MoH winner to be sued for Flagpole

[Crazed Rabbit]

I detest homeowner's associations.

CR

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I detest homeowner's associations.

CR

I don't know much about buying houses, but surely he could have found a place that didn't come with a homeowners association?

I think the "nice neighborhood" look is silly, but he wanted to live there.

[Reverend Joe]

I detest homeowner's associations.

CR

Indeed. I guess I can see it Tincow's way, in that he is in violation of the contract and the HA has an interest in keeping everything uniform. But on the other hand, Homeowner's Associations can be really bad for neighborhoods. For example, my family moved into a neighborhood that was later taken over by something similar to a homeowner's association, called the *insert street name here* Historical Society. The Historical Society then proceeded to stop people from doing things like putting up artificial siding that, in addition to being much better for a house than wooden siding, is indistinguishable from the real thing (I'm not talking about the older stuff that people put up on cheap houses decades ago; I've seen real siding and this stuff, and believe me, it looks completely real.) Their reasoning? It wasn't historical or aesthetically pleasing. So they would rather have houses with old rotting wooden siding falling off the walls and destroying the property value, aesthetic appeal and overall structural integrity of the houses than a perfectly good-looking house that will last decades longer just because it requires artificial siding. And it gets worse: people have complained about not being allowed to cut down old, rotting trees that are a serious danger to their house and their neighbor's houses because the Historical Society wants to preserve the historical appeal of the neighborhood.

You can argue that these people could just move to another neighborhood. But that requires them to be able to move to another house, and that's just not something most people can do whenever they please. So much for a man's house being his castle.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Can neighborhoods really be taken over by a HOA? I don't see how that works.

[Major Robert Dump]

Typically, the group who is ultimately in charge of the HOA (ie board of directors, not elected reps) are the people who owned the land where the houses were built and membership in the HOA was required up front before building the houses.

In other words, a HOA who pops up in your neighborhood years and years after it is built is not going to have much power.

However, if me, joe snuffy and jane doe own 48 acres and decide to subdivide and allow people to buy lots and build houses if they agree to abide by the HOA chaired by us for our wonderful neighborhood XXXXX, then by god you are stuck, because even tho u own the lot, the roads, sidewalks, pool and everything else belongs to us.

HOAs are most common in fenced communities and areas with roads that are not kept by the city

The people who really get screwed are the folks who move into the home as the 2nd, 3rd owners, etc, and may not realize what they are getting in to, as the previous owners whitewashed the situation so they could GTFO

It also means if the original owners of the subdivided property, me, jane and joe, go bankrupt and lose our assets and have to skip town, that the bank who forecloses us is now the HOA because they won the rights to our little enclave.

beautiful, eh?

[KukriKhan]

I'm in an HOA neighborhood. I flew the American flag, attached to my house. Three times it got ripped off, pole and all. So I applied for permission to erect a 15 foot flagpole on my tiny lawn, so I could fly the colors in a place less accessable to passers-by (yard is fenced). Denied. Appealed. Denied.

Last month, I suggested/threatened to paint the street-facing front of my house as a giant American flag. Silence. I'm still thinking about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the CCR's may grant the Board the power of denial all nice and legal. And I'm not a Medal of Honor winner. But it's a crappy way to treat a vet, in the OP's story.

I'm running for the board next spring.

-edit-

Maybe to make a point, he should set up lots of little flag poles, with the Iranian Flag, North Korean Flag, USSR Flag etc, just out of badness

the rebel in me likes this idea.

[Subotan]

I detest real estate in general. Speculators, landlords, most estate agents, and all the other types who buy houses as an "investment" artificially inflate the price of land, and deny first time buyers; i.e. everyone under 30 from being able to own their own house. Why should Bob own three houses when he only lives in one, just because he happens to have been alive when a property bubble started?