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I signed up, and invited all the neighbors I knew, in large part because I have an out-of-control HOA. They purposely schedule meetings on short notice, typical

I signed up, and invited all the neighbors I knew, in large part because I have an out-of-control HOA. They purposely schedule meetings on short notice, typically when they know everyone's at work (2pm on a Tuesday, for example). Then they pass all sorts of pet projects, spending resolutions, "house rules" (don't even get me started on that nonsense), and so forth. Time will tell if peer pressure and transparency are effective antidotes to the petty tyranny of my HOA. But I'm all for anything that can theoretically check their influence. So far my neighborhood is pretty quiet. About 50-odd users. It's entertaining, though. There's this one guy who posts weird survivalist rants and doomsday scenarios about The Big One, and how we're not sufficiently prepared for it. (Probably true, I hate to say.) There's a woman breeding puppies in her apartment and offering them for sale. There's a guy using the site to promote his political blog. There's a guy playing True Detective, tracking all of the car break-ins in the neighborhood, and looking for a "pattern" and "the perp's signature" in the items left on the scenes. I kind of dig it all. Seeing the eccentricity on display adds a smidgeon of big-city atmosphere that I've always felt SF was lacking in comparison to other cities I've lived in. I hope the network comes into its own, and that we get more people in my neighborhood on board. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the strangeness of my early adopter cohort.

