Grandpa’s Basement House | Hacker News Reader

Grandpa’s Basement House

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378 pointscubix258 comments

Felt like I read a wonderful book in 5 minutes. That was a (to my mind) politically neutral tour de force that captured the last 150 years of housing policy, grounding its thesis with fascinating images and writing.

Agreed. Great read. Thanks OP!

You might also enjoy The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler.

As incremental construction goes, my grandma's house in North Dakota is a pretty good example. It went from a one story small home to a two story home with a wrap-around deck. I'm sure it was some ordered house put on a basement. It had an outhouse in the 70's but indoor plumbing was added. I remember sometime in the 80's putting in a support beam so they could remove some of the walls and support the second story. It was an all-hands task of the relatives with most of my uncle and aunts. I remember Dad's reaction when Grandma announced she had bought a wood stove to put in the house. That was a fun install requiring the removal of a wall, brick base, and running venting.

There was a bit of danger in all this expansion. The look of utter horror on my Dad's and Uncle's face when we turned off all the breakers and the stove was still on makes me laugh but was deadly serious at the time. Fixing that was a bit of an adventure. Dad and Uncle traced every wire in the damn house and I learned some new insults.

> Growing vegetables on what should be a lawn is verboten in many locations, if not by the government than by private association bylaws.

I'm aware that some HOAs limit (sometimes to what seems like an extreme) what can be done with the yard and lawn, but I wasn't aware of any governments that ban growing vegetables. Is that more common in water-restricted municipalities? (I live in midwestern US, where backyard gardens are very common.)

I've never heard of anything like that. Outside of HOAs, most regulations we see about the front are length of grass, what can and can't be done at the easement, public health issues, and maybe laws about invasive plant species. My wife used to work at a company that codified these laws, and she didn't know of anything either.

My HOA defines the acceptable types of trees, plants, and shrubs that can be planted. I don’t know if vegetables are restricted, but you cannot plant anything you want.

This is common in colorado.

What business does a bunch of Wikipedia admins have to rule what I can plant in my own backyard. Mind, I get concerns about invasive plants, water conservation or agricultural pathogens, but that's not what HOA's are usually about. They will tell you you can't paint your shed pink.

Wikipedia admins?

I agree this restriction is ridiculous. I don’t know the purpose except maybe to make the neighborhood all look the same.

The three sets Wikipedia admins, HOA board members, and Karens have an intersection with a large cardinality.

My HOA prohibits any vegetable or fruit plants, except heirloom tomatoes. So I can guess somebody on the board has a particular hobby.

I know in Florida because of orange canker if one orange tree has it basically all orange trees within a 1-mile radius have to be destroyed. This is state law because of the orange produce farms lobbying.

It’s almost unheard of to see suburban or wild orange trees in south Florida anymore.

Idk we visited some folks that had oranges growing in their yard in a major urban area. Enforcement is probably not great

They likely don't have orange canker issues then. It isn't a blanket ban, it's just "if bad thing happens then there's swift and large response"

Which is a shame.

I have fond memories of visiting my grandparents in Florida and going to their backyard to pick oranges and grapefruits to make fresh juice in the morning.

It’s unfortunate the orange lobby can ban something that just seems so Florida to me.

I could see front yards but not banning growing vegetable in back yards

I really don’t se why this is a thing for front yards either. Growing vegetables are just as pretty as a lawn, and even if you don’t think so, surely productive use of the land ought to take priority.

I find it so strange that such restrictions only seem to exist in the US, where there is normally so much emphasis on individual freedom.

There seem to be a lot of people who like the idea of willfully entering an HOA agreement that limits freedoms that they wouldn’t want their neighbors exercising. I can see both sides but it’s not really for me.

There is something to be said for being able to restrict negative activities. Someone piling up junk on their front yard for example. I own in a Strata title apartment building which comes with a lot of very similar restrictions but its all pretty reasonable imo. You are free to paint the inside of your apartment however you want but painting the balcony or the hallway side of your front door is not allowed as it compromises the visual image of the building.

Similar issues in a suburb. One person with rusted out cars on the front compromises the entire street. No one will care if the rusted cars are inside a shed though.

>No one will care if the rusted cars are inside a shed though.

Not necessarily true. Some HOAs will prohibit you from building the shed in the first place and some even go so far as to regulate the contents of your garage.

I should fess up that I actually do own one property in an HOA, so my declaration that it’s “not for me” is a little dishonest. It’s definitely a place that I don’t care about as much as my “real” house, so I’m a little more able to tolerate the silly rules. It’s a condo, and for example I’m not allowed to change my exterior blinds in any way. Gotta keep the exterior look of the building uniform, right? :eyeroll: It does have its advantages though. The place is very well kept and its resale value reflects that.

> You are free to paint the inside of your apartment however you want but painting the balcony or the hallway side of your front door is not allowed as it compromises the visual image of the building.

Sounds monotonous with a lack of free expression and personality.

Can you imagine a high rise where its all following a consistent design except one balcony which is painted red? It would look like crap. And for little gain since its only really something you can see properly from the street.

