in for a world of hurt. We eventually moved to the country where hoas are a no no
emodendroket 4y ago
I've lived with and without an HOA and, besides common area maintenance, which I think could easily become a nightmare if you're going it alone, I appreciate how now there's someone to complain to if my neighbor strews garbage everywhere and it starts blowing to my front door. The world is full of horror stories because an HOA just doing its job is boring stuff and there are things that make sense to take out of their hands but I don't think it'd be a net-positive to just eliminate them all.
- 64bittechie 4y ago
  You do realize that you can just call the city and complain?
- jjav 4y ago
  > appreciate how now there's someone to complain to if my neighbor strews garbage everywhere and it starts blowing to my front door Littering onto your property is rarely allowed, so you can call the non-emergency local police number. There's no need to impose the radical restrictions of HOAs to solve problems that already have simple solutions without any of the downsides.
  - bluecalm 4y ago
    You can complain but they won't do anything about it more often than not. You need small local government to care about those things. I live in a country without HOAs and it's a nightmare. Everyone does how they pleases: noise, polluting junk cars, garbage in common areas, illegal parking on pedestrian paths etc. I am lucky enough to be able to afford a large land area to put my future home on and fence the rest. If I ever wanted to allow others to build their houses there I would certainly want a set of rules - that is HOA.
    - watwut 4y ago
      I live in country without HOA and it is no hellhole like you described. Pretty clearly seems to me, HOAs are really not required for any of that.
verdenti 4y ago
mind-blight 4y ago
The only time HOAs really make sense is with condos. We have twelve units over 2 in my HOA, and the dues all go to water, garbage, and a little set aside for future maintenance of the building. It wouldn't name sense to manage this individually, and the whole thing is pretty light touch

thelastgallon 4y ago

https://archive.vn/5tlBD https://archive.vn/5tlBD

m463 4y ago

> and when part of a tree fell in his yard, he and his wife left it there for critters to use as habitat LOL, I too would find great pleasure watching the entropy show from my recliner.

defrost 4y ago
We farm and intersperse native corridors and habitats. I, for one, enjoy watching visiting pythons drink in the back yard [1] [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-15/thirsty-python-wa-midwest-snakes-harmless/101651156 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-15/thirsty-python-wa-mid...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
  I love this sort of news article! In a world with grand, sweeping historic moments - war, disease, love, triumph and tragedy, where humanity is preparing to build an interplanet colony, this one snake - and the fact that it took a drink - has been acknowledged by many humans around the globe. We've taken the time to marvel at this creature having a sip of water. And it's none the wiser, it's just going about its life. There's no angle, no promo, no agenda, just here's a snake, it took a drink. Beautiful.
bigbillheck 4y ago
We had to have a big mostly dead tree in our backyard cut down a few years ago, I insisted they leave the debris. Some of the branches are re-establishing themselves, as well as the stump, and it looks like we'll get multiple trees out of it. The places in between the branches I let grow wild, and we're getting birds I've never seen coming to visit. It's great, and I have no regrets.

chiffre01 4y ago

There's a great comment on the NYTimes article about a conservative, elderly,flag waving couple who are more than willing to let a local politburo tell them what they can and cannot do with their property.

ryan93 4y ago

I have to imagine a neighborhood full of lawns like this might have some downsides. Not to mention the property values. Plenty of rural places you can do this.

barbazoo 4y ago
In most markets, I'd be surprised if the property value was affected by whether it has a pristine lawn or not. > I have to imagine a neighborhood full of lawns like this might have some downsides I can't imagine any, what do you have in mind?
- ryan93 4y ago
  How many neighborhoods have you been in that look like a post apocalyptic waste land?
  - barbazoo 4y ago
    None but I don't think that's what we're talking about. Have you seen the pictures in the article?
nitwit005 4y ago
A number of areas encourages changes to lawns to save water. There doesnt seem to be an obvious effect on property values.

