I don=92t know what you mean by =93reasonably modern and reasonably close to civilization=94 but I=92m 22 miles from downtown Los Angeles. That=92s 22 minutes with very little traffic and one hour with heavy traffic. The houses here average about $250.000 and have a large yard. Is that reasonable enough?
How big and how old is the house? How old is the subdivision? When we were looking for a house around here, just about everything from 1980 or so on had a(n) HOA. Our house was built in the early 1970s and in a subdivision new enough to have all underground utilities but old enough to have CC&Rs that did not establish a(n) HOA. We would have liked something a little newer but were determined to have nothing to do with HOAs.
Perce
Houses and Subdivisions very old but no HOA and no CC&R. All utilities including natural gas, sewer, water underground but electric above ground. If you=92re a regular at alt.home.repair then you don=92t care how old your house is.
"Clot" wrote
Chili contests have been held for decades around the country. All the cooking is done outside. Bugs just don't fall from the sky so a tent is not going to help. May even be a fire hazard if a grill flares up. Millions of Americans grill outside under the open sky. .
"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote
I know Florida and CA are overrun with HOAs, but here in New England they are a rarity. I'd never move to a place that has one.
We have HOA , it's called PROPERTY taxes! Only on Condos and townhouses here which is a major ripoff. They must pay $200/hr for the lawnmower guys!
We had one in Vermont but its function was really only to collect money to mow and pay the taxes on some common land. It was usually about $60/year, (about
1% of our property tax), so it wasn't a big deal. Here in Alabama we have an HOA but again, it does nothing. There are some rules the builder put in but no one is around to enforce any of them, and they aren't.
What I hear from family members and friends is that HOAS tend to be worse because their busybodies are not lazy. While municipal governments have more of a tendency to be lazy.
I have yet to hear of municipal governments forbidding people from parking trucks on their driveways, regulating house paint colors and color schemes to such extent as sometimes effectively specifying a particular brand, forbidding people from working on their own cars on their own driveways, forbidding above-ground pools where in-ground pools are allowed, forbidding outdoor solar/wind drying of laundry, or forbidding someone from romantically kissing a date in front of the home before going in for the night.
That gets me thinking that in comparison, NYC is more reasonable despite banning specific breeds of dogs and a cat hybrid, and CA is more reasonable by banning sale of paraboloidal microphones and .50-BMG rifles. That gets harder to enforce, since cops don't tour homes the way I hear HOA busybodies often get to do one way or another. A cop needs a warrant to look for my .50-BMG rifle or my paraboloidal microphone. Heck, my experience is that landlords are not busybodies the way HOA board members are said to be.
One laziness of some municipal governments: Make HOAs responsible for maintenance of the sewer utility (if any) and neighborhood-level/street-level water distribution, local roads, things like that... Make the developer build those and write deeds ordaining existence of an HOA whose duties include in part maintaining these... The municipal government then gets to brag about its taxes being lower... The HOA busybodies get to hire their buddies to do the maintenance on the roads and the under-street water lines and any sewer lines there...
Do enough homeowners that have HOAs go to their HOA meetings to hold to the fire the feet of "that level of government"? So that, for example, road maintenance is performed at a reasonable frequency and to a reasonable extent by the winner of a reasonable competitive bidding process? (Of course, I wish people also held municipal gubmint feet to their respective fires.)
Do enough homeowners who are not "busybodies" run for election to their HOA boards? It's hard enough to get good-honest people to run for municipal, county and state government offices for that matter!
And as much as Americans like to bash lawyers, why do Americans vote for so many of them for state government legislative offices and for both houses of US Congress?
The way I hear it, a condo board is a board of an HOA. As in, condo unit owners are homeowners governed by an HOA. Condo owners have as much right to vote in and run for office in their HOA elections as Mc-mansion owners that bought into their respective HOAs have.
I would rather have a landlord than an HOA. At least my experience so far is that landlords are lazier, and they hire and pay for only enough staff to do what needs to be done, sometimes even less. Their hired help have a tendency to prefer enjoying their evenings and weekends of whatever time-off over making enemies with the tenants. (Though I have known a few to be "Bah-Humbug, bug-off!" - but those in my experience usually don't spy on tenants beyond checking for unreported in-unit plumbing leaks, unreported vermin infestations, unreported sparking-sputtering light switches and electrical fixtures, and similarly serious ilk.)
Cost to the HOA is cost to the homeowners that the HOA has jurisdiction over.
A few posts back, KRW claimed that the HOA is still in place, although I have yet to see a cite of the responsible (or irresponsible) members of the HOA board in question surviving re-election.
I hope the HOA board members in question here get thrown out and land on their kiesters on hard pavement. I hope the homeowners care enough to replace the board members in question at soonest-available election time.