I know HN loves the muh freedoms angle but surely its easy to understand how forgoing the freedom to paint a very small portion of the property is largely beneficial.

I imagine a highrise with every apartment a slightly different customized style and it's lovely.

I am part of the minority that would not mind at all if my neighbor had a rusted out car in their lawn. I recognize that this isn't a very common opinion though.

I've often wondered how much overlap there is on people who live in an HOA and people who are opposed to government regulation. I realize government regulation isn't quite the same as HOA regulations, but it's amusing to me how extreme some HOAs are (grass a certain length, no service vehicles, etc) and how the people that live in them are often politically conservative.

Why is that amusing? Government vs private is the distinction. You willfully associate with an HOA. If you don’t like the HOA you buy a house a mile away.

By that logic you willfully associate with a city too. If you don't like the city ordinances you can buy a house in a neighboring city or outside the city limits. Even moving in to a reasonable HOA is no guarantee. The board can change and your dream home can become a nightmare. Trying to find a property without a HOA in some areas can be nigh impossible or at the very least can significantly increase your commute.

This is interesting/ strange to me. I grew up in the Midwest and a modest garden in the backyard was often the case. I’ve never heard of them being banned. I don’t doubt they are some places.

I’m sure some suburban guy decided to plow his front yard and be a corn farmer, but generally I find nobody minds a garden.

> This is interesting/ strange to me. I grew up in the Midwest and a modest garden in the backyard was often the case. I’ve never heard of them being banned. I don’t doubt they are some places.

Backyard gardens are generally unobjectionable, it is the front yard that gets neighbors riled up when they see dirt and messy looking plants. Even then, if you make an effort to have it present as ornamental (eg. herbs, cherry tomatoes, mini peppers, etc. in attractive raised beds and containers that don't displace the entire lawn) you may be able to get away with it.

Oh, and definitely keep the compost pile out of sight.

Some neighbors have dedicated their front yard to vegetable growing. They have raised beds--I should say not particularly attractive ones. I don't know what kind of yield they get, for the house overshadows it a fair bit of the day. But we are not in an HOA.

At least a couple of households nearby have composting drums in sight from the street.

This is such a strange and uniquely American sounding thing.

Not once in my live have I complained about a neighbours yard, or had them complain about mine. And if they did, I'd laugh them off the property. What business is it of theirs?

I've seen municipalities prohibit keeping chickens, but not gardens.

Where I live, they only prohibit keeping roosters, though there are restrictions on chickens as well I think -- though theres no enforcement. A couple of my neighbours have them (and they escape and wander around the scrub land behind my fence and make friends with the local brush turkeys, which I find cute and endearing). Its quite fun to live basically in the centre of Brisbane's city, but have chickens wandering around. But that's also part of what makes this place neat, in my opinion, while I'm a kilometre from the CBD, the townhouse I live in is in a suburb filled with old Queenslander houses, newer builds, townhouses and small apartment buildings.

I remember this topic being a big news item several years ago:

Dear Modern Farmer: Can I Legally Grow Food in My Front Yard?

https://modernfarmer.com/2013/06/dear-modern-farmer-can-i-le...

oak park hates veggies- trying to make sense of oak park's war on vegetables:

https://oakparkhatesveggies.wordpress.com/about/

Homeowners Across the Country Face Citations for Illegal Gardening:

https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/right-to-g...

> Is that more common in water-restricted municipalities?

Where I live, watering outdoor plants is only allowed 3 days a week, and only before 9AM or after 6PM on those three days. That doesnt mean growing vegetables is specifically illegal, but it does mean starting seedlings requires breaking the law during the warmer months.

I wonder how that law is worded - could you for instance fill up several X gallon jugs (1, 5, 55 [~4L, ~19L and ~208L] - whatever you have/need) during those permitted used windows, and water the plants from that supply as needed?

I could see the time window applying to the actual act of watering the plants ("don't water during the hottest/brightest part of the day, to avoid wasting most of it to evaporation"), but the specific days seem to me like they're just for load balancing...

I believe some areas object to the use of rain barrels, so I wonder if this option would fall under the same or similar restrictions.

I have a friend who lives in a rural area. He'd like to build a house on some land he owns that is unsuitable for farming (too steep) but he is unable to get a construction loan from the bank as they will not write a loan that is secured only by the property. Incremental construction might be the only way to do it (assuming the county will issue him a building permit that would span 5+ years).

Being debt-free within a few years of the house being completed has a lot to be said for it. But when a loan payment is 80% or more interest at the start, that's a lot of profit for a lender to give up - they're not exactly going to be jumping at the opportunity to write those loans.

Banks don’t Usually hold loans. The loans are typically packages and sold as bundles to institutional investors and banks get a cut of the deal with minimal risk. But to do that banks have to follow rules on what the packages look like so only certain products get loans and everything else isn’t worth dealing with

This may be specific to whatever country you're in. The major 4 banks in mine hold loans.

