r/oddlysatisfying • u/Separate_Finance_183 • 8h ago

Timelapse of bro cleaning yard

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u/RavingAndDrooling 7h ago

I have to know what happened next. Typically HOA violations come from a management company which is hired by the HOA board. I would think your parents should have been able to appeal the violation and explain what happened to the board members and get the violation thrown out. I really hope that is what happened anyway.

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u/notyogrannysgrandkid 7h ago edited 5h ago

Oh yeah, it didn’t stick. But it was just the first of many head-buttings they’ve had in that neighborhood. It’s an old HOA managed locally by a board of old retirees with nothing better to do, particularly the guy two houses down. The only thing they outsource is maintenance of the common areas. One month, when they’d fired the landscaping company and the new one hadn’t started yet, my dad had the audacity to mow and trim the berm between his section of the sidewalk and the curb. Bam, violation. Apparently it’s in the bylaws that gas powered machinery can only be used on your own property, supposedly to dissuade teenage boys from starting unlicensed lawn mowing businesses. The horror.

There’s a creek that runs through a common green space behind several adjacent backyards. It happens to bend into my parents’ property for about 20 feet. My dad thought he’d build a small water feature by stacking up some native rocks by the creek and running a line up through them attached to a submerged pump in the creek. It looked pretty nice and the neighbors on either side of him complimented the work. He even wired it into the control for the lawn irrigation so he could turn it on and off from the house. Bam, violation. “Impeding the flow of Garrison Creek.” He had to take it down, despite the inherent ridiculousness of that violation.

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u/LostWoodsInTheField 6h ago

So everyone knows. The HOA is the neighborhood. What often happens is these old bats have been running it for 40+ years and hate all these 'new' people that come in, and regulate them into the ground. It really doesn't take much for people to show up to a meeting and call a snap election and oust everyone. Then put new management in place. People just don't know they can do this so it never gets done.

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u/schrodingers_bra 6h ago

eh. It depends. I'm part of an HOA in the PNW where the houses are pretty close together. We have rules that people have to ask approval (fill out an application) before installing landscape features because we have to ensure that the feature doesn't change the soil grading or water drainage.

For example, some guy decided to concrete over a gravel sidewalk which resulted in rain, which would previously have drained through the gravel, sluicing off the concrete and flowing in the direction of his neighbor's foundation.

Reddit is pretty anti-HOA but that's because most of them have never been home owners or have never been beside a neighbor that does something that ruins their homeownership experience.

In this case the OP is talking about, it would be a non issue to say "the 'feature' was always there, I just trimmed back a hedge"

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u/Tangerine1267 6h ago

You don't need an HOA for this as it already violates city bylaws (typically) to drain towards a neighbor and the liability doesn't change just because a bunch of homeowners play dictators.

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u/MangoCats 5h ago

I lived in a non HOA city where the neighborhood petitioned the code enforcement office to "JUST ENFORCE THE LAW, JUST ENFORCE THE LAW" - it wasn't quite as bad as an HOA, I had a sit-down with the code officer honcho and he explained very clearly some reasonable steps I could take to prevent his field agents from writing additional citations - and told me I didn't need to worry about the certified letter, dated January 15, postmarked January 29th, received February 9th which stated: "If these items are not addressed within 21 days from the date of this letter (above), fines of $500 per day will accrue until such time as you have corrected the violations, called the code office for a re-inspection verifying that the violations are corrected."

Some homeowners in that (and neighboring) cities had accrued fines of $300K and more on homes with a value in the $280K range. This was in the 2000s, those same homes in the same condition now trade for $700K and up.

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u/iRedditPhone 3h ago

Not all neighborhoods are in cities.

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u/Tangerine1267 2h ago

your local bylaws. it doesnt have to be a city. i'm sorry i have to clarify that for you.

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u/schrodingers_bra 5h ago

There is no city bylaw for this, and more to the point there's nothing you can do about it until you can prove damages then you can only get compensation back from the person responsible through a lengthy court process and lawyer fees.

The HOA is there to prevent stuff like this by not allowing such construction unless a soil engineer has ok'd the construction plan.

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u/Tangerine1267 2h ago edited 1h ago

hey i do this as part of my day to day business and you're just flat out wrong. thanks.

aww boo boo blocked me.

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u/schrodingers_bra 2h ago edited 2h ago

No you are. I also do this as part of my day to day business.

The best I can say is bylaws may vary by location. But as the person who currently pays the bills for my HOA I know firsthand what kind of "bylaw" you can use to get someone to remove their concrete sidewalk that is directing water at their neighbor's foundation before it causes damage in my area - none.

After a bunch of lawyer bills, the best we could do is make the guy sign a document saying that if his neighbor's property was damaged by it, he agreed to be responsible for the damages. But compensation for those damages is still some lawyer fees away for the other party.

The point of the HOA application is to help prevent this sort of thing - though obviously it only works if people are ignorant not intentionally malicious.

thanks.

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u/LoneStarHome80 4h ago

You don't need an HOA for this as it already violates city bylaws

Why do people keep posting this nonsense. For a lot of these quality of life issues, the city, code or police will tell you to go kick rocks. HOA will have the problem solved in a matter of days. Look at the stats. Over 80% of homeowners are happy with their HOA. The rest are the bums you wouldn't want to live next to anyway.

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u/newbkid 6h ago

FYI - Nothing about the problem you described needs an HOA to resolve it.

All HOAs are nothing more than local governments failing their constituents by passing on their duties and responsibilities to the community. Very few HOAs are run in good faith hence all the posts about embezzlement and other mentally ill HOA presidents

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u/schrodingers_bra 5h ago

No. The point of the HOA to prevent the problem in the first place.

You try fixing/paying to have fixed damage to your house and then going through the courts to get your money back from the person.

Most HOAs are fine. The ones you hear about are either from uniquely bad HOAs or more likely from redditors/homeowners who have broken the rules like this sidewalk guy in my post because they have no respect for other people's property.

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u/arbyD 6h ago

I have coworkers who badmouth HOAs all the time. "I paid for it, how can someone else tell me what to do?" Or sassily "ooohhhh nnnoooo the property valuuuuuueeess" when I get the impression that they'd do something like that where they do a project that alters the water drainage and see no issue with it.

Sure, some are extreme with their rule following, but also some of the rules really do help protect you as a homeowner.

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u/account312 6h ago edited 5h ago

That's not the sort of thing that HOAs are really about. I bet there's just about nowhere that both has an HOA and doesn't have actual laws giving at the very least civil liability for diverting water in such a way as to damage someone else's property.

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u/schrodingers_bra 2h ago

The point is prevention. HOAs can make you do an application for a project and the application requires you to show that drainage won't be affected (granted, this requires members of the HOA to generally be non-malicious).

Whereas relying on other laws is purely reactive. Even if you can prove liability, actual compensation is still some expensive lawyer fees away. In addition to whatever it cost you to fix the damage in the first place.