satori99 12y ago
Can I ask what a HOA is for and what it does? I don't think they exist in my country. We have body corporate entities for strata title blocks, but freestanding houses pay rates to local government directly for services. Does a HOA provide garbage removal, street maintenance, etc?
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  The nominal answer is that HOAs are membership associations to which owners in a condo building or neighborhood are sometimes obligated to join. The homeowners pool dues every month to cover things like garbage collection, building maintenance, etc. The HOA also acts as a governing body over the building's residents, and is free to impose any number of rules and restrictions on usage, design, etc., in anything defined as a "common area" (chiefly, any part of the building that is outside the airspace of the condo interiors). Some HOAs set additional restrictions on what you can do inside your condo, provided that activity, construction, design, etc., affects the neighboring units in any way. Above and beyond their common-area jurisdictions, many HOAs are free to establish "house rules," which are arbitrary and binding restrictions on just about anything that the HOA board happens to dislike. The cynical answer is that HOAs are legal fictions set up to shelter building developers from the financial burdens and liabilities of having to pay for, or be on the hook for, any of those services or maintenance needs. HOAs are the greatest invention in favor of real estate developers since the timeshare.
  - Huppie 12y ago
    I'm not entirely sure if this is different in the US, however where I live (The Netherlands) the owners make up the HOA in the end. So if a majority of the owners doesn't want a specific rule or board member it's easy (and possible) to override that decision and put a new/better board member there. Where I live the HOA board only gets to decide on the 'small stuff' (for big purchases like said Pool renewal above they still need a majority vote.) I try to 'activate' HOA members (everyone that contributes) and remember them that a HOA is made up of its members in the end. If you don't like anything about it you should either talk with your HOA representative / board member AND/OR contribute by opting to become a board member yourself. Source: I'm one of the five HOA board members in our small (60apt) apartment building.
    - adventured 12y ago
      HOA systems vary pretty dramatically in the US, in terms of how they operate exactly. Some HOAs operate by pretty weak by-laws, and can only decide trivial things. Others have obnoxious levels of control. Typically an HOA board consists of community members or home owners (if that's the type of development), and sometimes a company that either developed (and owns) the neighborhood or one that manages it will have seats. Some HOA boards are easy to toss out, others are not. The vast potential variances make it important to try to get to know more about the HOA ahead of time if you're thinking about moving into a development with such.
  - antihero 12y ago
    So do you rent the buildings from the HOA? Or do you own them? And surely if you own them, they have no legal right to tell you want to do unless it breaks the law?
    - blueskin_ 12y ago
      As I understand it, it can be either case. Not sure how they can screw you around if you own it, probably some obscure law, but it's obvious enough if you're renting from them.
- mikeytown2 12y ago
  Homeowner association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association
- prawn 12y ago
  I've always assumed it was the equivalent of Australia's strata management fees and the resulting decisions you get with strata-titled properties. Sadly, I think any time you have amateurs involved with administration and decision making, you cop the resulting amateur politics and it can quickly make the process miserable. I wonder if somehow anonymising the process and removing personalities could even help? Leave it purely about the issues, funds and votes?
- LAMPEY 12y ago
  HOA's are generally required to maintain community storm drains. They also perform other functions like maintaining common areas such as pools and enforce conformity requirements as decided by the community. HOA members are exempt from certain taxes and pay assessment fees to the HOA to provide these services.
- Sophistifunk 12y ago
  It's like a Body Corporate, but they tend to be a lot more intrusive, both in their reach and how much they wield their power. They do stupid shit like fine people for not having perfect grass, even during droughts, that sort of rubbish. They also tend to have more power to approve who lives in the building/complex, rather than just what you can and can't change on the property.
- jessedhillon 12y ago
  A collection of people in your building who have nothing fulfilling in their own lives, and thus relish the prospect of telling you how many flowers you can have in your front window or how heavy your dog can be. They manage the common property, services and insurance for a building where there is a tenancy-in-common situation, like a condominium. They are usually elected, although the people who would run for this kind of position tend to be the last people you want to have any kind of power.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  They were largely meant for keeping black (or jewish) people from moving into neighborhoods (and called "white homeowners associations.") They also set up common standards for yard maintenance, how your house could be painted, parking, visitors etc. - and were a vehicle for cooperating to invest in shared neighborhood infrastructure. Everyone signed an agreement which gave the HOA legal claim against the homeowner for violations of those standards, and when you sold your house, the prospective homeowner would have to be approved by the HOA and would have to sign the same agreement. Like many bureaucracies, they survived the obsolescence of their original purpose. They provide little beyond (sometimes) a way to arbitrate homeowner disputes.
  - kyrra 12y ago
    Huh? What HOAs are you talking about? At least in Texas, every HOA I know of is just allowed to pass rules about upkeep of a persons property (they also manage community resources). They have zero say about who can and cannot live in a given area. Also, HOA rules can never supersede any local/state/federal law/ordinance.
    - masklinn 12y ago
      > Huh? What HOAs are you talking about? http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm > They have zero say about who can and cannot live in a given area. Because they've been barred to by the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
    - afarrell 12y ago
      Parent said "they were", not "they are".
pdenya 12y ago
My neighborhood is much less interesting than yours. We have someone stealing mail but no detectives yet.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  If you need someone to investigate your mail theft, I'm happy to put in a word with our vigilante. I'm sure he'd love to take the case. Fair warning: based on the tone of this guy's dispatches, I'd say there's an outside chance he is the car thief. The plot thickens.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  This is something I've never understood about the US, that people collect their post from unlocked boxes by the roadside instead of a lockable box on the wall or a letterbox in the door. Is there any specific reason, or just tradition? I would never be comfortable leaving my post lying around for anyone to take; you might as well write your bank details, name and date of birth on your wall.
  - adventured 12y ago
    Where I grew up nobody would ever think about stealing postal mail. It would rate as approximately the lowest concern as a home owner. I never saw a single locked box, they were always simple fold down boxes by the road-side in front of the house. First it's a federal crime and fairly serious to steal postal mail, second most of the stuff in the postal mail would be bills or junk-mail, and third home owners get used to when the postal mail would arrive based on when the postal worker runs their route, so a mail thief would have to have good timing and risk getting caught by the home owner. Neighbors often watch out for each other as well, someone suspicious snooping around your neighbor's mailbox might warrant a call or stop by to point it out. Most Americans, at least in the past, would be throwing out bank statements in their trash every month (now a lot of it would be digital of course). If you wanted to steal bank details, I suspect that would be the way to do it rather than trying to time the mail and risk getting caught that way. Name and date of birth are mostly trivial to come by. You can look up modest details about almost anyone in the US for $20 or $50.
blueskin_ 12y ago
HOAs sound totally messed up. How do they have any legal power?
- masklinn 12y ago
  Plain and simple contracts. Developers create residential subdivisions, incorporate a HOA, and ownership in the subdivision requires contracting with the HOA.
aidenn0 12y ago
If you are in California, there are a lot of legal restrictions on HOA boards. I would recommend picking up this: http://condobook.com/ http://condobook.com/ for more information. (Despite the name it has a lot of information general to common interest developments.