He should check this lender https://www.umpquabank.com/ I have been watching some videos from a local builder and he says they will do off-grid construction loans.

Often in those cases you build a minimal “setup” perhaps not even technically legal for habitation - thing barn with power and septic.

Then with that in place you modify it toward a house.

Or drag a mobile home onto the lot for temporary.

A contradistinction: Traditional Queensland houses are built raised on stumps, first, because of floods and cooling airflow under (sub tropical)

When you can afford Air Conditioning, or have too many babies you build under.

So our pattern is build high first, fill in later. The one here is "build basement first, digging under the ground with a house on it, is a pain"

(also raised because termites: gumtree hard stumps treated with CCA can survive them, siding and framing wood less so. Modern build tends to be either a slab of concrete and single storey, or a mcMansion, or units)

This style of incremental building seems to be still in existence in Southern Europe.

It‘s not uncommon to see unfinished concrete structures. Basically the raw skeleton often with exposed rebar at the top or sides, indicating future work.

They may stay in this state for years. As apparently everything is paid in cash and so building only advances whenever the owners have enough at hand.

In Spain it also related to planning permission. Once the building work has finished, you need to have the planning permission paper work in order. Therefore they often leave one small room unfinished (exposed on the outside wall) to claim work is still in progress.

I read something similar but in Egypt. Leaving the home unfinished avoided either taxes or planning paperwork or both.

It also lets the eventual buyer do a lot of customization. Buy a concrete shell, complete with the finishings you want.

I have lived all my life in Spain and that's not my experience. Maybe in some small rural towns you can (illegally) keep an unfinished work for years, as long as nobody notices.

However, that is absolutely not true for most Spanish cities.

Maybe not in major cities, however, definitely applicable to a medium sized town in Catalunya.

I saw a good documentary on shell construction in South America as a means to improve access to home ownership, as well as to allow homeowners to significantly customize the homes over time. We don’t see this much in the US but it makes sense to me.

When you are cheap labor you will have big problems getting ahead because of rent. So as soon as you save enough to buy land you do (between inflation and government revolutions banks are not useful, you have better odds your land will be recognized). Until you can afford to get a minimal shelter room on the land though you are renting while owning useless land. Once you have shelter everything that went to rent before can be put into more rooms.

It is a very different world from the ones most of us live in.

It’s very common in Mexico.

I once stayed in an AirBNB in Crete where the lower floors of the building were occupied and the upper floors hadn't been built. If you carried on up the stairs past our apartment, you ended up at what looked like an building site with concrete floors and exposed steel beams. I didn't see any building work happening while I was there.

“I asked why and was told that by the 1950s it was clear that the national economy had re-centered away from agriculture and small farm towns to a handful of big cities.”

You were told wrong by more than 30 years. The US was officially more urban than rural by the 1920 census but the demographic trend had been going on for 50 years before that.

By 1900 1 in 10 Americans lived in just 5 cities (NYC, Chicago, Philly, St Louis & Boston).

They aren't wrong, and neither are you. Population growth was large in the cities due to immigration. And if you had many children on a farm, you couldn't divide the land for the next generation and still be profitable, so they had to move to cities. What happened from the 50s-80s were small farms being given up because they weren't economical.

The machinery during the 50s-60s eliminated a lot of agricultural jobs, and drive down prices. Not just for farmers, but also in processing agricultural products.

Note that, the census considers many “small farm towns” to be “urban areas.” For example, Sibley, Iowa, where my wife grew up. It qualifies because it’s population is 3,000 people (over the 2,500 limit the census bureau uses). But it’s not what most people would consider to be an “urban area.”

I own a number of acres. One neighbor has an orchard and a horse pasture. Another has a Christmas tree farm. We're adjacent to a fairly large conservation property. We're urban according to the US Census. And we certainly have no practical way to shop by either walking or public transportation.

The census basically calls it urban if you have a sewer not a septic heh.

Most people consider “small town” to be rural though it’s technically not as it’s a city.

I don’t even have sewer. Though I do have town water.

Knew someone who had city sewer but was on a well. Caused an interesting billing problem for the city, since they usually bill for sewer as part of water.

The farm my father bought in rural Ohio for his retirement had a house that started life as a basement house. It was built in the 50s, and the basement had a kitchen, full bath, a very nice fireplace, and a few other rooms. Plus the garage. The ground floor basically re-did it all. My father's theory was that they did the basement first, then built the rest of the house later. I hadn't realized such a thing was common.

There was one of these basement houses in my neighborhood (mostly built in the 40s) until a few months ago when it was flipped and they built a top floor on it making it look like a completely different (and unremarkable) house.

My wife and I have talked about building something incrementally recently. Looking at what we could afford, we can't purchase an actual house, but we could get some land for a reasonable price. So, we were thinking of getting an airstream, buying some land, and then building a set of smaller buildings like this around the property as we got the funds. However, there can be lot of pushback on this from what I read.

Wow, this was great.