Or are the homeowners that have votes going to be like Philadelphian voters often are - voting for experience over "not being part of the problem", or not lift their rumps on election day and allow the problematic incumbents to be re-elected by themselves, each other and their buddies?
The legal fees incurred by the HOA are the problem of all homeowners governed by the HOA.
I would hope that at soonest-available election time the homeowners replace HOA board members that incurred big-ticket legal fees in court battles poorly chosen by busybody HOA board members.
It appears to me extremely incredible for a 4-year-old to pass through a fire hose (generally 6 inches in diameter or less, usually less) and the nozzle at the end of the fire hose, and to both pass that far and remain being a 4-year-old live human needing only an overnight hospital stay, whether or not also surviving being tossed into a fire worth fighting with a hose and a pump that can pass a 4-year-old child.
I would repeat, "extremely incredible". And I consider such to be so "incredible" that I would like to add a phrase that comes to my mind with such an extreme claim, whether the cited link supports it or (preferably) does not support it: "Credibility problem".
Or does one have a cite for a 4-year-old child being sucked from a pool by firefighting equipment, and afterwards passed by the firefighting equipment to be tossed onto the fire (or scorched property), and needing only an overnight hospital stay with most-notable injuries being
1st-degree burns over 10% of skin area?
I'd turn down a job offer that effectively requires me to move into an an area where my home choice options are effectively limited to ones that have HOAs. (I have heard that such areas in USA do exist.)
Unless the prospective employer can tell me where I can replace an ignition coil or a timing belt in my car close to my home, and where I have complete lack of problem with operating a soldering iron, let alone high power UV lamps of any wavelength or a Class IIIb laser in my living room or my bedroom at any moment that my scaredy-cat boyfriend is somewhere else...
(Unless a career move includes a raise sufficient to rent or otherwise acquire a separate business property for use of UV lamps, Class IIIb lasers, soldering irons, heat guns, maybe a drill press, and-the-like...)
-snip-
You are kind. The word that pops in my head is "bullshit".
The world *is* a very big place, but I'd have to see the cite about the part of the world with such large firehoses, such kind pumps, and such lucky little boys.
Jim
Here in Houston we have HOAs. We also have deed restrictions. Together they cover, oh, I'd say, 1/4 of the residential property in the city.
The rest of the town is "my property, my rules." We don't even have zoning.
We do, however, have other methods of enforcing civility.
A few years ago, Shell bought a corner lot in an uber-ritzy neighborhood with a view toward inserting a gas station. The neighbors objected. They tore up their Shell credit cards. They signed petitions. The neighbors promised war, and war on a Biblical scale...
When Shell got the objections from people in the neighborhood (i.e., ex-Secretary of the Treasury John Connally, Secretary of Commerce Robert Mossbacher, etc.), Shell donated the land to the city for a "pocket park."
"Jim Elbrecht" wrote
The word that popped into my mind was wry humor.
In Florida, HOAs and condos are entirely different animals with their own sets of statutes.
Our condo has attics above the second floor units, some of which were infested with rats years ago. When a renter called city code enforcement folks about animal noises in attic, the inspector determined only that there was a dust-ball in the AC duct. He didn't check the attic.
We had sewer backups three times...our unit is closest to the street, so our commodes backed up first. One time, bad enough that sewage saturated about half the carpet in master bedroom. I called the city, they ran a camera up the sewer line, determined it was "in bad shape" and installed a cleanout at the edge of our property. Condo assn. also did a video; no repair yet. The official name for our code enforcement folks is "Community Response Team"....yep, they respond but they don't do anything.
Now that you mention it--- and after I consider that mm has been posting here a while & I haven't noted any flaming net-nuttiness about previous postings. . . . maybe that was the loud 'zoom' I heard this morning.
Jim [if mm is British that would explain a lot-- I never get their humor]
Sorta depends. I have known bureaucrats to get a bug up their ass about things and, with the police powers available to the government, have made life miserable.
There are a couple that come close. Things like driveways, regulation of colors and in-ground pools have been included in the zoning variances for subdivisions around here. Height is another biggy. And then there are the restrictions on historic houses, but that is more self-inflicted since you have to apply for them or know the status when you buy them.
That is largely self-inflicted, again. You should know the neighborhood busy-bodies and just don't invite them into your house.
Lawyers are the only ones who can take the time off from actually doing work to run.
Florida passed a new condo law in, I believe, 2009, that bans board members from serving on boards if they are in arrears with their maintenance assessment. That would have saved a lot of grief for my condo a few years back. Imagine condo owners wanting and needing repairs, like new roof, and a deadbeat on the board voting it down. It gets really, really nasty. There aren't any professional standards or ethics in my area....
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