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> One thing that an HOA might actually be good for I've gotten nothing but benefits from living in neighborhoods with HOAs. Basic stuff like funding for lands
by VWWHFSfQ 1y ago
> One thing that an HOA might actually be good for
I've gotten nothing but benefits from living in neighborhoods with HOAs. Basic stuff like funding for landscapers to keep up the shared grassy areas along the streets, to plowing the access roads in winter time. But the main benefit has always been that it provides a legal mechanism to force everyone to maintain their yards and property. No need to drop passive-aggressive notes in a mailbox about people parking their cars on their lawns.
10/10 highly recommend
edit: apparently you guys don't like HOAs haha. Well I love them. Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump.
- shakow 1y ago> people parking their cars on their lawns. Indeed, God forbid people would like to park their cars on their property!
- arcticfox 1y agoYes indeed! One of the reasons I'm personally happy to live in an HOA after having lived in an area where lawn junkyards were common.
- gameman144 1y agoSome people like living in communities that look nice. It seems fair that you can opt-in to those rules by buying in an HOA, and if you do want to park on your lawn, buy elsewhere. (And I am not a fan of HOAs personally, so I do in fact live elsewhere, but my neighbors house is also an eyesore)
- op00to 1y agoI live in a beautiful neighborhood. No HOAs.
- kspacewalk2 1y agoTo each their own. I much prefer to live in the neighbourhood where each neighbour does what they feel like with their property, within reason. It ought not be any business of yours what I do with my yard, front or back, as long as it doesn't adversely affect your enjoyment of your own property - and this last part is key - as a reasonable person would interpret it. In other words, smells and health hazards - sure. Unexplainable hatred for wildflowers, uncut grass and the laughter of children - go ahead and send a passive aggressive note straight to /dev/null for all I care.
- Arainach 1y agoThe issue is that it's hard to agree on where the line is and (without a HOA) impossible to enforce. Wildflowers? Generally good. Tall grass that allows rats to thrive and spread into adjacent yards? Bad. Most people don't want to have to go to court to battle pedantic neighbors who confuse the two.
- dfxm12 1y agoIf it comes to it, cops, 311 and probably other means are available. It's possible to enforce and court is not needed.
- Arainach 1y agoIt's hard enough to get the cops to come out to a robbery - I know of nowhere in America where they're bored enough to come look at someone with poor landscaping. Unless you're a decamillionaire (or a cop), the cops in America don't care about you.
- autoexec 1y ago> I know of nowhere in America where they're bored enough to come look at someone with poor landscaping. People get fines all the time for failing to cut their grass. Some cities just love the income. They can add up to several thousand (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/in-court-of-appeals/1687744.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/in-court-of-appeals/168774...).
- c22 1y agoIf you're feeling like an asshole and you complain to the city about your neighbors overgrown yard most places will start fining your neighbor daily if it's actually a problem. It's not really a police matter though.
- onlypassingthru 1y agoMy former city has code enforcement officers that drive around the neighborhoods and issue warnings and citations for insufficient weed control (got one of those), unsightly (dead) vegetation (got that one, too) and minimum pool maintenance (next door neighbor got that one). FWIW, I'd love to know how they're monitoring everyone's pools.
- Etheryte 1y agoOver maintained yards are a leading reason for having no biodiversity around your home. First you lose the bugs, then the birds and over time this extends to everything.
- VWWHFSfQ 1y agoA 3" cut once a month during peak growing season is hardly "over maintained". Every HOA community I've lived in has been perfectly reasonable.
- ben_w 1y agoWithout knowing where you are exactly, I can only give a vague and general response such as "in much of the USA, the mere existence of a lawn is 'over maintained'", see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeriscaping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeriscaping
- VWWHFSfQ 1y agoOh I don't live in Nevada or Arizona, if that's what you were implying. Also, this thread is about the utility of HOAs, so in the example you're giving, then HOA can actually be more beneficial since they often include bylaws to restrict or prevent landscaping and watering during periods of water conservation. It goes both ways.
- ben_w 1y agoWhat I'm implying is: HOAs can mandate bad things, including in various cases lawns, because an absence of good reasoning when mimicking others isn't the preserve of individuals.
- JohnFen 1y ago> I've gotten nothing but benefits from living in neighborhoods with HOAs. I'm happy somebody has. Except for you, I have never heard anything but nightmares from the people I know who suffer under HOAs.
- VWWHFSfQ 1y agoI question the motivation of people choosing to live in a place where they are constantly at odds with the agreed-upon standards of the community. They should leave if it is really that stressful and onerous.
- swiftcoder 1y agoAnd this is how we get Redlining
- VWWHFSfQ 1y agoNot sure how redlining comes into this. Everyone in my neighborhood provided no fewer than 3 signatures in a contract agreeing to abide by the well-documented community standards for use and upkeep of their property.
- swiftcoder 1y agoI’m sure those community standards don’t suggest in any way that they might impinge on the freedom of expression of any minorities who might consider moving to the neighbourhood…
- snacktaster 1y ago> freedom of expression I don't believe that it is a constitutional right to live in a neighborhood that will permit you to operate a chop-shop in your overgrown yard.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoThe problem is that those standards can change based on who's elected or chosen to run the HOA.