Thinking about codes and permits, I think the idea of self-reinforcing change is interesting here. As more people rent or frequently buy/sell, it makes more and more sense to have strict safety codes and permitting rules because the people building and making money off the structure don't bear the safety risks of bad construction. But as this raises costs and places barriers, it makes renting more common, etc.

I think the last two paragraphs, which I quoted below, sum up exactly something that has been on my mind for a while now.

Somehow, while we were all busy debating for or against this or that political view, we, common people, lost control of more and more of our existence.

We lost control of the food we eat, the kind of houses we live in (as this article explains), the way we invest our money, our work schedules, our means of production, our means of transportation (and more).

Saying this, immediately triggers alarm bells (ah! He is saying that buildings should not be regulated, he must be a libertarian right winger! Oh! He says we need to own the means of production? He's obviously a communist!) and this prevents us from discussing many of the things that really matter.

> I want you, dear reader, to set aside all the squirrelly feelings you may have about the political Left or Right. Perhaps you hate the evils of Big Government or the evils of Corporate Capitalism. Maybe you like cities. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you like the kinds of people who live in them. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you like places that are a bit messy. Maybe you need a place that’s orderly and tidy. That’s not the point I’m making here.

> Look at these images of the Summerlin West development on the far edge of Las Vegas. The scale is massive and the same dynamics are at work. Everything about this place is enormous and predicated on vast amounts of institutional complexity and debt. Somehow, as a society, we’ve drifted from ordinary people being able to build their own homes on a cash basis in an interactive iterative way, to these immense hyper elaborate habitats. You may not aspire to live in a small underground home that takes years to complete. The Summerlin West homes may be better in many ways. But there are trade offs involved. Both individuals and the larger society have agreed to a set of interlocking delicate systems that are simultaneously highly effective and spectacularly vulnerable to disruption. That’s my point.

“One by one the old parking lots, gas stations, and muffler shops are being transformed into new structures and uses.”

Not if the SF Board of Supervisors has anything to say about it. They’ve actively blocked the transformation of parking lots into dense house as recently as this year. SF is anti housing somehow wrapped in a veneer of progressivism.

My wife recently pointed out a real estate listing for a basement home very like the flat roof variant in the first part of the article. Not sure where she saw it, while in the same state it's rural.

I'd actually figured it as someone making the best of what was left after a tornado or other disaster.

See also, Chile's half house concept:

https://www.archdaily.com/797779/half-a-house-builds-a-whole...

Reminds me of this https://dengarden.com/misc/The-Pitfalls-of-an-Underground-Ho...

Fascinating! In many parts of the world, the incremental approach seems alive and well. I'm sure many have had the experience of traveling in a developing country and wondering why it seems that all the buildings are unfinished. Rebar sticking out everywhere! It actually makes a lot of sense, when one does not have access to credit or even a safe place to save money. You build your house as you can afford each component, storing the value that way - take any surplus cash, buy some more bricks, and add them to the house.

This is quite a tangent (it's a novel, not some non-fiction deep-dive) but A House for Mr Biswas (VS Naipaul) is a great book that I'd recommend, your comment just reminded me of it.

A basement house featured on Zillow Gone Wild this week [1] . According to the same account it went sale pending after 1 day on the market.

[1] - https://twitter.com/zillowgonewild/status/152662553013669478...

Pro tip: don't build your house in a swamp. It'll sink.

Pro-pro tip: anything buried will bubble up. (re: Nola graveyards)

I live in one of the earliest post-WW2 planned suburbs (in Maryland). Many of the houses here are two-storey and were built as such, but with the second floor unfinished (in other words just an attic with no interior walls, decoration, etc) until the owners needed the space and had the money.

On some other streets, people have added a floor to what were originally built as one-level homes.

My parent's house was built like this! The previous owners built a single story basement house into a hill, and then added the main story later in the 60's. It's a cute little ranch now, but sort of weird in that the basement now has all the hook ups needed for a kitchen.

The idea of HOAs having any kind of say feels so undemocratic, but not in a standard way. We should not tolerate purely popular democracies. We allow representative democracies, and part of that public contract is for our leaders to represent all those in their constituency, not just those who voted for them.

That means those in the minority. The crazy guy growing gourds instead of a lawn. The loon with the purple house. The impoverished who can’t paint their house every other year. Those kinds of folk need representation the most.

"that public contract is for our leaders to represent all those in their constituency, not just those who voted for them."

That's the statement, but it's never worked that way. Of course minority groups have been steamrolled

> Those kinds of folk need representation the most.

An understandable sentiment. How much are you willing to pay for it? If you have a $1.5 million mortgage and that loon shows up next door and paints their house purple, your house might lose $300,000 in value. Same with the other neighbors, who also pay mortgages but aren’t as compassionate as you.

What happens when your spouse gets a sudden offer to relocate and you can’t make your money back on the house?

Shocking how quickly peoples opinions change on this stuff when an eccentric next door can lower the value of their own investments

Maybe we shouldn't think about housing as an investment

Maybe we shouldn't try to control people, including what they think, in such an authoritarian manner.

