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Comment by monster_group | Hacker News Reader

I sold my previous house precisely because of noisy neighbors (or rather their dogs). Their three dogs lived in the backyard permanently no matter what the weather - never seen them walked. Talked to the neighbors twice about the noise - no action. Called the cops at 3 in the morning - still nothing. Finally, I decided to sell the house and move somewhere where there is low dog density. I developed a dislike for dogs because of my previous neighbors. Even now, three years later, a barking dog drives me nuts, gets my heart going fast and blood boiling.

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I had the very same experience and also sold my house because of it. The previous owners had sold it to me without disclosing the issue, but for the same reason (we disclosed it to our buyers).

The part of the article that resonated with me most was the feeling of helplessness, of impotence, of being assaulted and being unable to do anything to defend yourself.

I decided to sell the house when I started hating the dogs themselves. It wasn’t their fault, it was their awful owner, but after months of rough sleep in my guest bedroom (further away than the master) with earplugs in, I hated it all equally.

In Bavaria if your dog barks more than 30 minutes per day, the neighbours can record it on video, call the police and you will get fined. At first I thought this is astupid law but after reading your story I changed my mind.

in Bulgaria people will poison your dogs

Oh you know that happens in everywhere right?

Apparently not in the US, or not often enough to have an effect.

It happens here in the US, too[0]. The consequences, both criminal and civil, are generally not very severe. It may not be happening frequently enough to have an effect, or it may not be happening publicly enough to become a concern for owners. Plus, generally, the owners who are problems are already not very concerned about their dogs.

[0] - https://gazette.com/news/colorado-springs-woman-pleads-guilt...

I remember hearing about people putting sharp objects in food, like broken glass or blades.

Same in Belize, I hear from J.McA.

It's didn't go so well for the dog killer.

In most places without sensible regulation they'd poison the dog, which opens the slippery slope to escalation. Bavarian law prevents that.

Dogs... I can relate, but in the house it's not that bad. Heavy curtains/external blinds over windows usually are enough to filter out their barks, howls and whines. Now people with subwoofers - that's something much much much worse. You see high frequency filters well. Low frequency just goes straight through the walls and into your head and after hours of whomp whomp whomp you just want to go grab a canister of gasoline and burn the partying fuckers alive together with their whole sound setup from hell.

I live in a picturesque area, so it's usually assholes in cars coming to enjoy the views with extra bass, and while noise complaints to the police has remedied the situation quite a bit, it still randomly occurs. I've learned to really welcome bad weather, because that most often means a peaceful evening without the impotent rage.

This saddens me to hear this. I see in Zillow sooo many instances of a Yellow dot (sold, say 1/2018) then a red dot shows up as of 5/2018 and just sits on the market. The problem? the new neighbors. After analysis my wife and I have concluded, after seeing hundreds of homes (even with acreage) that neighbors are far far far the #1 reason a house goes for sale. It might be kids, dogs or music.

I live with an endless barking dog. It isn't mine, but it wakes me constantly.

If there has been peace for a while and it barks, I can feel my entire body change "mode" to stressed. It is uncanny. Even if mentally it hasn't bothered me, my body still goes into battle mode.

I have the same reaction (physical) to a screaming kid. It has made raising my baby incredibly difficult (especially the first year). Mentally, I understand that it's just a crying baby and that's what they do, but physically I was shutting down - body tensing, a surge of extremely stressful energy rushing through my body and ultimately being left unable to function. My wife thought I was nuts and was just faking it. I tried searching for a medical explanation but came up short. The closest I would describe it as something I hear chronic fatigue people say -- not having energy to get up, no matter their mental state. I would sit there, practically paralyzed by stress, or whatever that stress induced.

I don't know about the paralysis but I once read an internet fact that stated our brains are innately wired to react to babies and children's screams in order to ward off potential threats to our retirement plans.

I believe it. I work in an environment that many people would consider stress inducing; I engage in amateur combat sports; however, when my six month old loses it, I absolutely get an immediate pulse raising stress reaction.

I've read articles that say that when they stress-test fighter pilots by having them do cognitive test while wearing headphones with different sounds, they usually mix in infants crying. It's one of the most distracting things for a person to hear.

For me, it wasn't when the kids started crying that was the most stressful, but when they wouldn't stop. You check their diapers, you check if they're hungry, you rock them gently, and even then sometimes they just wouldn't stop crying. After a while the noise would be so bad that I had to hand them off to my wife, and she did the same when she became too frustrated.

