Erm… Actually, this was my first post in this thread. :o But I’ve said it elsewhere.
The sad thing is, in some parts of the country at some times, houses with HOAs are the only stock available. It happened to my family in the DC area back in the mid-70s. My dad wanted to live near his employer, which was a federal agency on a large campus in Maryland. The only houses available at the time were in a “new town” (now some 35,000 people), all covenant-controlled. So he thought he’d at least make the best by buying a house with a nice lake view. But because our back yard bordered a park, our entire property was subject to HOA review. They dictated the kind of fencing we could have - only country-style, open timbers, absolutely no privacy fences - so that made it easy for them to dictate almost everything else, too - such as a general prohibition on hanging wash. One neighbor wanted to put in a screened gazebo, because her allergies made it otherwise impossible for her to be outside. HOA said “nope.”
Because HOAs are private entities, they’re almost completely exempt from basic civil rights laws - and god help you trying to actually prove anything, anyway.
They’re evil.
Actually, I think the objective is more like “help keep up property values”. Which will be higher if the neighborhood’s specially neat and tidy.
Odinoneeye, there is a difference between that type of HOA (what’s probably the original spirit of a HOA) and the HOAs set up under Restrictive Covenants to be a sort of mini Shadow Government.
The heck with the flag. Here’s what offends me:
AAAAAAGGGGH
As a person named Jones, I just want to say:
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THERE IS NO WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE SPELLED JONES’.
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The possessive of “Jones” is “Jones’s.”
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The plural of “Jones” is “Joneses.”
Thank you.
I’d like to see one of the many American vets whose lives have been saved by Aussies in umpteen wars go down there and give the little tyrants a history lesson. If the neighbor is USMC, he ought to be fighting for her.
Hell, if I lived there I’d fly an Australian flag in my yard just to piss 'em off.
Paging Bobbie Dooley…
Plenty of Hoosiers love 'em as well. The Pizza King restaurant chain has aired commercials which celebrate such “Indiana traditions” as auto racing and “lawn geese”. The front porch of the house across the street from my residence features a gaggle of the ceramic birds.
Relevant to the original purpose of the thread: When I lived in Ohio, there was a man across the street who flew the Irish flag and “Old Glory” on selected holidays. My dad made jokes about the situation – “If Mr. L loves the Auld Sod so much, why doesn’t he move back there? Then again, his family probably came over 150 years ago, and he’s probably never even been to Ireland” – but there was certainly no overt hostility (that I was aware of, anyway) ever expressed by any of the neighbors. Of course, this was in a suburban development whose homeowners’ association was much like the one described by Odinoneeye. Dues were voluntary, and the group went dormant at times, only to be revived when the sewers backed up and flooded basements, or when a spate of burglaries plagued the neighborhood.
Up until last year I lived immediately across the street from this bed and breakfast.
Apart from the general abominations, (wooden butterflies and bees, year-round “icicle” Christmas decorations, and ugly signage reading “DIANA’S LUXURY BED AND BREAKFAST,”) the flags bothered me a lot.
Here’s why: In the years after the photo on the front page was taken, both the Canadian and the American flags became grungy and frayed. I imagine that some of her American tourists commented on the appearance of the flag, because in the seven years that I lived there, the American flag was replaced twice. When I left, there was a nice new Stars and Bars, bigger than the Canadian flag, and the Canadian flag was grey and tattered. Did I mention there’s only one flagpole, and that they were both run up it?
That drove me up the frigging wall. I guess it wasn’t really an insulted sense of nationalism – more just that it looked wrong on just about every level. And it seemed like cynical (and misguided) pandering. You’d think that at least one of the times they replaced the American flag, they’d pick up a new Canadian one, too, though.
I don’t think it would bother me if an American ex-pat neighbor flew a flag on their property – as long as it was well-maintained. Oh, and quiet. 