Who's being authoritarian? I'm suggesting changing how we think about housing

There’s nothing authoritarian about entering a contractor voluntarily

Agree completely

Since they paid their money to buy the property, they can paint their house whatever color they damn well please, IMO.

If there’s an HOA, they probably agreed not to.

If they’re my neighbor, they’re probably not in an HOA. (Though that would be an amusing experience to live in the first property outside the HOA wire.)

One of my cousins got in to a fight with the neighboring HOA over something (think the developers were trying to force them to sell to own the whole track) so they set out to be as annoying as possible — pink plastic flamingos, broken down cars &etc.

I mean I don't think they should be any rules really, I'm just pointing out that a lot of people who would be very free thinking before hand become very "Not In My Back Yard" about it as soon as they have skin in the game.

Which is why I no longer live in a place with an HOA

> your house might lose $300,000 in value

Dramatic license aside, I'd hate to live anywhere where property value (or residents' senses of well-being) was so fragile that it couldn't handle a purple house.

I have literally seen that happen, although the house was electric blue and not purple. I did in fact put my money where my mouth is and moved to a farm without an HOA.

They would hate to live in Tobermory I suppose: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tobermory_Main_Stree...

Or indeed, Boston: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/victorian-houses-in-cambri...

Tangentially, Victorian houses were frequently very colorful. The lack of color photography leads people to think of them as drab, depressing shades of gray. But nothing could be further from the truth. HOAs that restrict colors to a boring beige are doing a disservice to their neighborhoods.

If I lived in one of those houses, would I be able to paint it whatever color I wanted (e.g. pink and yellow stripes)? Or is there some sort of coordination to make sure they all look appealing as a set?

You can choose whatever colour you want. It seems they used to me more sombre but around 50 years ago the owner of the hotel decided randomly to paint it bright yellow and neighbouring houses along the front thought it was a great idea and started choosing their own outlandish colours.

>What happens when your spouse gets a sudden offer to relocate and you can’t make your money back on the house?

How is that someone else's problem? Ironically, in some areas around me properties without HOAs are priced and selling a couple of 100ks higher than ones within HOAs.

Where did I say it is someone else’s problem?

I think the root of this is treating housing an asset, which justifies all kinds of arguments. My house would probably increase in value a lot if I bulldozed all the others and replaced them with public gardens. The sane place for me to draw the line is where the property ends.

What a great answer to losing a great deal of money: just don’t treat it as an asset! Just ignore the loss, who cares! Sure it’s nice being wealthy, ain’t it.

I’m not saying to ignore the loss, I am saying to limit people’s ability to use the government to protect their asset value by mandating what others do with their property. In my view too many municipalities treat decrease in asset values like a kind of pollution that leaks from your property into the surrounding spaces, and use that logic to force certain uses of people’a property. But unlike physical pollutants that leave properties, the decrease in property value is often a nebulous and subjective force, and enforcement boils down to enforcing conformity with the majority. The harms are nebulously defined and the slope is so slippery that you have neighborhoods where they have slid all the way into mandating color pallets and lawn type and length.

This kind of system doesn’t let people do something as simple as postpone repairs until they can get favorable financing, and ends up a tax on the poor or different to protect an asset for the majority landowners in my view.

One of the most desirable neighbourhoods in my city has houses painted all sorts of different colours, including purple. Somehow the property values survive.

> that loon shows up next door and paints their house purple

HOAs started as a way to handle common infrastructure, like drainage. They allow a few homes to share drainage, without sticking all of the costs of maintenance to the homeowner who happens to have the pipe on their property.

In my case, my HOA carries property insurance for undeveloped land, maintains a grassy cul-de-sac, and maintains a fire road. (I personally spend about 2 hours a year trimming growth on the fire road because so many people walk on it.)

As far as saying that an HOA is to keep the loons out, we did have a hoarder live around the corner from the HOA. The people who lived across the street couldn't sell their home. (They had kids and wanted a larger house.) Could the HOA really do anything about the hoarder? I know the people who lived around the hoarder all put a lot of pressure on hee, the town condemned the house, and eventually it burnt to the ground. At least my with HOA, there isn't any good way to "evict" a loon who makes a mess.

Can’t you fine them to death then foreclosure for the ammount due when it’s not paid

I believe it can work with liens, but those can effectively be ignored until the home is sold.

In the case of the hoarder, she owned her home outright. The town put liens on the property to cover the cost of cleaning up the lot. But, she still owns the lot and hasn't put it on the market. (She also places things on it, too.)

The root issue here is that you frame it as you paying something for him. What is actually happening is that you demand that everyone else pay for your mortgage by subjecting themselves to your restrictions.

> We should not tolerate purely popular democracies.

Open town meetings, which are pure democracies, have been working pretty well in New England for quite a long time now, with the biggest issues in modern times being low attendence and committee overstep.

When I bought my first house, I purposefully avoided any neighborhood with an HOA because of all the internet scare mongering I had heard over the years.

After ten years of one neighbor parking cars on their lawn, another growing more weeds than blades of grass, and another with 8 vehicles parked along the street I was done.

