HOAs Strike Again

[kymom99]

I manufacture car parts, I am not a police officer so I do not police society. I have no way of keeping speeds down. It's just a normal neighborhood with normal size roads.

Yeah we have speed limit signs for that.

 

[Christine]

Our HOA does not allow home-based businesses. It's a very general statement; however, they have taken it to just mean home-based businesses that would disrupt the neighborhood. These disruptions basically have to do with noise and car/foot traffic that could disturb any neighbors adjacent to the business.

The HOA did have to force a daycare provider to stop. She was watching up to 15 children (yes, she had assistants so the ratio was good). She had created a path between her house and her backdoor for the parents/children to enter her house. This path took kids/adults (many talking/crying, etc) right next to her neighbor's house wall/bedroom area at 6AM. She then proceeded to have the kids outside all day on her playground. It was like being next to a schoolyard at recess-whistles blowing, kids joyfully yelling for hours, etc. The people on either side and in back of her had enough. So the HOA had to step in and tell her that she could either make noise modifications or close down. Legal battles ensued. In the end, the HOA won.

My financial advisor lives in a neighborhood where this sort of thing is actually enforced by their county (not an HOA). She has a home based consulting business. She is only allowed to book appointments between 9AM and she must finish up by 4PM so as not to have her customers coming and going and taking up street parking during hours when most people are at home trying to find some peace.

 

[dez1978]

I live in an HOA and none of that applies to me either.

I'm really confused why people who say they are anti-HOA seem to think they are all identical and dictate every single thing. That couldn't be further from the truth.

Mine mows common areas, does all snow removal, general area landscaping, and that's about it. They don't dictate anything as far as what your house looks like. So to generalize and say they all do that is ignorant.

The HOAs that are super controlling are the ones that get all the attention so thats what people think of when they think of HOAs. Ones like yours don't make headlines.

 

[RedAngie]

The HOA did have to force a daycare provider to stop. She was watching up to 15 children (yes, she had assistants so the ratio was good). She had created a path between her house and her backdoor for the parents/children to enter her house. This path took kids/adults (many talking/crying, etc) right next to her neighbor's house wall/bedroom area at 6AM. She then proceeded to have the kids outside all day on her playground. It was like being next to a schoolyard at recess-whistles blowing, kids joyfully yelling for hours, etc. The people on either side and in back of her had enough. So the HOA had to step in and tell her that she could either make noise modifications or close down. Legal battles ensued. In the end, the HOA won.

Sometime in the 1990s the people who owned the house four or five away from my parents started a day care business. They built a large addition to the back of the house.

No HOA, but I’m sure they had to get building permits and approval from the township. My parents never had an issue with it, but I don’t know how the immediate neighbors felt.

Someone took it upon themselve to ask for volunteers and donations to maintain the entrance island to the neighborhood. Cutting grass, planting shrubs and flowers, etc. I think my parents gave $100 per year but never did any of the work. There are about 80 homes in the subdivision. Assuming half donated the requested $100, $4000 seems adequate.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Our HOA does not allow home-based businesses. It's a very general statement; however, they have taken it to just mean home-based businesses that would disrupt the neighborhood. These disruptions basically have to do with noise and car/foot traffic that could disturb any neighbors adjacent to the business.

The HOA did have to force a daycare provider to stop. She was watching up to 15 children (yes, she had assistants so the ratio was good). She had created a path between her house and her backdoor for the parents/children to enter her house. This path took kids/adults (many talking/crying, etc) right next to her neighbor's house wall/bedroom area at 6AM. She then proceeded to have the kids outside all day on her playground. It was like being next to a schoolyard at recess-whistles blowing, kids joyfully yelling for hours, etc. The people on either side and in back of her had enough. So the HOA had to step in and tell her that she could either make noise modifications or close down. Legal battles ensued. In the end, the HOA won.

My financial advisor lives in a neighborhood where this sort of thing is actually enforced by their county (not an HOA). She has a home based consulting business. She is only allowed to book appointments between 9AM and she must finish up by 4PM so as not to have her customers coming and going and taking up street parking during hours when most people are at home trying to find some peace.

