When I last lived in Chicago, dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I had an old International Metro Mite step van. No windows behind the doors except two tiny ones in the rear doors. Got pulled over on LSD by a cop who approached the (now) open door and was told “No Trucks on LSD”. I asked if there was an exemption for RV’s and he replied there was but they had to have sleeping, cooking and washroom facilities. I gestured towards the back, where my sleeping bag, Coleman stove and lantern were, along with a camp toilet and 5 gallon jug of water. He laughed out loud and said “Guess you been readin’” and walked back to his car. Thank God I’d just returned from a campout at Elkhart Lake racetrack the day before and hadn’t unpacked…
Is bringing up the law in Chicago of all places really the best defense against claims of HOAs being corrupt busy bodies?
You know it’s bad when you’re worse than Chicago.
Just pointing out how a pickup could be lawfully (not rationally) called a capital-T truck, putting it in a non-pleasure vehicle category, and giving HOA people with nothing better to do the ammunition they need to harass residents. And, of course, in the process of pointing that out, telling y’all about another Chicago quirk.
If the truck has those nuts on it, then it’s a pleasure vehicle.
Every.
Single.
Time.
…I hear or read a story about an HOA, I’m more bewildered with how they exist.
As mentioned, they must have their upsides but the downsides seem straight down.
And there’s spikes at the bottom.
With venom.
I’m an amateur radio operator and also bbq & grill a lot and the horror stories from these hobby communities are just terrible. Why do these people with these hobbies buy here?
Smoke and ‘excessive food smell’ bans?
Prohibitions on visible antennas, even for a few hours?
Without the overnight truck parking ban in Chicago, I have no doubt there’d be folks running cement mixer dispatch yards from their houses.
There’s a couple guys here on my block who drive pickups and park them on the street overnight and it isn’t a problem. They don’t abuse it. The police aren’t looking for it (esp during midnights) and only respond to specific complaints. In my opinion, that’s the way it should be.
Of course, we also have folks leaving lawn furniture in the street to guard ‘their spot’ for a couple weeks after each snowfall so we do it weird around here.
The city does offer overnight truck parking permits on an individual basis and are granted or denied by the alderman. I think some wards have complete bans, though.
In Chicago, at least, the police are given latitude to ticket vehicles regardless of the plate type. A passenger plate on a clearly marked taxi? Ticketown.
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Though, oddly enough, I’ve never heard of that “no pickups” rule being enforced on any of those streets/boulevards/drives - I lived in Chicago for 15 years and even after we moved out we’ve driven our pickup through the city many times.
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It is enforced but not often except for Lake Shore Drive. I think a coworker was pulled over on Logan Blvd in a work truck years ago but the Drive is definitely targeted. It is also among the rare roads to spot a radar speed gun or a car solely doing traffic enforcement.
The primary ban is only for overnight parking though there’s also a driving ban on boulevards. If you need your washing machine repaired, just don’t make it an all-nighter, no matter how hot the service person may be. I seem to recall an exemption permit if you can show a need to be on the blvd but I’m sure it is an annoying thing to get.
It isn’t a tax, it is a fee. At least for the State of Illinois’ part, the fees for light trucks (under 8klb) are the same for passenger cars. Larger trucks can get expensive in a hurry. The Chicago city stickers do cost a bit more, though, but I am having trouble find a straight-up cost for the various vehicle types. This is undoubtedly intentional.
Here’s the authoritative source if you’d care to research the cost but I’m breaking the link since it almost crashed my browser:
chicityclerk.
com/city-stickers-parking/about-city-vehicle-stickers/vehicle-pricing/
Not that I am defending HOAs - I lived in a condo for years and once got into a shouting match at a HOA annual meeting…
But, here’s the thing - when you are in the process of purchasing a home governed by a HOA, you are given a copy of the CC&Rs detailing all of the rules. When you sign the contract to purchase you are stating that you agree to abide by the rules. It’s a contract, you sign it. It’s the buyers responsibility to read the damn thing and understand it!
So, I don’t really have a ton of sympathy for the high outrage that people experience when they violate a rule and are called on it, yah?
While I agree with that sentiment, it’s important to realize that the rules can be changed drastically and arbitrarily by a power-hungry board. Depending on the HOA bylaws, the board may have the power to act in any number of ways that would be difficult to predict from the initial CC&R.
That said, my feeling is that most HOAs (and co-op boards in the case of NYC) are fairly benign and the rules tend to be reasonable.
Indeed.