When I bought my second house I specifically wanted an HOA. After another 6 years, I couldn’t be happier. Yes the HOA prevents me from doing a handful of things, things that aren’t really a big deal in the grand scheme of things. While the HOA keeps the entire neighborhood looking nice and slaps people on the wrist when they need it.

Two factors are at play:

HOA or not

Good folks or not

The balance between the two is nuanced and it sounds like you landed on a different side of the debate to me. I’m sorry to hear that, and I respect that, as a result, you have a different view of HOAs to me. Peace.

Keep in mind that some HOAs are cooperative organizations, and some are run by very damaged people.

Also keep in mind that getting together to organize a set of common standards and restrictions is the basis for all exclusive communities. That's OK if you are on the casual compliance side of the rules, or if you get to write them to suit your preferences. But it is discriminatory. Similar covenants have been used to keep out ethnic minorities (because of the way they live, like animals!).

Being for or against HOAs is like being for or against laws. It's meaningless without context.

Some HOAs are traffic lights. Some HOAs are civil forfeiture.

An HOA can morph from tolerable into unconscionable. Deny the HOA the right to exist in the first place, and it will never go bad. This is an appealing tradeoff for many.

> An HOA can morph from tolerable into unconscionable.

A friend of mine lived in an unconscionable one and managed to turn it tolerable by running for President on a platform of vowing not to enforce any rules. Stayed in “power” for quite a while.

I don't think it's quite what you're describing (sorry if it is) - but 'we [deliberately] have rules, we just don't enforce them' would probably be a pretty effective & pleasant one.

I suppose essentially that's just living in a society, i.e. as anywhere without a 'HOA', but codified.

It’s exactly as I described. He said he wouldn’t go after anyone for rules violations, and he didn’t. The previous busybody HOA President was quite bothered, but it seemed most people just wanted to be left alone.

Yeah, that's how I understood it.

I just meant that you could also deliberately have rules (as opposed to come into office after them) and you do intend that people follow them, create new ones, update them, etc., but they're just not enforced, and everyone knows that.

As in just codifying some social expectations that would probably exist in roughly the same form anyway.

Oh I completely agree that that’s the effect. There were still rules, and I’m pretty sure there were even reminders sent to people breaking rules in ways that were legitimately bothersome (albeit without the teeth of enforcement fines), they just eliminated the problem of the petty rules cop fining people $50 for having their lawn a half inch out of spec.

My neighborhood voted to abolish the HOA in 2002, about 5 years after being established. The developer has their finger in the HOA pie as a permanent seat; instead upon abolishment they were relegated to upkeeping the entryways per their sales contract and city agreements, only through voluntary funding by people in the neighborhood.

It's had mixed results. The neighborhood is surrounded by a brick wall that had a gap below (why??). The mortar is failing in several places. But the entry ways are kept pristine (developer is a big one in the area and has been slapped by lawsuits for not holding up their end before).

For the first two I just can't get that worked up over it, and for the last one it's the use of shared reasource (the street) that bothers me.

Yeah, I get people wanting HOAs to maintain property values (Though I am not one of them, I chose a neighborhood with no HOA on purpose). I don't get people who genuinely care for its own sake about their neighbors lawn having weeds. Or the house having an unusual paint color. Who cares??

> I don't get people who genuinely care for its own sake about their neighbors lawn having weeds.

Certain types of invasive plans are noxious, outright poisonous, encourage hay fever, or just spread so fast that they can end up destroying neighbor's yards as well.

Plants don't obey property lines.

Edit: Unkempt yards can also be breeding ground for pests. From mosquitoes in still water to hoards of rats. Most people don't want to put up with those styles of annoyances that are trivially avoidable if everyone in the area cares just a little.

These are all already torts or illegal under municipal law.

Unfortunately, the court system is not friction-less enough for "your weeds got in my yard" to be a remotely workable reason to go to court. It would be nice to live in a society where justice flowed as freely as municipal water and common law obviated the need for all other forms of organization or regulation, but in the real world going to court is so expensive and time-consuming that we need a lot of other forms of power around to avoid overusing that method.

If you have a plan for reforming the local judiciary to be so effective that HOAs are no longer necessary I am all ears, but I have not heard any proposals for doing that.

You don't need to go to court. Most cities will be happy to fine your neighbors for "harboring pests".

Hay fever comes from grass. Less grass makes me more comfortable at home.

Rats come from having edible garbage available and fruit trees dropping fruit.

The most annoying things about neighbors are dogs that bark all day, and the leafblowers and lawnmowers.

> The most annoying things about neighbors are dogs that bark all day, and the leafblowers and lawnmowers.

Do you not encounter leaf blowers and lawn mowers in a HOA community? I would have expected it to be much worse because there would be maintenance crews doing it for every house in the area vs maybe a few houses on a ~20 house block.

Absolutely you do. The HOA I used to be in had that problem in spades. Weekends on a warm day were unbearable with the windows open.