satori99 12y ago

Can I ask what a HOA is for and what it does? I don't think they exist in my country. We have body corporate entities for strata title blocks, but freestanding houses pay rates to local government directly for services. Does a HOA provide garbage removal, street maintenance, etc?

jonnathanson 12y ago
The nominal answer is that HOAs are membership associations to which owners in a condo building or neighborhood are sometimes obligated to join. The homeowners pool dues every month to cover things like garbage collection, building maintenance, etc. The HOA also acts as a governing body over the building's residents, and is free to impose any number of rules and restrictions on usage, design, etc., in anything defined as a "common area" (chiefly, any part of the building that is outside the airspace of the condo interiors). Some HOAs set additional restrictions on what you can do inside your condo, provided that activity, construction, design, etc., affects the neighboring units in any way. Above and beyond their common-area jurisdictions, many HOAs are free to establish "house rules," which are arbitrary and binding restrictions on just about anything that the HOA board happens to dislike. The cynical answer is that HOAs are legal fictions set up to shelter building developers from the financial burdens and liabilities of having to pay for, or be on the hook for, any of those services or maintenance needs. HOAs are the greatest invention in favor of real estate developers since the timeshare.
- Huppie 12y ago
  I'm not entirely sure if this is different in the US, however where I live (The Netherlands) the owners make up the HOA in the end. So if a majority of the owners doesn't want a specific rule or board member it's easy (and possible) to override that decision and put a new/better board member there. Where I live the HOA board only gets to decide on the 'small stuff' (for big purchases like said Pool renewal above they still need a majority vote.) I try to 'activate' HOA members (everyone that contributes) and remember them that a HOA is made up of its members in the end. If you don't like anything about it you should either talk with your HOA representative / board member AND/OR contribute by opting to become a board member yourself. Source: I'm one of the five HOA board members in our small (60apt) apartment building.
  - adventured 12y ago
    HOA systems vary pretty dramatically in the US, in terms of how they operate exactly. Some HOAs operate by pretty weak by-laws, and can only decide trivial things. Others have obnoxious levels of control. Typically an HOA board consists of community members or home owners (if that's the type of development), and sometimes a company that either developed (and owns) the neighborhood or one that manages it will have seats. Some HOA boards are easy to toss out, others are not. The vast potential variances make it important to try to get to know more about the HOA ahead of time if you're thinking about moving into a development with such.
- antihero 12y ago
  So do you rent the buildings from the HOA? Or do you own them? And surely if you own them, they have no legal right to tell you want to do unless it breaks the law?
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    As I understand it, it can be either case. Not sure how they can screw you around if you own it, probably some obscure law, but it's obvious enough if you're renting from them.
mikeytown2 12y ago
Homeowner association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association
prawn 12y ago
I've always assumed it was the equivalent of Australia's strata management fees and the resulting decisions you get with strata-titled properties. Sadly, I think any time you have amateurs involved with administration and decision making, you cop the resulting amateur politics and it can quickly make the process miserable. I wonder if somehow anonymising the process and removing personalities could even help? Leave it purely about the issues, funds and votes?
LAMPEY 12y ago
HOA's are generally required to maintain community storm drains. They also perform other functions like maintaining common areas such as pools and enforce conformity requirements as decided by the community. HOA members are exempt from certain taxes and pay assessment fees to the HOA to provide these services.
Sophistifunk 12y ago
It's like a Body Corporate, but they tend to be a lot more intrusive, both in their reach and how much they wield their power. They do stupid shit like fine people for not having perfect grass, even during droughts, that sort of rubbish. They also tend to have more power to approve who lives in the building/complex, rather than just what you can and can't change on the property.
jessedhillon 12y ago
A collection of people in your building who have nothing fulfilling in their own lives, and thus relish the prospect of telling you how many flowers you can have in your front window or how heavy your dog can be. They manage the common property, services and insurance for a building where there is a tenancy-in-common situation, like a condominium. They are usually elected, although the people who would run for this kind of position tend to be the last people you want to have any kind of power.
pessimizer 12y ago
They were largely meant for keeping black (or jewish) people from moving into neighborhoods (and called "white homeowners associations.") They also set up common standards for yard maintenance, how your house could be painted, parking, visitors etc. - and were a vehicle for cooperating to invest in shared neighborhood infrastructure. Everyone signed an agreement which gave the HOA legal claim against the homeowner for violations of those standards, and when you sold your house, the prospective homeowner would have to be approved by the HOA and would have to sign the same agreement. Like many bureaucracies, they survived the obsolescence of their original purpose. They provide little beyond (sometimes) a way to arbitrate homeowner disputes.
- kyrra 12y ago
  Huh? What HOAs are you talking about? At least in Texas, every HOA I know of is just allowed to pass rules about upkeep of a persons property (they also manage community resources). They have zero say about who can and cannot live in a given area. Also, HOA rules can never supersede any local/state/federal law/ordinance.
  - masklinn 12y ago
    > Huh? What HOAs are you talking about? http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm > They have zero say about who can and cannot live in a given area. Because they've been barred to by the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
  - afarrell 12y ago
    Parent said "they were", not "they are".

