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This article is conflating the need for a "lawn" and what it means with people violating the terms and covenants they signed when they joined an HOA. If your H

This article is conflating the need for a "lawn" and what it means with people violating the terms and covenants they signed when they joined an HOA. If your HOA requires grass, you've gotta have grass, even if you want a garden. As someone that has had the poor fortune of being on an HOA board neighbors like these might say they're well meaning but really they're just breaking a promise and not willing to do the hard work to convince the HOA to amend their bylaws. Having a lawn can be great - it's hard to play soccer or toss a frisbee in a rain garden. Having a garden or letting it go "natural" is also cool and a lot of people do it in the US - but not if you've signed a piece of paper saying you will keep your lawn a lawn.

jchw 2y ago
But that's just a straight-forward appeal-to-authority argument, and it doesn't really do anything to justify the existence and prevalence of the rules. Is it really a good use of time to go and fight each HOA individually? It doesn't really seem like we have time for that.
- LiquidSky 2y ago
  <But that's just a straight-forward appeal-to-authority argument No, it isn't. It's a simple statement of contractual obligation. They signed a deed under the authority of an HOA so they are bound to obey the rules of the HOA. If you don't like that don't buy property beholden to an HOA.
  - jchw 2y ago
    Yes. It's a simple statement of an obligation. The critique is against the existence of said obligation.
    - toasterlovin 2y ago
      Which obligation you entered into willingly. So really you’re appealing to your own authority to legally bind yourself in contracts.
      - jchw 2y ago
        That isn't what is being questioned here. What we're calling into question the legitimacy of the agreements in the first place. When it brings up the story of the home owners unknowingly breaking their HOA agreement in the beginning, the point isn't that it's unreasonable to expect people to follow rules that they agreed to. It's really two things; it's that A.) They didn't even realize they agreed to those rules and B.) Those rules are, in our opinion, stupid and arguably harmful, and we don't have to allow them. Now you might argue, "Tough shit, their fault for agreeing to something without paying attention." I don't know if you guys happen to be homeowners, but I would dare you to even try to enumerate the number of obligations you've agreed to throughout the journey of buying a home. The enormous stack of paperwork you have to deal with is not exactly the easiest to digest, especially if you aren't a legal professional. It is fully understandable that someone would fail to grasp what they're getting into when they sign their HOA agreement, which I'm sure to many uninitiated people, is just another formality of home ownership. Most people are only aware of the practice of HOAs because of the pushback from normal people who assume when you buy a house and own land you generally are allowed to do what you want on it subject to some fairly basic legal requirements. And that's crap you have to read and understand in addition to hundreds of other such documents and contracts in your life. Cue the HumancentiPad episode of South Park here. And even if you do know what you're getting into, it might not exactly be something you want to get into. The housing market is not always in your favor, and these HOAs are quite prevalent in some localities. So while it's technically an agreement, it's often a begrudging one. People who wind up here often won't be caught by surprise by an HOA rule, like the case at the beginning of this article, but that doesn't mean they're any happier. The good news is, there is precedent here. We don't just let people agree to whatever they want, because the dynamics of some kinds of relationships are too ripe for abuse and negative outcomes for society. Just like how labor laws can restrict what employers can ask you to do, the law can also restrict what HOAs are allowed to enforce, and that's what we're after here. The rationale here is pretty straightforward; I don't give a shit about people's desire to live in neighborhoods with lawns that look like golf greens, but I do care about the ecological disaster that American lawns can be, especially depending on where you live. Now if you disagree with that premise, then fine, nobody says you have to agree with the article, and I'm not trying to convince anyone to either, but this line of argument is offensively missing the point. I promise you, nobody is misunderstanding how an agreement works.
mvieira38 2y ago
The piece of paper you are pretty much forced to sign if you want to live in any neighborhood at all. That's not really the full consent you are implying it is, most people are forced into joining an HOA
- ty6853 2y ago
  In my state you don't sign the hoa (covenants). Instead it is just something a dead guy signed 40 years ago, encumbered on the land for infinity*, and recorded somewhere. Maybe the title search will turn it up, maybe it won't, but either way it is enforced whether you know (or even could know) about it or not. I was particularly enraged that even in unpopulated desert wasteland ( not even roads to get there ) 9 of 10 properties I looked at were encumbered by this nonsense, usually by a dead boomer who was afraid of anything but a mansion next to his mobile home pig farm. Several times I was lied to by everyone and only discovered it during title search and only because I sifted through hundreds of pages of ancient scanned documents. It is truly a poison on the land and by design the proportion of encumbered land ratchets up with no way to reverse. * Theoretically the law requires them to have a way to be removed but clever lawyering makes it next to impossible for a regular person.
- neogodless 2y ago
  https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/hoa-statistics https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/hoa-statistics > 82.4% of new homes sold in 2023 were part of HOA communities Not sure if this is AI-generated but this almost contradicts it on the same page (though it is constructed vs sold.) > 64.7% of newly constructed homes were part of HOA communities in 2023, down 2.1% year-over-year (YoY) > 77.1 million Americans live in HOAs, condominium communities, or cooperatives in 2024; this number represents 22.7% of the 2024 total U.S. population Of course, not everyone buys new homes. https://www.nahb.org/News-and-Economics/Housing-Economics/National-Statistics/New-and-Existing-Home-Sales-Reports https://www.nahb.org/News-and-Economics/Housing-Economics/Na... > Key Findings about the home buyers in the 2021 AHS: > 7% of home buyers purchased a new home
  - foobarian 2y ago
bravetraveler 2y ago
Ever see the movie 'War Games'? I'd prefer HOAs be starved, not encouraged
wonder_er 2y ago
supporting HOA's is supporting a key tool supremacists used in the USA for a long time to enact oppression and violence on people of the global majority. You can keep supporting it. if we were hanging out IRL I would clock[0] you (unhappily, regretfully) as someone supporting supremacy. a belief in authority can get real dangerous, real fast. Update: [0] I mean "clock" in the "to note the flaws of" sense. Urban dictionary gives one definition which sounds right-enough: > used in gay vernacular especially among drag queens > to call out someone's flaws, to uncover or reveal the truth in a situation or one's true gender Here's a few quotes about HOAs, zoning, and policing from https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/police-pasco-sheriff-targeted/intelligence-led-policing/ https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p... > If the targets, their family members or associates wouldn’t speak to deputies or answer questions, STAR team deputies were told to look for code enforcement violations like faded mailbox numbers, a forgotten bag of trash or overgrown grass, Rodgers said. “We would literally go out there and take a tape measure and measure the grass if somebody didn’t want to cooperate with us,” he said. Rodgers said people sometimes would fail to pay the fine, which would result in a warrant being issued for their arrest. So, the gap between HOAs and police (deputized slave patrols) exists only for the people that want to imagine it as existing. mountain out of a mole hill? perhaps.
- jjulius 2y ago
  >You can keep supporting it. if we were hanging out IRL I would clock you (unhappily, regretfully) as someone supporting supremacy. Let me understand you - you would assume that the individual in question knows for certain how HOAs have been used against minority groups, and then you would physically attack them before asking them if they were even aware and trying to enlighten them to the issue? Edit: And at the risk of pushing HN's guidelines, I'll point out that this is what you've put on your personal website: >I value coherence, meaningfulness, compassion, and kindness. One of these things is sure as hell not like the other. Yikes. Maybe go get some fresh air, bud... Edit 2: And I say all this as someone who very much hates HOAs and will never own a home that is in one.
  - wonder_er 2y ago
amanaplanacanal 2y ago
I live in suburbia, and I don't think I have ever seen either soccer or frisbees in any of my neighbor's lawns. I would never buy a house with an HOA. I realize that some places people don't have much choice, and I sympathize with their plight.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
milch 2y ago
Except that the article said that the HOA needed to change the rules before that forced the couple to change what they were doing. The only thing that was called out as being against the rules was them keeping chickens in their backyard
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

