Not the ramp itself but an HOA has the legal power to approve the aesthetics of it.
I see. By that logic we should do away with elevators because they might break.
I don’t know if you’ve ever wheeled 100 lbs up a ramp but it’s not without it’s problems and that occurs every time it’s done. On a good day it’s PITA on a bad day you have to deal with water, snow, and ice.
The lift I showed is specifically for lifting wheel chairs. It’s industrial grade and runs on DC so it’s designed to operate if the power fails.
I don’t mind the ramp at all. There’s one in my neighborhood that’s really an eyesore, and I haven’t heard the neighbors protesting. Some people just have too much time on their hands.
Except that’s not what’s being discussed. The ramp they built doesn’t match the house aesthetically. It’s not the end of the world that neighbors don’t appreciate it. It appears from the photo that the owners already included landscaping to spruce it up so there really isn’t a story here at all.
HOA’s are not something I’d be interested in but that doesn’t mean I find the mindset self-absorbed. YMMV
Then go spend it. The family has a daughter in a wheelchair, and our health care system is paleolithic. You can assume they’ve got better uses for their money.
I used to work for a beverage distributor . I’ve hauled almost 300 lbs up ramps and up/down curbs.
My mom was in a wheelchair(long before the ADA), my younger brother has CP, I spent two years in one after my accident and my wife uses one right now.
I think I know what it involves.
A lift can break in more ways than just losing power and a business can find the money for repairs more easily than a private family.
If the neighbors want a better looking ramp, they should offer to pay for it. Otherwise, fuck 'em. And maybe fuck 'em even if they do offer to pay.
Ah, the slippery-slope argument! 
Then you know how dangerous a ramp is. on a regular basis. If their daughter has a fit as claimed in the article then loosing grip on the wheel chair is a real problem. She’s going to be banging of steel rails.
They sunk a tremendous amount of money in that ramp so your premise that they couldn’t afford repairs on a lift are not logical. These are industrial mechanisms of a simple design. They most likely consist of a motor, 4 switches and a worm gear drive.
*smacks **Sailboat *with a nor’easter
Why? It’s their property. It’s none of your business whether it looks appealing or not.
Take a look at the picture of the house. There’s no place for a lift.
Say that again when you’re selling your property that happens to be next door to a bunch of jackholes who let their property look like the outskirts of the town dump.
Sure, when THEY sell, the property will look clean and tidy, because they’ll get more money that way, when YOU sell, it stays a shithole that’s chasing away your buyers.
Legally, you may not be able to do squat about it, but I defy anyone to be happy with the idea of getting thousands of dollars less as a result of their neighbor’s eyesore.
that’s just a false statement. Property owners are responsible for the maintenance of their property in any municipality I’ve lived in. That means lawns have to be mowed and the structure maintained in appearance. The extent of appearance varies from location to location.
That’s like saying there’s no place for a ramp. Of course there’s a place for the lift.
That’s the problem with busy-body neighbors, one person’s beauty is another’s eyesore.
If someone approached me complaining about my ramp, I’d go nuts blinging it out into the pimpinest ramp this world has ever seen. Big jewels on the rails, shiny gold paint, red velvet ramp, neon trim lights, and a sound system that blasts Yellow’s “Oh Yeah” every time I wheel up the ramp.
Wow, fuck the neighbors. That is an awful awful thing to be against.
I hope whoever sues them loses big because I think every effort should be made to accommodate someone if they are disabled, especially if its a ramp in front of your own fucking house. I would protest any real estate agent who undervalued the house because of that, and/or undervalued the houses of neighbors. So there’s a ramp, big fucking deal, its a house like any other only more accessible. Hell, I would hope agents add value to the house because of that because any one of us can become disabled and need one and this house has one built in!
That isn’t how it works.
There’s a clause somewhere in the US Constitution that all Americans have the inalienable right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and stable property values. At least I’d have to assume it’s there, considering the number of busybodies who are convinced they have such a right.
The worst was a bar that I went to one time that featured a fully accessible handicap restroom upstairs from the main bar, with the only available means to get to that restroom was to go up the stairs themselves. To make matters even more ridiculous, as I was filling out a complaint to be left for the owner, a man who identified himself as the daytime manager (he was sitting at the bar and it was nighttime) told me that they did have an elevator, but it was only for employee use. However, he told me, he would let me use it “this one time”.
So a bar with a handicap-accessible restroom upstairs, with a perfectly usable elevator available for the disabled customers to use, instead makes those customers be subject to being physically lifted and carried in their chairs up the stairs by multiple security guards. :smack:
All because that elevator is the “service only” elevator and off-limits for customers. WTF.