pdenya 12y ago

My neighborhood is much less interesting than yours. We have someone stealing mail but no detectives yet.

jonnathanson 12y ago
If you need someone to investigate your mail theft, I'm happy to put in a word with our vigilante. I'm sure he'd love to take the case. Fair warning: based on the tone of this guy's dispatches, I'd say there's an outside chance he is the car thief. The plot thickens.
blueskin_ 12y ago
This is something I've never understood about the US, that people collect their post from unlocked boxes by the roadside instead of a lockable box on the wall or a letterbox in the door. Is there any specific reason, or just tradition? I would never be comfortable leaving my post lying around for anyone to take; you might as well write your bank details, name and date of birth on your wall.
- adventured 12y ago
  Where I grew up nobody would ever think about stealing postal mail. It would rate as approximately the lowest concern as a home owner. I never saw a single locked box, they were always simple fold down boxes by the road-side in front of the house. First it's a federal crime and fairly serious to steal postal mail, second most of the stuff in the postal mail would be bills or junk-mail, and third home owners get used to when the postal mail would arrive based on when the postal worker runs their route, so a mail thief would have to have good timing and risk getting caught by the home owner. Neighbors often watch out for each other as well, someone suspicious snooping around your neighbor's mailbox might warrant a call or stop by to point it out. Most Americans, at least in the past, would be throwing out bank statements in their trash every month (now a lot of it would be digital of course). If you wanted to steal bank details, I suspect that would be the way to do it rather than trying to time the mail and risk getting caught that way. Name and date of birth are mostly trivial to come by. You can look up modest details about almost anyone in the US for $20 or $50.

blueskin_ 12y ago

HOAs sound totally messed up. How do they have any legal power?

masklinn 12y ago
Plain and simple contracts. Developers create residential subdivisions, incorporate a HOA, and ownership in the subdivision requires contracting with the HOA.

aidenn0 12y ago

If you are in California, there are a lot of legal restrictions on HOA boards. I would recommend picking up this: http://condobook.com/ http://condobook.com/ for more information. (Despite the name it has a lot of information general to common interest developments.