I had a house in the suburbs with my ex-wife, in a neighborhood with an unreasonable HOA. We had to replace a leaky roof, and we had to wait 2 weeks for the "architecture committee" to approve our replacing our roof with one of the exact same color and style (and we had to wait because starting without approval would have been a violation).
What amazed me was that the neighborhood was full of tea-party conservatives with "Don't tread on me" bumper-stickers, who were always complaining about government overreach. Yet they ceded the right to even begin repairs on their own house to a bunch of busybodies.
I vowed to avoid HOAs after that experience (except when they are unavoidable, like when owning a townhome).
The irony is that while the HOA was great at delaying needed repairs for cosmetic reasons, they were terrible at keeping out the "undesirables" my ex-neighbors constantly lived in fear of.
Somebody managed to open a half-way house for addiction recovery just down the street from me, and my neighbors were very upset. I think they finally used a regulation preventing more than a handful of unrelated people living together and managed to get the halfway house closed months later.
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I had a house in the suburbs with my ex-wife, in a neighborhood with an unreasonable HOA. We had to replace a leaky roof, and we had to wait 2 weeks for the "architecture committee" to approve our replacing our roof with one of the exact same color and style (and we had to wait because starting without approval would have been a violation).
What amazed me was that the neighborhood was full of tea-party conservatives with "Don't tread on me" bumper-stickers, who were always complaining about government overreach. Yet they ceded the right to even begin repairs on their own house to a bunch of busybodies.
I vowed to avoid HOAs after that experience (except when they are unavoidable, like when owning a townhome).
It's okay to be tread upon if it is a private enterprise, especially if it is a misstep tread from boots actively stomping someone they don't like.
The irony is that while the HOA was great at delaying needed repairs for cosmetic reasons, they were terrible at keeping out the "undesirables" my ex-neighbors constantly lived in fear of.
Somebody managed to open a half-way house for addiction recovery just down the street from me, and my neighbors were very upset. I think they finally used a regulation preventing more than a handful of unrelated people living together and managed to get the halfway house closed months later.