jchw 2y ago

But that's just a straight-forward appeal-to-authority argument, and it doesn't really do anything to justify the existence and prevalence of the rules. Is it really a good use of time to go and fight each HOA individually? It doesn't really seem like we have time for that.

LiquidSky 2y ago
<But that's just a straight-forward appeal-to-authority argument No, it isn't. It's a simple statement of contractual obligation. They signed a deed under the authority of an HOA so they are bound to obey the rules of the HOA. If you don't like that don't buy property beholden to an HOA.
- jchw 2y ago
  Yes. It's a simple statement of an obligation. The critique is against the existence of said obligation.
  - toasterlovin 2y ago
    Which obligation you entered into willingly. So really you’re appealing to your own authority to legally bind yourself in contracts.
    - jchw 2y ago
      That isn't what is being questioned here. What we're calling into question the legitimacy of the agreements in the first place. When it brings up the story of the home owners unknowingly breaking their HOA agreement in the beginning, the point isn't that it's unreasonable to expect people to follow rules that they agreed to. It's really two things; it's that A.) They didn't even realize they agreed to those rules and B.) Those rules are, in our opinion, stupid and arguably harmful, and we don't have to allow them. Now you might argue, "Tough shit, their fault for agreeing to something without paying attention." I don't know if you guys happen to be homeowners, but I would dare you to even try to enumerate the number of obligations you've agreed to throughout the journey of buying a home. The enormous stack of paperwork you have to deal with is not exactly the easiest to digest, especially if you aren't a legal professional. It is fully understandable that someone would fail to grasp what they're getting into when they sign their HOA agreement, which I'm sure to many uninitiated people, is just another formality of home ownership. Most people are only aware of the practice of HOAs because of the pushback from normal people who assume when you buy a house and own land you generally are allowed to do what you want on it subject to some fairly basic legal requirements. And that's crap you have to read and understand in addition to hundreds of other such documents and contracts in your life. Cue the HumancentiPad episode of South Park here. And even if you do know what you're getting into, it might not exactly be something you want to get into. The housing market is not always in your favor, and these HOAs are quite prevalent in some localities. So while it's technically an agreement, it's often a begrudging one. People who wind up here often won't be caught by surprise by an HOA rule, like the case at the beginning of this article, but that doesn't mean they're any happier. The good news is, there is precedent here. We don't just let people agree to whatever they want, because the dynamics of some kinds of relationships are too ripe for abuse and negative outcomes for society. Just like how labor laws can restrict what employers can ask you to do, the law can also restrict what HOAs are allowed to enforce, and that's what we're after here. The rationale here is pretty straightforward; I don't give a shit about people's desire to live in neighborhoods with lawns that look like golf greens, but I do care about the ecological disaster that American lawns can be, especially depending on where you live. Now if you disagree with that premise, then fine, nobody says you have to agree with the article, and I'm not trying to convince anyone to either, but this line of argument is offensively missing the point. I promise you, nobody is misunderstanding how an agreement works.