Ours is similar enough on that. Our governing documents aren't copy and paste enabled but our rule is




I believe the day care reason is likely to keep in mind what your HOA was having to deal with. There are county and then each city can have their rules regarding licensing, permitting, how many children, related vs non, etc so there is rules outside of the HOA on this.

From our governing documents snipped above there's really only 3 things that are cemented in the covenants (highlighted in yellow) with the other rules being a case by case basis (the "may establish rules and regulations" part).

1) No advertising- signs other than garage sale and political signs (only during the legal time period allowable per state law) aren't allowed in general

2) No customers or clients coming and going

3) No child or adult day care

I know there was a brief conversation about time period. Our original HOA covenants were filed with the city and county in 2005 when the neighborhood first started being built. I do think most of the rules like someone else mentioned is designed to keep zoned residential neighborhoods residential.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

The HOAs that are super controlling are the ones that get all the attention so thats what people think of when they think of HOAs. Ones like yours don't make headlines.

True, we've had one in our area that has been in and out of the local news because it's gone through appeals back and forth and the sheer amount (over $1million I believe) and has been going for years now.

The homeowner put up an extensive enough landscape without getting HOA approval. The judge agreed this was the case. The judge also agreed the HOA unfairly targeted this specific homeowner denying a request once it was actually made among a few other frivolous citations furthering the unfairly targeted stance over the years of this homeowner living there plus a prior issue about a satellite dish placement (which the FCC informed the HOA they are legally in the wrong so that issue was dropped). Through the several appeals these two factors have not been disputed, it's the "who pays for the legal fees" that is largely the question. The homeowner was ordered to pay $25K to the HOA by the judge and can keep his landscape project. The unfairly targeted was a big part of the court proceedings, HOAs do have to be careful in how they treat homeowners, it may appear hypothetical to some but these things can appear in court and bite HOAs and homeowners alike.

The judge ruled that both the homeowner and the HOA embroiled themselves in what amounts to a personal battle and that is what people often hear about on HOAs. It is what typically makes the news. So many HOAs are just your average run of the mill sort of things and some do honestly help protect the area's investment (by collecting fighting back against city and/or developers who would ruin an otherwise copacetic neighborhood which has happened several times in my area alone). It's just the ones like I described above that get highly noticeable and it doesn't mean that sometimes the HOA is in the wrong and it doesn't mean that sometimes the homeowners are in the wrong. Not all HOAs are bad, not all HOAs are good. Like I said in a previous comment balance is what you hope for.

 

[MillauFr]

I manufacture car parts, I am not a police officer so I do not police society. I have no way of keeping speeds down. It's just a normal neighborhood with normal size roads.

The best way to reduce speeds isn't by more police enforcement. It is to engineer the road for reduced speeds by narrowing the road and have cars park on both sides.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

The best way to reduce speeds isn't by more police enforcement. It is to engineer the road for reduced speeds by narrowing the road and have cars park on both sides.

That doesn't appear to work on the streets that have cars parked frequently enough in our area, in fact all it seems to do is cause more chaos by congestion, fender benders and decreases the satisfaction of living and it doesn't seem to help speeding either because people are more worried about not being boxed in by inability to have more than one direction of traffic safely.

I can see this being a way of life on streets where there isn't garages and driveways and really the way to park is on the street. There are some areas like that Downtown as well as I can think of where my alma mater is at towards Downtown there or towards the campus area but those are a function of the area. They might be residential roads but they were built before subdivisions were a thing for the most part.

 

[kymom99]

The best way to reduce speeds isn't by more police enforcement. It is to engineer the road for reduced speeds by narrowing the road and have cars park on both sides.

We don’t like cars parked on our street. For the most part it’s not necessary here. And on the rural roads it’s obviously not allowed.

 

[tcufrog]

If you don't have parked cars lining the streets how do you keep speeds down? Are the streets very narrow?

Our streets are wide enough that someone can park on each side and a car can get through. Our neighborhood is huge and we've had problems with speeding on some of the main streets so the HOA bought hidden speed cameras and moves them around periodically. There are signs warning about the cameras. There seems to be less speeding now.

Our neighborhood is one where you bought your lot and chose your own builder so there's a lot of variety in the style of homes even with the HOA rules. Most of the architectural rules are ones that we have no problem with such are requiring privacy fences of a certain standard so they'll last a long time, hail-resistant roofs (we sometimes get softball-size hail), etc. We recently painted our front door teal without any problems. The redesign of our front landscaping and lighting plan was approved within 24 hours.

Since we have such a huge neighborhood with a resident-managed HOA, the HOA has two employees who have an office right outside our neighborhood. They're very helpful at handling questions and concerns. A company manages our payment portal.

Soon after the neighborhood was established, a builder bought a whole bunch of lots that are contiguous and built garden homes. They're so highly sought after by residents when they retire that they never officially go on the market. The residents started having problems with their homes though and were ineffective at pursuing recourse with the builder. Since so many residents were affected, the president of the HOA, who is a lawyer, organized the residents and helped them hire a lawyer who will represent the HOA and the residents affected. I don't know much about the case but from what I've heard, this avenue has been much more successful than the residents individually trying to get it resolved.

I never wanted to live in an HOA neighborhood but we found the perfect house for our unusual needs here. Luckily, the HOA is fabulous and really has the residents' interests at heart.

 

[Colleen27]

I agree with most of your comments but did want to say your examples are kinda what tick people off about HOAs which is inconsistent adherence to the covenants.

Your HOA doesn't allow employees, you covered up your neighbor that did have 1. I don't know if you were on the Board then but that would be favoritism and actively allowing someone to break the rules while on the Board should have had you booted off it. Only when it was messing with parking spaces/cluttering up the road did you see it an issue with someone else doing it.

That goes both ways, though, since the rule is also a very good example of how needlessly nit-picky HOAs can be - residents are allowed a nanny or housekeeper but not an administrative assistant or other employee for the purposes of running a business. There's no material difference between the two; one person is one person, and a nanny is as much employed by the homeowner as an assistant.

The HOAs that are super controlling are the ones that get all the attention so thats what people think of when they think of HOAs. Ones like yours don't make headlines.

I think that's a lot of it. I also think it only takes one bad experience to shade one's perception in a fairly permanent way. My opinion on HOAs has everything to do with a close friend's experience with one when we were all in the marriage-houses-and-babies stage of life. She and her husband bought just before the housing crash in what was being marketed as a "family oriented" HOA neighborhood, with plans for a playground and community pool with splash pad and other as-yet-unbuilt amenities geared toward families with children. But when the housing market went to pieces, the builder pivoted and started marketing to an older target audience. And since the older folks who moved in had more time/desire to be active on the HOA, the rules started changing in very not-family-friendly ways. First no plastic play equipment, then no backyard play equipment at all. The splash pad element of the community pool was dropped and adults-only hours were implemented that severely limited when working parents could take their kids to the pool. The space for the playground became a walking path and butterfly garden. And HOA meetings were moved to the middle of the day, so even if people like my friend had wanted to push back, they'd have had to take off from work to do so. Now, I know that's an unusually extreme example rooted in a perfect storm of conditions and that such a sharp demographic swing in a neighborhood doesn't happen often under more normal circumstances, but it left me (and her - they sold that house, unfortunately at a loss, and moved to an older established neighborhood without a HOA) with a very strong impression of how the simple "majority rules" of an HOA can become a problem even if it doesn't seem to be at the point in time when you buy the house.

 

[MillauFr]

That doesn't appear to work on the streets that have cars parked frequently enough in our area, in fact all it seems to do is cause more chaos by congestion, fender benders and decreases the satisfaction of living and it doesn't seem to help speeding either because people are more worried about not being boxed in by inability to have more than one direction of traffic safely.

Narrowing the street is always going to slow down cars. It might not slow them down enough but it they will go slower than if the street is wide open and free from obstacles. Boxing in cars on residential streets is a good thing. It also prevents cut through traffic.

 

[MillauFr]

We don’t like cars parked on our street. For the most part it’s not necessary here. And on the rural roads it’s obviously not allowed.

Rural areas are different. But in suburban Seattle this is typical street. If you didn't have cars parked on both sides of the street you would have people doing 25 mph +. By parking on both sides and narrow down the cross section it keeps people to 10 to 15 mph.

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.544...4!1s063XDkG6pLFlGcowSlCKLw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

 

[tvguy]

Ours is similar enough on that. Our governing documents aren't copy and paste enabled but our rule is

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I believe the day care reason is likely to keep in mind what your HOA was having to deal with. There are county and then each city can have their rules regarding licensing, permitting, how many children, related vs non, etc so there is rules outside of the HOA on this.

From our governing documents snipped above there's really only 3 things that are cemented in the covenants (highlighted in yellow) with the other rules being a case by case basis (the "may establish rules and regulations" part).

1) No advertising- signs other than garage sale and political signs (only during the legal time period allowable per state law) aren't allowed in general

2) No customers or clients coming and going

3) No child or adult day care

I know there was a brief conversation about time period. Our original HOA covenants were filed with the city and county in 2005 when the neighborhood first started being built. I do think most of the rules like someone else mentioned is designed to keep zoned residential neighborhoods residential.

Childcare and adultcare are an interesting legal challenge. My subdivision was started in 1976, no mention in our C.C& R.s about them specifically, just no home based businesses. Our street is a quarter mile long and was extended to the west in 1985 and those homes are different rules, no idea about the prohibitions. But there are two care homes that were put into existing homes in that portion of the street. One is for disabled adults, the other for the elderly. They can have no more than 6 residents. The location of the one with the disabled adults is right on the corner with the main street in. The medical transport vans often block your view getting out onto the main road, so I suspect someone has complained. But having placed my mom in one of these facilities 10 years ago a few blocks away and having talked to the owner, state law in California gives high priority to these facilities. She had issues with her neighbors when she was converting the house she bought into a Residential Care Facility for the Elderly, but in the end, State Regulators told the neighbors that having these type facilities in residential areas was a high priority. They did require the owner to do certain things to maintain a fire lane and parking that did not impact neighbors, but it was clear, they were going to allow the facility to be built.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Childcare and adultcare are an interesting legal challenge. My subdivision was started in 1976, no mention in our C.C& R.s about them specifically, just no home based businesses. Our street is a quarter mile long and was extended to the west in 1985 and those homes are different rules, no idea about the prohibitions. But there are two care homes that were put into existing homes in that portion of the street. One is for disabled adults, the other for the elderly. They can have no more than 6 residents. The location of the one with the disabled adults is right on the corner with the main street in. The medical transport vans often block your view getting out onto the main road, so I suspect someone has complained. But having placed my mom in one of these facilities 10 years ago a few blocks away and having talked to the owner, state law in California gives high priority to these facilities. She had issues with her neighbors when she was converting the house she bought into a Residential Care Facility for the Elderly, but in the end, State Regulators told the neighbors that having these type facilities in residential areas was a high priority. They did require the owner to do certain things to maintain a fire lane and parking that did not impact neighbors, but it was clear, they were going to allow the facility to be built.

I actually don't disagree with you on that insofar that it's a tricky situation. Our city has ordinances regarding adult home care and child home care but what is allowable in our state is the HOA can fine you for in violation of the covenants.

It's treated as two different things:

1) Illegal activity (city, county, state)
2) HOA related rules

It's the same thing for things like parking on the street for so many hours without moving or the length of the grass. The HOAs have the ability to be stricter than the state, city or county but their limitation is fine/violation related vs criminal situations although situations like things that are considered trespassing, etc can become criminal matters. The city can fine your grass (and has according to disgruntled people on Nextdoor) but it's through the legal system at that point vs an HOA fine is not through that..well until you have such situations contained within the OP.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

That goes both ways, though, since the rule is also a very good example of how needlessly nit-picky HOAs can be - residents are allowed a nanny or housekeeper but not an administrative assistant or other employee for the purposes of running a business. There's no material difference between the two; one person is one person, and a nanny is as much employed by the homeowner as an assistant.

I agree with you but as I stated later on most of that would be related to commercial vs residential. A person who has a nanny or housekeeper isn't running a nanny or housekeeping business.

My point really was if the rules in the covenant state there can't be any employees that's an issue with how the covenant was written IF your primary concern is clogging up the street what's one vehicle? Nothing really. So in terms of the rules for the PP they don't really appear to be written to prevent clogging up the street, it sounds much more like most HOAs in terms of not wanting a commercial business ran out of a residential home. Now they could draw the line of not more than one or two employees while maintaining largely a residential area especially if the HOA did things like cap how many homes within it could do it which would allow for a tad bit of leniency without creating a mass chaos in terms of street parking. Our neighborhood is planned for up to 700 homes it's quite large and people here and there aren't going to be a big issue in the grand scheme (that's just giving an example for my neighborhood).

I haven't truly said I was for or against the PP's rule but rather pointing out why people get miffed at HOAs or the concept of them. The example given doesn't help in that case since it showed a clear issue with fair and consistent adherence to the rules.

 

[Genie+]

Nothing at all good about an HOA. If you're not paying my taxes and mortgage payment, you have no business as a neighbor who owns other property than mine to tell me what to do.

It depends what a potential home buyer is looking for.

Might be attractive for someone who previously lived in a neighborhood of obnoxious incessant barking dogs, owners that rarely cleaned up droppings, with properties turned into junkyards, or in an area that had a crazy amount of traffic unrelated to those who lived there. Could be worth the tradeoff for some people. Read the contract carefully and get the inside scoop before buying.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Narrowing the street is always going to slow down cars. It might not slow them down enough but it they will go slower than if the street is wide open and free from obstacles. Boxing in cars on residential streets is a good thing. It also prevents cut through traffic.

Maybe in your experience but I'm just trying to give information for mine. It really doesn't slow down vehicles. Even those monstrous speed hills or dips built into the road people still sorta plow through them although I'm sure their cars take a beating. Doesn't seem to help on cut through traffic either. At least in our area cut through traffic is either due to distance the road is (meaning it's less out of your way than the other roads) or traffic on the main big roads. Having a narrow street with double parking on both sides doesn't really alleviate these factors. It's basically much more of a hassle than worth.

There's a difference in creating pathways for cars that take the strain out of other really busy roads and creating more of a mess and more disruption and dissatisfaction.

 

[Lilias]

I have a fun HOA story!

Our first house came with an above-ground pool. We decided to take a peak inside it one day to gauge how much work it would take to fix up. The cover disintegrated as soon as we touched it and boy was that pool BAD. Green, full of frogs. Terrible. We were young and completely overwhelmed by it and decided to just deal with it later.

A month or so later we finally drained it, but then the pool liner ripped. It officially became too expensive/tiresome to deal with and we just left it and would deal with it before we moved (which we were planning to do soonish). We lived on a hill, so the neighbors surrounding us could see it even though our backyard had a pretty tall fence.

We got a letter from the HOA telling us we had about 10 days to completely fix the pool (that was fenced in) because it was a health hazard (even though it was empty at this point). The next door neighbor's kids would jump everyone's fences constantly to get their balls, so I assumed it was them who complained. Two weeks was definitely not enough time to fix this beast, and also we couldn't afford it at the time. This was our second "offense" (we let our grass get too tall during a really hot summer previously), so it seemed like a "do this or you're homeless" kind of situation.

SO we burned the whole thing to the ground, lol.

I'll never forget the smell Or how tall the flames got.

 

[tvguy]

I actually don't disagree with you on that insofar that it's a tricky situation. Our city has ordinances regarding adult home care and child home care but what is allowable in our state is the HOA can fine you for in violation of the covenants.

It's treated as two different things:

1) Illegal activity (city, county, state)
2) HOA related rules

It's the same thing for things like parking on the street for so many hours without moving or the length of the grass. The HOAs have the ability to be stricter than the state, city or county but their limitation is fine/violation related vs criminal situations although situations like things that are considered trespassing, etc can become criminal matters. The city can fine your grass (and has according to disgruntled people on Nextdoor) but it's through the legal system at that point vs an HOA fine is not through that..well until you have such situations contained within the OP.

Yeah, I ran into an issue years ago when the County started requiring a permit for residential burglar alarms. The ordinance banned exterior sirens, requiring bells only. My C.C&R's banned bells, and only allowed sirens. I was denied a permit because I had a siren. My alarm had been installed years before the permits were required. Took 6 months, alarm agency kept denying my permit but finally it got to the County Counsel who told the board that C.C& R's trump ordinances.