Weed seeds blow across property lines and create problems for other people. It creates an undue burden on those that want to maintain a garden or other curated flora.

Maybe going to war against natural native plants is a losing battle...

Why do you assume the weeds in question are native and not invasive?

The bad weeds around here are spread by bird poop. Not much to be done about that, except mow them down.

And mandating that everyone have a manicured lawn doesn’t place an undue burden on those who like wildness and want to curate that or want to grow vegetables?

"Things happen by themselves outside, and having to deal with that because you want things in a certain way is an undue burden"

You know weeds are only weeds if you don't want them, right? Everywhere else they're just wild plants.

Depending on where you live and how bad a yard gets, it can be a real problem. Here, for example, it can be an invitation to snakes or other wildlife that aren’t confined to that property.

That said, I’m -1 on HOAs. I’ve heard far too many complaints and too few people happy with them to deal with one.

I've had quail, deer, mice, raccoons, coyotes, moles, hawks, snakes, lizards, bees, wabbits, squirrels, gophers ground beavers, bobcats, owls, and even eagles hanging out on my property. I'm in the middle of the metropolitan area, too. I don't mind them :-/ A couple years ago a coyote mom decided the front yard was the perfect place for her to watch her 7 pups grow up. She'd keep a weather eye on me, and I enjoyed watching them.

A couple months ago a coyote decided to poop on my front door. Obviously, it was sending a message, but I'm not sure what it was.

> but I'm not sure what it was

Probably didn't like my HackerNews posts!

While I agree with you for the most part, the problem comes when you have an HOA led by some Karen who decides to fine you and make your life miserable for doing something like having the audacity to fly a pride flag. You got lucky that the handful of things you want to do aren't a big deal, or your local HOA doesn't consist of any overly zealous busybodies with nothing better to do than become the neighborhood stasi.

> like having the audacity to fly a [doesn't matter] flag.

I don't live in the US, and at best the concept is very rare here, and I don't like the idea of it, but that sort of thing is exactly what I would like.

Flying a flag (why?!) has much more impact (probably negative) on your neighbours than it does (presumably positive) you.

I think flying [let's say current nation's] flag, can very a bunch depending on the country, I know in Denmark as well as the US it appears much more common than in other parts of the world. And personally, once I'm used to a flag being flown, I don't really care which

I don't care which either, that's why I elided the example in the comment I replied to - just to be clear I wasn't objecting to that in particular.

In the UK flying a union flag (residentially) would be extremely unusual - I'm aware of one, not where I live, and indeed it attracts scoffs and eyerolls - you do see England flags (St George crosses) more, particularly at certain times of year or certain years; that's more a signal that 'I am a football fan' than of patriotism, though.

Maybe that biases me against them in general. But even for things I do 'support' in some sense (I noticed a Ukraine flag covering a garage door recently, for example) I don't want a flag waved at me, and I wouldn't want a neighbour that did that.

If you think having a pride flag is something that has a negative impact on my neighbors, you're exactly a fine example of the sort of proto-HOA stasi I hope never gets onto the board of one.

The road example I get, but why do you care what other people do on their property?

We bought our house in 2016, next to an old tear down house. (I’m talking about plants growing inside because the roof doesn’t keep the water out.) Recently someone bought the house, tore it down, and built a million dollar house in its place. The other day, he gets into a fight with my wife—over various things, but among them the fact that he’s mad we won’t clean our porch. I told him that he’s the idiot who built a million dollar house next to people who were happy living next to a tear down for years.

Now before, I felt a little guilty for keeping the pool toys out there all year, but now I’m definitely not going to put them away.

Because other peoples property effects my my property, in value and enjoyment.

What if they enjoy cars?

So what? Those other people aren't obligated to do things that lead to your enjoyment. Please.

They are in a HOA area though.

This is absurd. Other people don't have to live their life a certain way just because that makes you happy.

If in a system of perfect liberty two people have a right to enter in to a contract, and three people have a right to enter in to a contract, and, inductively, as many people who want to live in a housing division have a right to enter in to a contract, then yes, yes they do.

No, but common courtesy and cleanliness is something that makes me happy. I’ve lived in neighborhoods that have had rat problems because of a single home that kept trash everywhere. Should I be inconvenienced because someone doesn’t want to do the bare minimum to upkeep their property? Would you be ok if I moved next door to you and hung nazi flags (this has happened to me as well)? When people behave in ways that infringe upon my life, yeah I can be irritated and want to live in an area that they aren’t allowed to do that. People who won’t respect others can continue to live in areas that let them get away with it. I won’t live like that anymore.

Causing a rat problem seems very different to letting weeds grow on their lawn. The rats will migrate elsewhere, potentially toward you. The weeds are pretty harmless.

And there are county-level remedies for nuisances like that.

> Would you be ok if I moved next door to you and hung nazi flags (this has happened to me as well)?

Restricting nazi flags also restricts pride flags.

The question is "Would you be okay if I hung flags?"

What about other forms of displaying support? Are posters just a cheaper flag?