- stronglikedan 1y ago> Basic stuff You like paying extra for stuff that is normally included in your property taxes? I'm dumbfounded.
- Arainach 1y agoProperty taxes basically never pay for privately owned things, be that landscaping in common spaces, maintenance of private neighborhood roads, etc.
- dsr_ 1y agoThe alternative is public space and public roads.
- Arainach 1y agoThese don't work because suburbs are a ponzi scheme that is collapsing. People are grudgingly willing to pay to put in a brand new sewer once. No one wants to fund maintenance or pay millions to replace it in 60 years and cities are literally going bankrupt because the population density isn't enough to maintain the infrastructure. Cities realized this decades ago which is why many are reluctant to add more unsustainable public roads/sewers/etc. and insist new development owns and funds them privately....which tends to require a HOA to fund maintenance from communal contributions/reserves. https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/01/benjamin-herold-disillusioned-suburbs/677229/ https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/01/benjamin-h...
- mgerdts 1y agoMy back yard neighbors live on a private street with an HOA. When the city water pressure went high for a brief period of time, they were one of the few places to have water lines burst. Their private supply lines were not of the same rating as the city lines that supply similar neighborhoods. Since this was private, this HOA was on the hook for ripping up the street, repairing water lines, and fixing their street. Being a customer that doesn’t normally need such services, the fix was done a couple months after the water lines break. They had a week or so with no water and many weeks of water being fed to their homes via hoses connecting a fire hydrant and the spigots they would normally use to get water outside. They were so lucky this happened in the summer. In the winter, the hoses would have frozen solid. These folks were very sad the city’s water utility couldn’t do the work. They fix water main breaks within a couple days, usually the same day.
- owlstuffing 1y agoOh, how I’ve never wanted downvote power more.
- nick__m 1y agoSubmit interesting unique links and post more substantive comments (maybe add a paragraph or two your previous comment) and you will be able to downvote soon enough. But I don't understand the appeal, when I do it is usually accidental (really easy to do on a tablet)...
- c22 1y agoI usually downvote comments that are derailing the thread or are so lazy as to feel like a waste of my time to have read. I'll often upvote comments with opinions that are counter to my own, especially if they are presented in a clear, coherent, or novel way that causes me to think a bit.
- lovich 1y agoDownvoting is a gated power on this site?
- soulofmischief 1y agoYou just need 500 karma to downvote. It helps prevent brigading and ensures that users have a moment to adjust to the community and its general expectations before being able to participate in community moderation. If a user cannot reach that low bar after a while, they probably aren't a particularly active or positive member of the community.
- axus 1y agoA neighbor had a bus under renovation in their driveway for a few years. That really bothered one guy, the rest of us just rolled our eyes. HOA is another layer of local government, I think it's great that moving is a chance to choose the government (or anarchy) that you prefer.
- gcanyon 1y agoI have a friend whose parents built a 48' sailboat in their yard over about a dozen years. "built" as in cast the lead keel, laid the fiberglass hull, etc. etc. This was in a traditional suburban neighborhood, but no HOA. So they had to be pretty good friends with their neighbors.
- nkrisc 1y agoHOAs can be good. Like many things, HOAs are not inherently bad or good. It’s the people who run them. I lived in a four unit condo buildings before and the HOA was fine, because all residents were on the board. I now live in a more typical suburban HOA development and the HOA is very unobtrusive and only comes down on the actual problem properties (overgrown, uninhabited houses) and doesn’t do much other than handle common area upkeep. Dues are only $150 per year.
- johnkizer 1y agoFrom what I can tell, HOA experiences - like politics - are highly dependent on the folks who would make good decision-makers actually being interested in, and attaining, the level of power in the association to make those decisions. I've seen both - folks who are good stewards of the community's money and add to its energy, and folks who can't manage money and exhaust the community's energy on trivialities.
- antisthenes 1y ago> edit: apparently you guys don't like HOAs haha. Well I love them. Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump. This is so good, it can be used as a textbook definition of a strawman.
- Brian_K_White 1y ago"Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump." The single highest priority in life. Completely reasonable to give up everything else to get that.
- foobarian 1y agoI think the next house I move to, I will look for an HOA that prohibits combustion-powered yard tools, and hires an all-electric crew for common maintenance, cost be damned.
- ElijahLynn 1y agoDeath to combustion powered yard tools!!! So frickin noisy!!!!
- foobarian 1y agoEven worse is, say you have 20 neighbors on the block each scheduling yard maintenance separately, then it's like the balls in bins problem, and you pretty much end up with these abominations making noise at least once a day (and weekends included because that's when Dad has time to do the weekend warrior thing and it takes him 3x as long as a professional crew). Sigh.
- ElijahLynn 1y agoExactly! An incremental improvement would be that yard stuff should all be done on the same day of the week. And then it would just be super loud but for a short period of time.
- anon84873628 1y agoHOAs are like any government. Some are run well and have good laws, others not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