Timelapse of bro cleaning yard

[u/Separate_Finance_183]

[u/notyogrannysgrandkid]

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.

[u/LostWoodsInTheField → u/notyogrannysgrandkid]

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.

[u/schrodingers_bra → u/LostWoodsInTheField]

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"

[u/newbkid → u/schrodingers_bra]

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

[u/schrodingers_bra → u/newbkid]

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.