Random Politics & Religion #00

Any time I think of HOAs, I think of the Neighborhood Watch Alliance from Hot Fuzz.

That is Obama's excuse for everything. For the greater good.

Bwahaha.

No.

Well what is Obama care then ? Isn't that for the greater good ?

That actually is. Or, at least, it's supposed to be. Doesn't really go far enough.

But it's hardly his excuse or reason for everything.

You mean the once Republican plan for handling healthcare that forces you to buy insurance from private vendors as per the book of Capitalism, chapter 7, verse 11?

Essentially it forces everyone into the healthcare scheme. Except the healthcare scheme in America is a serpentine labarynth of *** yous, wordy mumbo jumbo and huge payments.

Yea and how did Obama make it better ?

Who said he did?

Just saying what it was supposed to be was for the "greater good."


But really, you're co-opting the HOA conversation into another boring ACA discussion. Please stop. I'd rather gripe about HOAs and BBQ.

I read that as hoes and BBQ !

I can go either way on HOAs.

If you have a planned community with amenities for its residents such as playscapes, pools and greenbelts, who do you think takes care of those?

Like Mosin mentioned before, vindictive, busy-body neighbors who refuse to speak to the neighbor they are "offended" by are usually the jackasses that make the property managers' lives hell since they're the ones who have to mediate frivolous minutia.

Jassik mentioned the mailbox incident. Was that voted in by the board?

HOAs - proving that you don't need goverment to be overly regulated nonsense.

It's like a suburban lynch mob where a soccer mom van with a shifty eyed "representative" appears on your doorstep with a clipboard demanding you fall in line... lest their be... consequences. *scribbles on pad*

Everyone loves the passive-aggressive game!

Speaking of passive aggressive *looks around P and R * Nope none of that here !

Well, some of us are simply trying to keep the place civil. From those other people who commit to shitting up the place with obvious nonsense.

I'm not gonna call anyone out because they know who they are but sometimes I wish someone would just punch them in the face or hand them bans because they obviously are just bringing down the standards of these forums. But again, I'm just stating an opinion. I'm not picking on anyone specific.

but can you go lasagna?

/elbows foney

Things being civil where is the fun in that ?

I can go my own way cue the song:

you're the one that wanted a dating thread!!!

so.. what!? zahrah's not good enough for you!?

you stuck up *** baked pasta dish

I don't even know who or what Zahrah is !

Taken, and I don't find this remotely funny.

an otter from oregon. jeeeez pay attention dumbass.

edit*

damn it, too slow.

The story actually goes deeper than that. The neighborhood was built in 3 stages between 1991 and 1997. My house being in the newest and largest lot/price category. (the houses range from 2/1 ~1100 sqft to one like mine 4/3 ~2100 sqft) and my stage was when the HOA started. The HOA was put in place with a generic charter by the developer, I'm assuming because it was just expected for a planned development. But, the board when we bought our house consisted of a retired surfer, a bitchy snow bird, and a rental landlord. I am now on the board as well, we have about 120 residences in the HOA.

The mailbox was one of those ambiguously worded clauses like "shall conform to aesthetic of the neighborhood" Which to me means you can't have giant one with flowers all over it. But to the bitchy snow bird meant "exactly the same as everyone else's". I challenged it, won, passed around leaflets about the incident and how she only lives in the neighborhood 3 months a year to the neighborhood, and took her spot on the board when she stepped down. We've since clarified the rules on a lot of things. We also apparently had a standard HOA due, irrespective of the actual cost of the duties of the HOA and had almost 100 grand sitting in an account, so I managed to get dues waved for a year and we lowered them for future years to reflect the actual overhead of what the HOA does.

I'm the first to admit that our HOA does functionally nothing besides police general upkeep of properties and petty complaints about noise. The public spaces in the neighborhood are maintained by a contracted park service and have sprinkler systems, etc. It's just another form of big brother that had a purpose in some situations and has been exploded onto everyone regardless of need or application.

All this sounds like first world problems.

First world problems are still problems. Everyone's gotta live their lives, yo.

No one's claiming that an HOA is pressing their children into child soldiers or anything (though you may wish to read those contracts more closely).

In the 3 or so years we've been here, I've only seen one major case go down and it involved a slumlord and the perpetual train of partying college students he rented his houses to. We ended up reaching a settlement where he had a rental property management company take over in exchange for being allowed to retain ownership. In that case, it was really a situation where his irresponsible actions were resulting in home devaluation and quite a bit of vandalism.

that's not a bad thing to have.

But we have laws for that already when it comes to health, safety, and noise ordinances. They just need to be, you know, enforced.

Giving authority to police that sort of thing to any snooty old busybody with nothing better to do with their time (no offense, Jas) is problematic in and of itself.

Meh. I support the idea of the HOA. But I've never heard any good coming out of them in practice.

so is having old refrigerators out in yards for months at a time!

No, it's one of the few things I can say we do well. We don't get involved in people's choice of landscaping unless it involves a rusting out station wagon. We have a lawn service already contracted, so we will spray weeds or cut grass that's a fire hazard and if it becomes a habitual thing, we bill the homeowner or do a more formal complaint process. The goal of the HOA with me and the "surfer dude" is to protect people's investment and maintain a pleasant living space. The rest we rely on homeowners to use their best judgement. We don't even meet unless there's a large enough complaint to have a hearing, otherwise we just pop messages up on the HOA Facebook page, lol.


100% agree, but the nice thing about the way we deal with it is that the problem can be resolved quickly and informally, when you involve the police, everyone tends to get more agitated and of course fines and arrests happen.