Health hazards are a different kettle of fish from “paint the houses the same color and keep the lawn tidy”. I think most everyone agrees that they don’t want a tree to fall on their head, or the house next to theirs to catch on fire. And yes, you don’t need an HOA to deal with that, most towns have health and safety rules.
I’ve called the town regarding a hazardous tree, too. It was a huge dead elm tree overhanging a major road.
Amusingly, someone (possibly the town) cut off all the branches at the property line about two years before they finally cut down the damn tree. God was that ugly!
Part of the problem is that it’s pretty easy to encode those characteristics in other ways. Like, you can prohibit outdoor light displays except around Christmas. The mere fact that the HOA is an authority that probably has to be interacted with in English is going to be a somewhat chilling factor for non-English speakers. And, of course wealth is highly correlated with skin color, so the most effective way to keep out the brown people is to make minimum lot sizes large, require expensive upkeep, prohibit ADUs and multifamily housing, cite older cars as “unsightly”, and otherwise price the poors out. All of which HOAs (and zoning) do in spades.
zoning single-family residence, minimum lot size does the lion’s share of that work. No HOA needed.
But that’s an interesting point about rules like only allowing festive lights at Christmas. I actually have several friends who like festive lights and use them at other times, but I’ve never lived in a place where there were rules about that.
I suspect that if you look closely, there are going to be tons of these things that are subtle ways to exclude the “other”. Probably a lot of them aren’t even ill-intentioned! Like, whoever wrote that rule about holiday decorations probably was thinking “Ok, I know some people like to put 40,000 lumens of electric Santas on their front lawn, and God bless 'em, but let’s make sure that shit doesn’t go into March.” and not " This way the muslims won’t be able to celebrate Eid with garish lawn ornaments" (or whatever).
Anyone remember the infamous While You Were Out episode on TLC? They did 2 day surprise make overs of a room.
They went into a gated community, HOA and painted a garish Caribbean beach theme on the back of the house. Beach chairs, umbrellas the works.
Husband comes on and went totally unhinged, on camera! Kept yelling about the HOA and how they’d react. Everyone felt so bad for his wife. She had set up the surprise.
I suspect that house got repainted within a couple days.
Eid al Fitr can happen virtually any time during the year, but there are typically not outdoor decorations. But what if I want to decorate for July 4? I’m not allowed to put out my red white & blue lights?
Doubt I’d ever buy into an HOA. I dunno - maybe when I’m old and decrepit, but not til then.
But ascenray is full of shit claiming a desire that one’s neighbors minimally maintain their homes is racist. If you can’t afford the time and money to maintain the home, you probably shouldn’t buy the home.
I’ve been in some very pleasant minority and mixed neighborhoods. My impression is that people of any color who take any pride in their homes generally prefer not have the shitty house next door to them. Don’t generalize about struggling strivers holding down multiple jobs to better their families, lacking the resources to do minimal maintenance. The folk I’ve known who stretched to better their and their families’ situation understood that part of that involved maintaining what you owned. Far more frequent I suppose, some people are lazy slobs, whatever their color.
BTW - many towns have municipal ordinances that cover some of the most egregious neglect. You aren’t allowed to attract vermin, trash in the front yard, grass no longer than x inches - that sort of thing.
I got to hear the amateur theologian Francis Schaeffer give an after-dinner talk (at his home in the Swiss alps).
I still have the image of him climbing his stone fireplace, sitting on the mantel with a pipe, and starting with “Our neighbor keeps measuring the hedge out front.”
“A number of times a week, he comes by with his tape measure… and if it’s grown a centimeter over the legal limit, he bangs on our door and threatens to bring the Kantonspolizei, a ‘copper’, unless we comply immediately.”
He went on to say that with Switzerland’s drug problems and racism and homelessness, this man’s biggest concern is the hedge.
That’s how I feel about HOAs. (yeah, even on the rare occasion when I wish we had one, to get Ol’ Pete’s cars out of his yard…) Our houses are all tidy, but we have neighbors who just moved here and said “This is great, y’all have some weeds and dirt in your yards! It’ll be a relief to have no one judging our lawn.”