I remember the first time I got a nastygram from my HOA. My rant went something like "What do those jerks think they can get away with! Telling me to trim my trees, anyone can look at it and see that… uh… the branches are all the way across the sidewalk and low enough that a tween would have to duck under them. Ok, well, they might be right about that, but who do they think they are to talk about my lawn! I mean, look at it, it’s… got a 10 foot wide bare spot… really should order some sod… But I won’t let them get away with telling me how often to edge my yard! Those rhizomes are… only… all the way across the sidewalk… I’ll get the trimmer
In general, I like having an HOA, because they make sure that me and my neighbors maintain the property. I like having the HOA, because it means every house has some standards to live up to. I’ve lived in neighborhoods with no HOA, and 9 out of 10 houses were eyesores. No thanks.
The reason “those crazy HOA bastards” make the news is because it’s rare. 95% of HOAs are reasonable organizations with reasonable people, 4.9% are probably non-entities that don’t do their job, and 0.1% of them are crazy wackos. You know, just like the general population.
I was recently at a friend’s house in a lakeside HOA. It was a nice 3-story house with big decks attached to first floor and second floor. They told me their HOA required a minimum square footage of deck on each house.
Let me give you an example. My parents were selling their house. My father had put effort into ensuring that his property was well maintained. Two doors down a guy had multiple piles of dirt, a pole and fabric structure with a truck in it, no lawn to speak of, it looked like a permanent work site. The next door neighbor put up a plywood sign claiming a property dispute, to chase off prospective buyers.
Some HOA’s are bad, but they tend to prevent some unpleasant aspects of living around other people. It’s a balancing act, if the HOA is run poorly, they become a problem, but most are run by reasonable people who just want a nice neighborhood.
Somehow, his brand new Ford F150 Platinum (50k starting MSRP, BTW) didn’t fit the bill, being not classy enough , while Lincoln Mark LTs did, as their owners are a different class of people or some such. Never mind that the guy was a President and CEO of a billion dollar company.
Total snobbish assholery. I don’t recall how it played out, but it sure struck me as asinine at the time.
Qualifications: I work for a corporation that, for lack of a better way to put it, manages the companies that manage HOAs (we have about 40 or so branch offices for different management companies) but IANAHomeowner.
Anytime I’ve seen similar rules, they’re written specifically to include permanent residents’ vehicles, but not temporarily parked vehicles for commercial purposes (i.e. the steam-cleaning van when you’re getting your carpets done.)
This is a brilliant analogy. I may have to borrow it from you.
Basically, it boils down to: the purpose of an HOA is to maintain and/or improve property values. It’s a way for people to protect an investment, and when you think about the fact that real estate (homes) are the biggest investment most people ever make in their entire lives, it makes sense from that perspective.
I wonder if we worked together. :dubious: I’ll PM ya.
Your description of your father encapsulates the HOA mentality quite well. While it ain’t my cuppa tea, I acknowledge that this lifestyle is near and dear to many people’s hearts.
Concur.
Never sign something without reading it, and understanding what you’ve read.
This is quite true.
Happened to me last year.
That may be the stated intent of an HOA, but in truth they can do very little to maintain or increase property values. I can find very little on line concerning apples to apples comparisons of property values in HOA neighborhoods vs those without, but this site (which is very pro-HOA), in an article entitled “HOAs Bolster Property Valuesby Enforcing Quality and Building Community (Idaho Law)” can be summed up in the following paragraph found near the end of the article:
“Even though the link between associations and home values is easy to understand, and is supported by anecdotal evidence, little statistical research has been done in this area. A 2005 study by economist Alexander Tabarrok concluded that houses in HOAs were worth on average 5 percent more than similar houses in the same neighborhood but outside of HOAs in the area studied. Admittedly, however, no research reflects the current market. For instance, no one has compared how the value of homes in associations have fared versus homes not in associations. Likewise, there is still no data about the relative foreclosure rates in and out of associations.”
Nothing in the article factually supports the title. The one study they cite concluded that an HOA adds 5% to the value of a property. That small difference could easily be eclipsed in HOA fees and additional maintenance costs.
It seems to me to be just a legal way for people to ensure they live near only others “like them”.
This condo association regulated itself straight into bankruptcy when it started to hassle a homeowner who turned out to be a lawyer with some spare time to litigate. Here’s the Post story about it.
Did the rest of the country miss out on the customized truck craze a few years ago? People were spending crazy amounts of money for luxury trucks. You better bet they expected to park them in the driveway of their half million dollar homes.