mvieira38 2y ago

The piece of paper you are pretty much forced to sign if you want to live in any neighborhood at all. That's not really the full consent you are implying it is, most people are forced into joining an HOA

ty6853 2y ago
In my state you don't sign the hoa (covenants). Instead it is just something a dead guy signed 40 years ago, encumbered on the land for infinity*, and recorded somewhere. Maybe the title search will turn it up, maybe it won't, but either way it is enforced whether you know (or even could know) about it or not. I was particularly enraged that even in unpopulated desert wasteland ( not even roads to get there ) 9 of 10 properties I looked at were encumbered by this nonsense, usually by a dead boomer who was afraid of anything but a mansion next to his mobile home pig farm. Several times I was lied to by everyone and only discovered it during title search and only because I sifted through hundreds of pages of ancient scanned documents. It is truly a poison on the land and by design the proportion of encumbered land ratchets up with no way to reverse. * Theoretically the law requires them to have a way to be removed but clever lawyering makes it next to impossible for a regular person.
neogodless 2y ago
https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/hoa-statistics https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/hoa-statistics > 82.4% of new homes sold in 2023 were part of HOA communities Not sure if this is AI-generated but this almost contradicts it on the same page (though it is constructed vs sold.) > 64.7% of newly constructed homes were part of HOA communities in 2023, down 2.1% year-over-year (YoY) > 77.1 million Americans live in HOAs, condominium communities, or cooperatives in 2024; this number represents 22.7% of the 2024 total U.S. population Of course, not everyone buys new homes. https://www.nahb.org/News-and-Economics/Housing-Economics/National-Statistics/New-and-Existing-Home-Sales-Reports https://www.nahb.org/News-and-Economics/Housing-Economics/Na... > Key Findings about the home buyers in the 2021 AHS: > 7% of home buyers purchased a new home
- foobarian 2y ago

bravetraveler 2y ago

Ever see the movie 'War Games'? I'd prefer HOAs be starved, not encouraged

wonder_er 2y ago

supporting HOA's is supporting a key tool supremacists used in the USA for a long time to enact oppression and violence on people of the global majority. You can keep supporting it. if we were hanging out IRL I would clock[0] you (unhappily, regretfully) as someone supporting supremacy. a belief in authority can get real dangerous, real fast. Update: [0] I mean "clock" in the "to note the flaws of" sense. Urban dictionary gives one definition which sounds right-enough: > used in gay vernacular especially among drag queens > to call out someone's flaws, to uncover or reveal the truth in a situation or one's true gender Here's a few quotes about HOAs, zoning, and policing from https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/police-pasco-sheriff-targeted/intelligence-led-policing/ https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p... > If the targets, their family members or associates wouldn’t speak to deputies or answer questions, STAR team deputies were told to look for code enforcement violations like faded mailbox numbers, a forgotten bag of trash or overgrown grass, Rodgers said. “We would literally go out there and take a tape measure and measure the grass if somebody didn’t want to cooperate with us,” he said. Rodgers said people sometimes would fail to pay the fine, which would result in a warrant being issued for their arrest. So, the gap between HOAs and police (deputized slave patrols) exists only for the people that want to imagine it as existing. mountain out of a mole hill? perhaps.

jjulius 2y ago
>You can keep supporting it. if we were hanging out IRL I would clock you (unhappily, regretfully) as someone supporting supremacy. Let me understand you - you would assume that the individual in question knows for certain how HOAs have been used against minority groups, and then you would physically attack them before asking them if they were even aware and trying to enlighten them to the issue? Edit: And at the risk of pushing HN's guidelines, I'll point out that this is what you've put on your personal website: >I value coherence, meaningfulness, compassion, and kindness. One of these things is sure as hell not like the other. Yikes. Maybe go get some fresh air, bud... Edit 2: And I say all this as someone who very much hates HOAs and will never own a home that is in one.
- wonder_er 2y ago

amanaplanacanal 2y ago

I live in suburbia, and I don't think I have ever seen either soccer or frisbees in any of my neighbor's lawns. I would never buy a house with an HOA. I realize that some places people don't have much choice, and I sympathize with their plight.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

milch 2y ago

Except that the article said that the HOA needed to change the rules before that forced the couple to change what they were doing. The only thing that was called out as being against the rules was them keeping chickens in their backyard

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]