Funnily enough, it made me immune to other kids crying. Before I had kids I would get very irritated at noisy kids or crying infants in the subway. Now, I'm just happy it's not my kids and that it's someone else's problem!

In croatia there was a famous case of a judge ordering a dog not to bark at night.

*https://www.cbsnews.com/news/court-if-dog-keeps-barking-at-n...

People like that should really not own dogs.

Everyone wants to get a dog when it’s cute and adorable as a puppy then they move on in life and have kids and other responsibilities and the dog just becomes a burden. There are definitely good dog owners, but there’s a ton of people who just have them and don’t really do anything with them besides feed them - dogs need exercise.

I’ll admit I surrendered the only dog I ever had after having her 6 years from when I was a college student until about 3 years after graduation. People usually think this is something to be ashamed of, but I knew the lifestyle I was living at the time was not good for an active dog (golden retriever). At that point in my life I was spending full days in an office and working out at the gym 1-2 hours per day, on top of sitting in traffic an hour or two, and I was moving into a one bedroom apartment after living in houses for most of the time I had a dog. I knew I would be subjecting the dog to a life of boredom and sleeping on the couch if I kept her.

Fortunately, for dogs like Goldens it is quite easy to find great homes through breed specific rescue societies, especially here in Austin (many thanks to Gold Ribbon Rescue).

...and now you know why nosy HOAs are so common even though people always talk about hating them.

It should be possible to have a simple rule requiring noise not to cross into a neighbor's residential property, without having a dedicated organization of busybodies collecting dues and micromanaging everything with a constantly changing set of restrictions.

this is not very simple. sound doesn't just "stop" at a certain point; it dissipates until a specific sound can't be heard over the noise floor. the only realistic approach is to set a dB level that can't be exceeded for a sustained duration. this is how the law already works in most localities; it just isn't enforced unless you really nag the police.

You can litigate everything forever if you want to be sufficiently pedantic, but that's missing the point. It's not that you don't at some point have to make a decision about how loud is too loud. It's that you can have a noise ordinance without giving anyone the capacity to compel anyone else to use a specific landscaping company or style.

> It's that you can have a noise ordinance without giving anyone the capacity to compel anyone else to use a specific landscaping company or style.

of course you can, this is how the law already works in most relatively dense places!

your original post seemed to imply that you weren't aware of noise ordinances outside of HOA bylaws, apologies if I misunderstood.

It's easy to define a rule; the hard part is enforcing it.

I've been on an HOA board for a couple of years.

Here are some of the things I have learned.

Some people (about 5%) are cranks. We have received legal threats because another owner parked in "their" unreserved parking space. Another owner disputed the cost of a roof repair: they had calculated the size of the roof over their condo and that's all they were willing to pay. It's easy to resolve a disagreement when both parties are reasonable but challenging when one of them isn't.

Some people don't read or listen. Some of the same people ask the same questions every month. You can send emails and place flyers but you will never reach everyone.

Some people are special snowflakes. Any HOA board receives regular requests to bend the rules for individuals.

Our rules have changed several times since I joined the board. None of these changes were done on a whim - each time it was in response to an issue or a liability to the association. Owners don't see the many emails and discussions behind a rule change.

Serving on an HOA board is a thankless job and can be a substantial time commitment. I joined the board because most of the other owners had already served and someone had to do it. I ran again last year because we are in the middle of a major construction project and I didn't want to leave the other board members hanging.

TLDR - HOAs are an exercise in politics on a small scale.

Agreed. Though I think the problem is because many of the HOAs don't price in their operating costs. Eg replying to mails. Though legal costs are usually passed on to the particular special snowflake tenant/owner afterwards.

If people were more aware that managing a community is work, they migh better appreciate it, and if they know it costs them money to send their idiotic requests, they would stop sending them. (And if not the members of the HOA will make money eventually the misbehaving member paying a heavy premium for its stubbornness.)

The problem with an HOA isn't that none of them can ever be caught in a state of not being literally on fire. It's that they generally have the power to do things that will mess up your life even though they shouldn't have that power to begin with, and one can turn from benign to malicious in a short period of time without an individual homeowner being able to stop it.

If the federal government is too big to be effective, an HOA is too small to be effective. They generally don't have the resources to make decisions carefully or fairly -- or if they do it's because you spent the time yourself and then the problem is they're consuming your life. But the decisions they make are nonetheless consequential to the people subject to them, so they can easily make your life hell by forcing you to choose between stupid nonsense and spending many hours of your life fighting to prevent stupid nonsense.

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