This is my nightmare–not just having busybodies deciding how tall your grass can be but actually mandating that you MUST HAVE GRASS. Lawn monoculture is shit, it’s terrible for native fauna and flora and relies way too much on garbage herbicides and fertilizers to exist. I honestly don’t give a shit what lawn fetishists want–dandelions are excellent for the soil because their deep roots break up clay and compaction, they’re one of the earliest and most robust spring meals for the pollinators and they’re edible too. If my neighbors don’t like it that a hardy plant flourishes better than their anemic lawns, tough shit.
My idea of the perfect yard is one that grows food and yet local ordinances or HOA bylaws can be enacted that prohibit growing food plants in the front yard and then I’d be forced to poison my property to please the garbage preferences of suburbia worshippers. That sucks.
Like what happened to these people:
My neighborhood has houses ranging in age from brand new all the way back to over a hundred years old, often right next door to each other. I wasn’t crazy about that one neighbor who painted their house Pepto Bismol pink but a few years later it changed hands and got repainted and now it’s yellow–still not my favorite but easier on the retinas. Point is that neither color choice is my business. Oregon recently ended single family only zoning regulations and that’s a really good idea–if you’re not crazy about a fourplex being built next door then YOU can move, leaving your SFR house available for a developer to increase density a bit more. Or you can unclench a bit and realize that what YOU consider to be an unacceptable eyesore is the height of awesome practicality and beauty to someone else and just as YOU would not welcome being required to make your house an identical “eyesore” your neighbor doesn’t appreciate having your taste imposed on them either.
If you like HOA crap, work out, but I’d rather undergo a cheese grater mastectomy, thanks.
These are little shadow governments that shouldn’t be legal. Home owners aren’t just governed by terms of the original contract, they set up mini-governments which create new requirements and make decisions based on questionable processes. They are setting up corporations that take the assets of disliked owners. If these were legitimate organizations the costs of the failures of the individual owners would be paid for by the whole corporate entity.
[quote=“mikecurtis, post:133, topic:919440, full:true”]Perhaps I wasn’t clear.
They’re not the same thing. They’re the same type of thing. They’re both discriminating against potential neighbors using a criterion.[/quote]
I think you’ll find that people regularly discriminate against others in ways that are not inherently immoral or illegal. An employer who lists minimum job qualifications for an open position is discriminating against everyone who does not meet those qualifications. A devout Baptist who only chooses to date those with similar religious values is discriminating against atheist. Do you find that you prefer the company of decent people or jerks? Because I’m guessing you discriminate against jerks.
It’s okay to discriminate against the type of neighbor who would leave the rusting engine block of their '65 Mustang on the driveway.
You’re hilarious dude. Not wanting neighbors who put a couch on the front porch and a large chicken coop in the backyard, a pool table under the carport and a loud sound system for parties is discrimination that should not be tolerated? Got it!
I could believe it. I would have paid more for a comparable house in a comparable neighborhood without an HOA. Far as I can tell that house doesn’t exist here, so.
The preponderance of opinions here is anti-HOA. I don’t know if that represents the general population. My HOA could simply dissolve itself with a 2/3 vote, yet this seems to be a very rare event.
If you don’t prefer the company of jerks, you adjust your personal choices to avoid spending time with them, you do not have the right to restrict the jerk’s choices so that they are unable to be in your presence. HOAs reach out on your behalf to restrict the activity of people who are not you, not even in public but on their own property, and in their own home.
Highly restrictive HOAs are about conformity, maintaining the “character” of the neighborhood and making sure all residents are the right “kind” of people for the neighborhood. In the old days that meant racial exclusion, today it means making sure everybody’s house looks like Ward Cleaver’s and not Fred Sanford’s.
Is that inherently evil? I don’t think so, but let’s be clear, when you say “I don’t want people like you to be allowed to buy homes in my neighborhood.” you’re saying something significant.