gnabgib 4y ago

Posted 15 hours[0] ago too. There was a very similar story in the last year, although maybe not for Maryland... the .garden tld makes it impossible to find. (The case for leaving the perfectly manicured lawn behind, 5pts)[1] (So Long, Traditional Lawn. Conventional grass is costly, high-maintenance, 28pts, 11 comments[2c])[2] (Replacing grass lawns with native plants, 159pts, 191 comments[3c])[3] (Set Your Garden Free: Start By Rewilding One Half, Says ‘Reformed’ Landscape Designer Mary Reynolds, 3pts)[4] (Blooming Essex garden points to future of horticulture in a heating UK, 1pt)[5] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33982234 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33982234 [1]: https://www.cbc.ca/life/home/the-case-for-leaving-the-perfectly-manicured-lawn-behind-1.6449477 https://www.cbc.ca/life/home/the-case-for-leaving-the-perfec... [2]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/so-long-traditional-lawn-the-new-turf-trendsfrom-wildflowers-to-fescue-11630087268 https://www.wsj.com/articles/so-long-traditional-lawn-the-ne... [2c]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28341708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28341708 [3]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/opinion/ct-sta-slowik-pandemic-garden-project-st-0530-20210528-2kklpxumlrfnhecwr2ljx7e2qe-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/opini... [3c]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27392558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27392558 [4]: https://www.gardenista.com/posts/mary-reynolds-we-are-the-ark-rewilding/ https://www.gardenista.com/posts/mary-reynolds-we-are-the-ar... [5]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/aug/01/blooming-essex-garden-rhs-hyde-hall-future-horticulture-heating-uk https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/aug/01/bloomin...

dougSF70 4y ago

They Faught The Lawn and The Lawn Lost is a headline writer's dream.

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
The song ends with "and the law won", and they turn it around to be "lost", and now it doesn't match the song it's mimicking. Seems lazy.
- nonameiguess 4y ago
  The Dead Kennedys version at least changed it to "I fought the law and I won."

danielodievich 4y ago

Some neighbors of ours on the island have a creek behind them and a little pond and hundreds of NW native plants and a little coy pond. It is an absolute delight to visit any time of the year, it teems with bees in the summer and still does lovely things in the winter. Now mind you there is no HOA, just the city, but the city is so happy they are maintaining it so. I love seeing that, I'll take that any time over the desert of the flat green grass...

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eduction 4y ago

I’m glad HN rewrites headlines. It usually works out. But, wow, if there’s ever an example of how a pedantic, literalist engineer type can ruin a piece of good writing, this job on NYT’s headline is it. And I say that as a pedantic, literalist engineer type. But one who listens to The Clash. (At least put a comma after “wins.”)

dang 4y ago
We've taken a crack at a more neutral headline. (Submitted headline was "Maryland couple fights home owners assoc. and wins ushering in new state law".) The submitter did have the right idea, because the NYT title was linkbait—Clash/Bobby Fuller references notwithstanding—and the HN guidelines ask submitters to rewrite those. (Mind you, the linkbait headline is so good that we could probably just go with it. Borderline call.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  I’d already read the original “Fought the Lawn” article and clicked on the link for this post because I thought it meant there was a follow-up article. So I got clickbaited by un-clickbait. And then I, rules nerd, rabbit-hole scrolled all the way down however-many comments to find out whether anyone noticed or cared. I believe I will go paint my house purple now.

fortran77 4y ago

I hate HOAs and would never, ever buy a house that existed within a HOA-mandated community. (This, however, is difficult to do. Many localities mandate that new developments have HOAs.) However, I also think the government shouldn't step in and invalidate legal contracts that two parties entered in to. When you buy real estate, both sides have representation, and both are fully informed. There's a formal closing process and everyone has ample time to read everything. If someone is foolish enough to enter into a contract that isn't in their best interest, the Government shouldn't invalidate it. I lived in Florida (outside of an HOA) when the State invalidated CC&Rs and HOA contracts to explicitly allow a person to fly an American Flag, and to permit solar panels. I happen to like both of these things, but I'd rather the market make these restricted properties worth less money because of these restrictions and let the market fix the problem. I would have no problem if courts ruled or state government passed laws restricting what newly formed HOAs and CC&Rs could restrict. And I'd certainly love it if government mandates of HOAs for new construction was made illegal.

