I was wondering about 900+ pages in the HOA agreement because when I bring up your PDF file, it says “page 899” at the top.
Glad that’s not really the case. 
What is in the lawn? A few wild flowers? A thicket of triffids?
I’m in the UK, so we never have HOA, but I think it might be a good idea in principle to prevent truly antisocial things. I assume the problem is some officious asshole is the only one who wants to be in charge, and ends up outlawing children.
Is there some procedure to get a vote of all the owners to overrule the president? Preferably in a low-effort-for-them sort of way, eg. petition, phone-in votes.
swampy, my friend, you’re starting to get into the realm of cruel and unusual punishment, but if all else fails, I’ll be in touch! 
Jackmannii - I think those page numbers were assigned by the county when they registered the covenants.
Shade - I have some low-growing broadleaf weeds - none of them bloom to my knowledge, none have thorns, none are poisonous, none eat small children. If you stand on the road and look at the lawn, it’s green. If you stand on the lawn and look down, you see weeds among the grass in certain areas.
Another thing I got to thinking about last night as I tossed and turned because this whole thing had me so pissed off - they’re doing selective enforcement of other items. For example, we’re only allowed to have wooden fences, no chain link, no split rail. Well the fence at the entrance of the neighborhood is vinyl “split rail” and one of the residents has vinyl stockade fencing. Personally, I have no problem with it - it looks good. I see no reason not to amend the covenants to allow that. But they’re not amended and they’re not enforcing that part. Another item is that satellite dishes are not permitted on the front or side of the house. Yet if you drive down the street, you see several. According to one person I spoke with, that item in the covenants is illegal because you have to put your dishes where they can be aimed correctly. Yet the item remains and is not enforced.
Yep, I’m seeing lots of issues here. Anybody wanna buy a house??
About the dishes, the Telecommunications Act of 1993 (at least I think it is 1993) said that no state/local/etc. law or rule is allowed to prevent a person from getting any form of telecommunication. One of which is satellite TV. Since some houses have to have the dish in the side or front yard (for aiming purposes), the HOA covenant cannot be enforced (since Federal law is higher than a HOA covenant).
Yes, I am on the Board of my current HOA (and was on the Board of the HOA at my last place until I took them to court).
Fin_man–You are correct. You have every right to put up a satellite dish and nobody can stop you.
[hijack] CG and I found out THAT delicious pice of law when we lived in an apt complex that tried to ban us from getting satellite tv. We showed them a copy of Fed law copied from a recent lawbook we found at the public library. They caved and we got our dish.[/hijack]
IDBB
Shade: HOAs are the bane of all that is good and pure, IMO.
It sounds all so sweet and nice…they want to keep people from having junk cars in the yard. Hey! I can live with that. They want to send out a cute little newsletter that gives info about babysitters and dogwalkers in the neighborhood. That sounds pretty nice.
It starts getting a bit oppresive:
You cannot paint your house without permission…even the SAME COLOR it was before. (At least, my old HOA).
Kids leave a bike outside? Letter.
Grass isn’t cut? Letter…and a fine, for sending a letter.
Oil stain on the driveway? LETTER!!
You can’t have a car that isn’t in “working condition” in your driveway for more than 24 hours. (So…technically say that I get paid in two days and I have a flat tire, if I leave the car in the driveway for two days, I could get a LETTER!)
Don’t pay your $300 before the end of January? Ok, let’s make it a $1000 with legal fees.
Well…ok, you can split up the payments and pay throughout the year instead…but if you do that, you can’t use the community pool.
It goes on and on…you cannot imagine the idiotic rules they come up with.
Don’t like it? Try to vote in someone new the next time…but very few board members changed while I lived in that neighborhood, and the rules didn’t change at all.
It sucked.
~J
Houston is apparently completely littered with these idiotic things.
FCM is also by no means the first one to complain about her HOA.
IDBB
Damn coding…ergh. It’s supposed to look like this:HOA rant here
IDBB
My SO and I were talking about buying a condo instead of a house for our ‘starter property’, but I want a house. I’m going to save this thread and show it to him as a reminder that condo associations are just like HOAs and THIS is what we’d have to go through. Thank God my parents don’t live in a neighborhood with an HOA. I can see my dad going ballistic if someone told him his grass was too long - especially since the man owns two full-time businesses and works practically 24 hours a day.
Ava
Just for giggles, i looked up noxious - I wanted a precise definition. Here’s what I got:
From American Heritage Dictionary:
- Harmful to living things; injurious to health: noxious chemical wastes.
- Harmful to the mind or morals; corrupting: noxious ideas.
From Webster’s:
Hurtful; harmful; baneful; pernicious; injurious; destructive; unwholesome; insalubrious; as, noxious air, food, or climate; pernicious; corrupting to morals; as, noxious practices or examples.
From WorldNet:
1: injurious to physical or mental health; “noxious chemical wastes”; “noxious ideas” [syn: harmful] [ant: innocuous]
2: having adverse effect on living things; “noxious chemical wastes” [syn: deleterious, hurtful, injurious]
Yep, that pretty much sums up my noxious yard… :rolleyes: