Expect the usual suspects to make a big deal about this story:
Before David Kelley went to Iraq, he bought his wife a “Support Our Troops” sign to display outside the couple’s home in the Westchase subdivision.
When Kelley, an Army private, went overseas in November, Stacey Kelley posted the sign outside their home. For her, the sign is a daily reminder of the sacrifice her husband and fellow soldiers are making.
But officials of Westchase, in northwest Hillsborough County, view the sign differently. They say the 2-foot-high sign violates community rules. Stacey Kelley, 24, received a letter from the homeowners association last month stating she could be fined $100 a day if she does not remove the sign.
“I’ve been crying and everything since I got that,” she said. “It’s ridiculous that no one can even show their support.”
Look- I think Homeowner’s Associations are evil- I would never buy a house or live in a community that has one. I think they are the equivalent of a neighborhood Stasi, and if someone tried to tell me what to do with my property I would probably end up in jail for inserting my foot in their nether regions.
But the simple fact of the matter is they live in one of these communities and there are rules. Most likely, the people in charge of the association will back down now that there has been all this controversy. But if they don’t, they would be within their rights, no matter how much I detest them.
Krista
Those Homeowners’ Associations are simply drunk on power. I really doubt that this is political. Many of them don’t allow clotheslines, or certain paint colours, or birdbaths, or anything that makes a house look like actual people live there. Malvina Reynolds had no idea how bad it would become, did she?
Steve
My father ran for a spot on the board of our condo association just to try and introduce some common sense into this nuttiness. I think he was mostly successful but he found it pretty hard constantly arguing with people who think the world ends if your aluminum siding isn’t painted precisely the correct shade of tan.
Rules are rules, but in a common-sense world everyone would agree that an exception should be made for a soldier’s wife who wants to display a “Support Our Troops” sign. I personally find it depressing that some right-wingers have made “support the troops” into a partisan slogan to be thrown in the faces of liberals, rather than a basic sentiment that we can all agree on.
Ancient Purple
HOA’s are notoriously evil on both sides. After 9-11, an HOA in Phoenix was citing homeowners for flying the American flag too much. I kid you not.
HOA’s are the Devil. Two cases come to mind:
1) A woman in suburban Phoenix had her home almost foreclosed upon because she was not making her association dues payments. But, it was because she was in hospital for long term oncology care. Thankfully, a judge stopped that nonsense.
2) A couple owned a home in Scottsdale. It was on a large acreage of property that abutted a subdivision with an HOA. The couple decided to paint their house a muted yellow. The HOA went to court to force the couple (who were not part of the HOA) to repaint their home a color approved by the HOA. The court smacked down the HOA hard and the judge all but told the board to resign.
HOA’s are the Devil.
Repeat: HOA’s are the Devil.
Jorge
John,
I actually live in Westchase here in Tampa. It is a huge planned community with many subdivisions, a town square, two shopping areas and about 10,000 people. The board is tough as nails. There is a good chance they won’t back down.
The President of the board is a reservist and Iraq war vet. His argument is that if they allow the woman to put up a sign supporting the troops then they’d have to allow people to put up signs protesting the war. What I could see happening is a community wide referendum to change the rules to allow for certain kinds of patriotic signage.
Don
Everybody loves to go into a full-tilt bitchfest when these HOAs step on something they like but they’re sure happy to move into their cookie-cutter communities when it’s other people’s individuality that’s being reined in. I wonder how many of these people who are unhappy with the board’s actions and policing even know when their board meets? Everyone gets the government they deserve, even at the community level.
Faux News
Correct as is John’s quote about HOA’s being the Stasi. I am very grateful not to live in an HOA. I do have friends who made that mistake. They tell me that literally several times a day the Senior Citizen Stasis walk throughout the development with clipboards in their hands looking for the slightest violation. They got a nastygram for parking one of their cars on the street in front of their house, rather than in the driveway.
Glad to know these Q-Tips (seniors)are doing vital and important work like that rather than mentoring or tutoring some of the local kids. Without these brave Q Tips to enforce the rules the terrorists would win.
Lines
Maybe if she told everyone else that they wern’t clapping loud enough and as a result the war was going to end in defeat, she might be taken as seriously as Instahack.
Nikki
Why can’t she hang the sign inside her house?
Lines
Because then people wouldn’t know she’s clapping, Nikki. Tinkerbell would die!
Mr Furious
Where’s Sean Hannity or Rush to pick up the tab for that woman’s fines? She gets to keep her sign up, they get to pat themselves on the back. That’s sounds like cheap publicity for them…
Nikki
Lines, I’da thought photos of her husband would be a more appropriate reminder of his sacrifice, but you are probably right. It has to be the Tinkerbell syndrome.
Krista
And that, boys and girls, is why I’m glad I live in the country. Mind you, some people go too far in the other direction…there are more than a few people around here with not one, not two, but three or more dilapidated (sp?), falling-down barns, rusted old farm junk in their yards, and the odd car-without-tires sitting somewhere in the middle of their fields.
Oh well. At least they mind their own business and let me mind mine.
John S.
I’m not a huge fan of my Homeowner’s Association, but I’m glad it is there. Mostly because it stops assholes from doing strange shit that I don’t want to live next to, like painting there house bubble-gum pink or constructing a moat filled with pirhana in their front yard.
I guess it’s the communal aspect of an Association that infuriates a “libertarian” such as yourself, John, but I’m glad the thought of having to peacefully co-exist with your neighbors offends you so much that you will stay out of any neighborhood I would live in.
Mr.Ortiz
My mother got sued by her HOA for having the wrong color trim on her garage. It was pale yellow instead of white, I believe. Funny thing is, she never painted it. That’s what color it was when she bought the place.
What really gets under my skin is how passive-aggressive they are. No phone calls or visits, just impersonal notes followed by legal threats. Some “neighbors”.
Mr.Ortiz
I should add, the HOA knew my mother wasn’t living in that house at the time, but made no attempt to contact her where she could actually be reached. Her first notice of the entire debacle was when she got served with legal papers. She was able to prove in court that they knew she wasn’t living there, and knew how to get in touch with her so, if I recall correctly, the judge threw the whole thing out and made the HOA pay my mother’s legal fees. None of it affected me personally, but damn that was satisfying.
SeesThroughIt
Oh, I fully expect Sean Hannity to be setting up shop in the woman’s front yard so he can broadcast from there. And I’m only half-joking. This is exactly the kind of nonpolitical political porn that Hannity jerks off to nightly.
Amen to this, Steve. It’s rather sad that this is what passes for wisom and patriotism in the right wing. Kinda speaks to their own shallowness and insecurity.
ZING!
canuckistani
I live in downtown Toronto, with a few nearby neighbours who have made their homes into weird and eccentric pieces of art. No HOA would ever allow it, and I’m glad to live in an interesting and vibrant community. If my neighbour wanted a bubblegum pink house, I’d help him paint it for the price of a beer. And you know what? It is a friendly and peaceful community, and it doesn’t depend on the colour of our garage trim. I’m with John. I don’t want to live where it takes lawyers to hammer you into a community.
Kimmitt
HOAs are, in fact, the devil. Live by the insane terror of the outside world, die by the insane terror of the outside world.
Steve
Yeah, well, there’s a middle ground, that most Homeowners’ Assocations utterly fail to find.
Krista
Steve – Bingo.
canuckistani – your neighbourhood sounds delightful! It sounds like some of those great communities in Newfoundland where the homes come in an assortment of jelly-bean shades. I can see people wanting for their neighbours to have a tidy and presentable yard, and to keep their place painted, but a lot of these newer suburban neighbourhoods are just horrible. My sister lives in one. Every single house is gray siding, taupe siding, slate blue siding,white siding, or brick. A friend of hers moved nearby, and they decided to get a pale, sunny yellow siding on their house. Well, you would have thought that they had painted obscene symbols all over the walls. I’ve never heard so much bitching and moaning over something so inconsequential.
Paddy O'Shea
Who in God’s name would want to live in a neighborhood like that? When I was a kid there was this middle-aged fellow whose wife used to make him carry a roll of toilet paper when he was out walking the dog. All so he could wipe the cur’s ass after it crapped.
Neoghborhoods like the one described here remind me of that guy. He later died of a heart attack, which leads me to believe that perhaps he had a lot of inner turmoil.
BIRDZILLA
She should take those jackasses in that HOME OWNERS ASSOCIATION to court for violating her freedom of expression she should be able to sue these idiots for everthing their worth and put them out in a place where thier ilk is more appreciated like SAN FRANCISCO
Tony Alva
None of you guys have any idea what it is you are talking about with this issue and I find for the first time I am in complete disagreement with John on this one.
My wife and I built our first home in a subdivision here in Atlanta with the intent to live in it for a long time. It is a covenant guarded community with restrictions that happen to be very reasonable. Basically, cut your grass, don’t paint your house wild colors, make repairs to the place when needed, etc… Following the first five years (after some turnover from original owners some who turned it over to renters), the neighborhood was noticeably sliding. I reluctantly volunteered for a seat on the board since nobody else would do it and became instantly engaged in the battle, not to restrict my neighbor’s freedom, but to preserve my property value. It is not about people wanting to do exotic things with their property (that makes up less than 1% of the issues I dealt with) it’s about the assholes who buy a fucking house and refuse to buy a lawnmower (the other 99%).
Maybe you guys all live in stable real estate markets in cities that aren’t experiencing as much rapid growth as Atlanta, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that if you lived here, you’d want to live in a covenant guarded community or you’d be putting your equity at serious risk. All you folks who contend that you wouldn’t mind if your neighbor painted his house bubblegum pink, or refused to cut his grass would ALL reconsider this foolish thinking the minute you put your house on the market, or certainly shortly there after when you found out that nobody wanted to buy it. I’m all for live and let live until is negatively affects the value of my property.
Of course, living in “the country” is one way to live a peaceful libertarian existence until the ‘burbs move in. I moved here 14 years ago from NY and what was once a rural farm house has a gas station and convenient store next to it now.
Based on my experience as I try to keep from bailing out of a house that I dearly love is that Atlanta must be a unique market since home price are still very reasonable. This is has an ugly unfortunate downside. That being that since just about anybody can afford to buy a house here, homeownership is a devalued aspect of life. I never saw people treat their home and property with such carelessness and disregard back up in New York. Maybe it’s because you actually have to earn and save for a long time before homeownership is within grasp up there. If it’s here in Atlanta, you can bet the next home we buy will be one in a neighborhood with a Nazi like association.
Steve
Yeah, well, obviously we all live in caves and are just faking it.
Ancient Purple
Nonsense. I live in Phoenix, the 5th largest city in America. It is the second fastest growing city in the U.S. (behind Las Vegas/Henderson, NV). I live in the Arcadia district that has one of the highest property value increase rates in the Phoenix metro area.
Guess what? No HOA’s except for a few tiny subdivisions accounting for less than 3 or 4 percent of the total homes in the district.
For every HOA you can show me that has “preserved” the value of a house, I can show you an non-HOA area where real estate is appreciating at an astronomical rate, regardless of the bright pink house one block over.
Anon for this
Silver Spring MD (Montgomery County)here. To be candid, shove it up your ass you pathetic scared white man. Our property values are soaring and so are the taxes. My working class neighborhood has no HOA complete with fences and rent a cops.It is racially/ethnically mixed (Orthodox Jews and African immigrants for example). Some of the homes that look a little worn out (negatively impacting my property value) happen to be occupied by the owners who have lived there for literally over 50 years. That sometimes happens when you are over 80 and still own your home. Go hide behind your gate, close your curtains and shiver as “those people” are making your property values go down.
Mike S
One of my favorite X-Files episode was the one where a monster killed anyone who did not comply with every single CC&R of the HOA. I think there are probably a number of HOA board members who could go along with thatpunishment.
Otto Man
I lived in Atlanta for four years in the late ’90s, and knew quite a few real estate folks working in the area. As they told it, the hot areas for new homeowners who were looking to make money on their investment were places without HOAs, like Midtown, Ansley Park, Virginia Highlands, East Atlanta, Grant Park, etc. One realtor friend used to refer to the suburban HOA areas as places where money and diversity went to die. (My sister lived in a HOA subdivision in Marietta, and I’d have to agree.)
I know argument by anecdote is a weak approach, but since you’ve opened the door, I had a friend who bought a condo near Piedmont Park and made a killing reselling it in 2001, and another who purchased a home in Buckhead for 250K in 1997 and resold it for 320K four years later.
Otto Man
Not just regardless of the pink house, but sometimes because of it. Most real estate folks see artists and their kind — the people you might expect to paint a house pink or otherwise break out of the conformist mold — as the first wave in a gentrifying community, with gay couples and yuppies close behind. Aesthetics aside, that kind of visible non-conformity is generally taken as a sign that a neighborhood’s on the rise, not in decline.
Tony Alva
If houses are appreciating at an “astronomical” rate I’ll bet the bank that there aren’t any houses colored bright pink to worry about. You think I’m making this shit up? You think I actually wanted to serve on our HOA board? It was the most miserable activity I’ve ever participated in next to eating brussel sprouts My neighborhood is 12 years old for cripes sake. Not five years ago most houses were well maintained, now they are not. We lost 3% of resale value in our subdivision in the last two years. Other subdivisions in our price range have experienced the same, at least the ones with weak associations.
Price points may have some factor in the Atlanta situation as well, but don’t take my word for it, ask anyone you may know here in this area living in a less than $200K house and they will assuredly vouch for all I’ve said.
I wouldn’t even go so far as to say that our HOA has been “successful” either. I think at best all they/we’ve done is hold off a complete slide for a couple of years at best. Here in Atlanta metro area a subdivision can turn in two years without something like HOA pressure to keep things in order. Maybe Phoenix doesn’t share these problems because there’s no grass to mow . Unless you lived in a situation where you’ve had to experience your neighborhood take a slide like this, I’d be real careful about shooting arrows at those who are willing to take action to stop it. I’m just trying to keep adding myself to the many so called white flighters. Cut your fucking grass and don’t paint your house pink. Is that really too much to ask?
Perry Como
Back where I grew up, mowing the grass was a city ordinance. As far as someone painting a house pink, it sounds like another “right to not be offended” issue.
HOAs sound like a great way to do some real life trolling. Study the bylaws and do the most obnoxious thing possible that’s not covered. Rinse and repeat every time they are changed.
Nikki
My mom’s house has been painted pink since the 70s (‘coz she bought the least expensive paint she could find). The neighbors use it as a landmark when they are giving directions. Hooray for no HOAs.
canuckistani
Since I live in my house as a home and not an investment, increased property values mean nothing to me except increased property taxes. Nonetheless, the value keeps going up, in spite of living close to the Cork House, the Elephant House and the Temple. Or perhaps, because of, as Otto Man points out. The nice houses are full of doctors and lawyers, and the ramshackle houses with uncut grass are full of students and artists, and that’s fine with me.
Tony, you need to sell now while the lawns are still cut, because you can’t stop a neighbourhood from declining with threats of lawsuits. And I think your neighbourhood will be better with cared-for pink houses than unloved beige ones. Diversity and distinctiveness are good things.
demimondian
The demi-mansion has never conformed to the local paint-coloration standards. However, to our chagrin, every time we’ve picked a new color scheme, several houses in the balance of the neighborhood have said “Just like [that one]” to the next painter.
The Other Steve
Oh good God…
Why doesn’t the woman get herself a Blue Star Service Banner from the American Legion like what you normally do. Why the stupid sign? Why break with a long standing American tradition? Especially with something so tacky.
What’s her address? I’ll order one for her myself.
The Other Steve
I live in a townhouse community with a HOA, and generally speaking I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
The only time I ever had a problem with a HOA, it wasn’t the HOA so much as nosey fucking neighbors. (My guess is they were Republicans)
Ancient Purple
You’re right. The house down the end of the block is actually lavendar and the one behind me is sunshine yellow, but what’s a few bold colors amongst friends.
Plenty of grass here to mow in Phoenix. Desert grasses are quite abundant.
But we have had our share of bad neighbors and those that won’t tend their lawns get a visit from city or county officials. You can’t let citrus fruit rot in your yards (to prevent rats). You can’t allow water to stand in puddles on your property for more than three days (to prevent misquitos and West Nile virus). You can’t have cobweb infested, broken down vehicles take up residence on your lawn. You can’t let your grass grow to unreasonable heights (to prevent blight). On and on and on.
Those are city ordinances and county regulations. Somehow, they all manage to get enforced quite well and I live in a neighborhood that does have the occasional bad neighbor. But no one has been able to demonstrate that not having an HOA has supressed our home values.
Oddly, the lavendar or yellow houses don’t seem to both anyone, including new buyers to the neighborhood.
ppGaz
Heh. Obviously you have never tried to kill Bermuda grass. Never sat on a cool carpet of Augustine on a hot summer day. Never mowed year round. Grass is so persistent here that it will grow into your house if you let it get to the cracks in the foundation.
tzs
Wait until you’re out on the coasts, where parts of the town get classified as “historically significant” and you can’t do NOTHIN’ to the house.
Including rewiring it so it’s not a goddamn fire trap.
Silly idiots.
Pb
I’ve got to say, town/city ordinances can be just as bad as HOA’s, if not worse. The example around here being the town of Cary:
etc., etc; they’re crazy.
Angry Engineer
Which is the situation I’m in now, where my wife and I live on 10 acres that’s agricultural and we’ve still got a township board that doesn’t want to grant us a permit for building a 30×50′ barn because there’s already one outbuilding on the property.
Regardless, I’m still not giving this up for living in some damn HOA, where they frown on the vast majority of my free-time activities.
capelza
It is such a Stepford kind of existence and folks more worried about the potential resale of the property than building a community.
But please by all means confine yourself to one of these greige gated ghettos. As much as I hate them, if someone signs up for one, then they can expect trouble from the rest of the anonymous folks. Do the cars have to be the same colour, too?
What we are experiencing in part of our community here is a newly formed group that wants to take a “historical district” and turn it into something it never was. A lot of them new folks to the area.
A long time owner remodeled his house, actually in the original beachy style it was and the good folks from the committee informed him that he’d have to put a dormer and some bric a brac type stuff on it to conform to their “vision” of the quaint Victorian “village” the area NEVER was in the first place. Needless to say, said owner told them to take a flying fuck…
my cat
Ther is an easy solution for this. She shouuuld just buy soemkind of attarctive shrub, plat it, and tie a yellow ribbon on it. Probem solved.
i don’t have much sympathy for her. They bought in knowing the rules. My dad was told toremove a Kerry sign under similar circumaatnces. he removed it to the back window of his van which is always parked so the back shows.
Davebo
You go to war with the homeowners association you have, not the one you want.
These guys are idiots and I’ve seen lots of them. But trust me. She’d really be crying if the letter said they needed 15k or so in assesment!
rachel
That’s exactly what I though of too.
Slartibartfast
HOAs have their good points and bad points. On the downside, as has been pointed out, they’re largely populated by the retired folks in the neighborhood, who make a point of looking for violations during their extended walks around the block.
On the upside, though, they keep the neighborhood a nicer place to live, which makes for elevated property values, etc. Know the rules and comply, and you’ll be just fine. Who moves into a neighborhood with a HOA, not knowing what the rules are?
Ours has just enough teeth to annoy, but not enough teeth to make life a living hell for those on the edge of compliance. I think it could possibly be replaced by a bunch of neighbors who talk to each other honestly, but there’s no guarantee that those neighbors would do a spiffy job of maintaining the common areas as the HOA does.
Right up until we decided to buy this house, I had resolved that I would never, ever even consider living in a neighborhood having HOA rules. So much for that.