SaddledBounding 4y ago
The government didn't invalidate a legal contract; the contract is simply no longer legal. If your position is that the government should never make laws that contravene existing practices, then I have to disagree. In practice, that would mean the government could never make any laws, or could only make laws that have no practical effect, because everyone was already obeying them of their own accord. Also note that in this particular case, "in 2011 they’d been told there was no issue with their gardens, and also that before 2017, they’d received no violations for their yard despite regular inspections", and note that the legal dispute between the couple and the HOA was settled outside of court; that is to say the parties came to an agreement outside of the formal legal system.

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hosh 4y ago

It's good to see that things are turning for those who want to practice r/NoLawns, create a wildlife refuge, or practice permaculture design.

kodah 4y ago

They could've done the easier, and more correct, thing and just abolished HOAs. Very few people with good intentions want these around.

dusted 4y ago

HOAs are one of the weirdest things I've learnt about the USA.. Land of the free, hates tax, loves guns, because freedom.. But the freedom to decide what color your fence is ? Nah, that doesn't matter ?

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
We don't actually like freedom here. It's really just a dog-whistle for conservative values.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  And even "conservative values" is a dogwhistle for a certain shard of radicalism. Conservatism in the sense of just generally being resistant to change is a valuable social function. It slows down change, lessening the social shock and upheavals, and allows for the consequences of changes to be better predicted and understood as they happen. If you oppose everything you'll be right some of the time, and catch things others miss when making case-by-case decisions. And this is in tension with and balanced by others who try to make changes before they're fully understood, because if we wait until we know everything we'll never do anything. The american conservative movement is mostly not conservative in that sense, and in some ways is one of the most radical ideologies extant right now. They are fine with and support swift, sweeping changes across large parts of american life: socially, politically, legally, towards certain ends. To the extent they are motivated by the state of change it is to undo change we have already gone through, and already experienced the unknowns and social consequences of. Trying to walk back large-scale social change has other names: reactionary, revanchism.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  The signalling and actual actions is always so weird for me. Like the stimulus checks. To me those sound exactly like socialism. Such that would not have really flown in one of these socialist European hellholes.
rat_1234 4y ago
This is my number one argument against HOAs: They are fundamentally un-American. Truly in every sense they are for collectivism over individual rights and it's insane. I live in a neighborhood where if you want to cut down a tree more than 10" in diameter you have to get all of your neighbors' buy-in. It's my tree! And your trees are your trees!

ilamont 4y ago

We live in an older suburb that has never had HOAs in a state (Massachusetts) that rarely has them (condo boards are a different story). One thing I see, however, are new people from other parts of the country who used to live in HOAs trying to impose voluntary codes of conduct on everyone in the neighborhood as if it were an HOA. The most recent one: don’t put your trash barrel out for pickup until after 4 pm the previous day. Related: Are HOAs and condo associations basically the same idea?

LatteLazy 4y ago
In a condo you have communal property you all have to maintain (the elevator, the roof etc, if they break you're all screwed). HOAs usually don't have that (maybe some roads that should be adopted by the local government...). Instead their rules are specifically about lifestyle and appearances.
- bradleyankrom 4y ago
  In subdivisions, they’re also responsible for maintenance of common areas like parks and other green spaces within bounds.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    Sorry I wasn't very clear. In a condo, you have shared assets like a roof and stairs and a front door and elevators. If they fail is a huge problem for everyone. In an HoA, you don't really share any VITAL components. You might all contribute to the upkeep of a park or a pool. But if the park or the pool are neglected, you can still live in you're home. You're actual home is self contained and yours alone.
- wintermutestwin 4y ago
  >maybe some roads that should be adopted by the local government... Government won't "adopt" roads behind a gate...
  - deleted 4y ago

bigbillheck 4y ago

The direct victors in question--leaving aside that eco-friendly yards are a victory for all--live in Columbia MD. Back in the 00s I lived in a town not too far away, and went to Columbia regularly for shopping and restaurants and to visit friends. I have never seen such a plastic-y repulsive town as Columbia, it's the Stepford of the mid-Atlantic, and god willing I'll never have to go there again.

unity1001 4y ago

This 'yard' thing with cut grass covering VAST tracts of land around the houses in the US and that being enforced this strictly is literally crazy when seen from overseas. SO much space lost, doing nothing but having grass on it, with a lot of money, effort, water and energy being spent to keep it that way. Eco-friendly yards look like a revolution compared to that delirium.