Wtf. Those are not even in the same ballpark. One of them is showing support for people that want to live a "non-standard" lifestyle, the other is showing support for a dictatorial regime that started a world war and murdered millions of people out of some idiotic ideology.

If you're going to restrict flags, restrict all flags.

Otherwise all you're doing is saying "this neighbourhood only allows support for these politics".

Are you sure you want to go that way?

Yes, I would be okay with restricting Nazi flags and other known hate paraphernalia.

Pride is not hate, despite modern recasting of homosexuality in scripture by conservative religions.

> Yes, I would be okay with restricting Nazi flags and other known hate paraphernalia.

There's already hate-speech laws to address actual hate-speech. I'm still asking if it is a good idea for HOAs to dictate what politics may be openly supported and what politics are not welcome in the neighborhood. There's a lot more nuance here than simply using the most extreme possible case and basing all the rules around that case.

> Pride is not hate, despite modern recasting of homosexuality in scripture by conservative religions.

It's funny that you bring up religious positions :-)

I had pretty much the same conversation recently with a very religious person who was appalled to find out that Satanism isn't against the law, being a Satanist isn't against the law and openly worshipping Satan isn't against the law.

They pretty much said what you are saying:

Them: "But they do animal sacrifice!"

Me: "Yeah, that's not legal".

Them: "So Satanism must* be illegal then."*

Me: "No, you can worship whoever you want to; you just cannot torture animals while doing so. The torturing is illegal, the worshiping is not."

So yeah - proclamations that are in fact hate-speech will run afoul of the law. Political support is not. IOW, Hate speech is illegal, political support is not.

The problem you will often run into when carving out your legal exceptions (for example, saying support for Nazi(ism) is hate speech) is that where do you draw the line?

Okay, we agree - support for Nazis is hate speech.

How about support for a political group that is formally sympathetic to Nazis but is otherwise not active in that regard at all? Do you now move the line to include this case?

What if that group is only informally sympathetic to Nazis?

What if the group is neutral towards Nazis but some members are openly supportive of Nazis?

What if the group is simply neutral to Nazis?

What if the group is only neutral and refuses to issue any formal statement on Nazis, even when asked?

What if the group actually is against the Nazi policies, and formally states this position, but also doesn't think they are a large enough or viable enough threat to spend their time on?

What if the group is only loosely associated with a group which is loosely associated with a group that fulfills one of the above criteria?

At each point above your exceptions get muddier and muddier. At some point your rules will become, in practice, a whitelist of what politics are allowed (all the rest are disallowed).

Basing all rules on the most extreme example is the most reliable way for an authority to extend its power.

"But they are Nazis" is the new "Think of the children".

I didn't buy the "Think of the children" argument back when, and I'm not buying it now just because someone slapped some lipstick on it.

Godwin's law.

Should I be allowed to disregard all others in the pursuit of my happiness?

Disregard? Absolutely. Involuntarily involve them? Never.

Some of you might enjoy the X-Files episode about an HOA with a sinister side.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0751076/

Yeah I had a neighbor who decided it was time to open his in home auto repair shop.

Fortunately the HoA board didn’t look kindly on it for a variety of reasons/ issues.

He eventually moved. I hope he found a good place with a big garage and fewer neighbors to do that thing.

Same with the rental party house (before the days of air bnb(but same issues)).

Aren't those cases covered by zoning laws?

It turns out comprehensive zoning laws are not universal. HOAs are typically a response to inadequate (or at least perceived inadequate) zoning regulation.

However the concept of nuisance has existed in the common law for centuries and insofar as someone’s behavior might be a nuisance it has always been actionable.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuisance_in_English_law

Depends how obvious it is .

Put a car repair sign up then yeah. Be more “quiet” about it and claim and you are fixing a friends car and it becomes less easy / an ordeal for the city or county to act. Unfortunately the car repair guy was not honest and that was an issue.

Party house was a bit of an ordeal.

HOAs tend to fill a lot of zoning gaps.

They are but enforcement can be lacking. The hoa can nickel and dime a person enough that they will take the 10% property value hit to move

There are legal limits to what zoning laws can cover. So HOA can be a way to sidestep state laws.

What's wrong with a guy repairing cars?

Single car garages, connected townhomes, limited parking.

Dude operated at all hours with air tools and etc and took up all the guest parking with broken down cars, leaking all sorts of stuff. He was also dumping all sorts of shit in storm drains and dumping his greasy parts and trash in other people’s trash.

The catch was this wasn’t a constant thing (well not until he chose to go full asshole), just often enough to be a pain, then stop, folks hope he was done, and then he would start up again.

Even had his customers wandering around looking for where he stashed their car and asking to park in front of people’s garage… other times not asking. A few would empty their car trash on the lawns and streets.

Edit I was curious and I googled him, someone with the same name got into tax trouble a few years later. I would not be surprised.

HOAs effect the members living situation, so they have the potential to generate some real horror stories. But it just seems like a particularly dramatic version of "people with happy situation don't post about them online."

My neighborhood growing up had a HOA that just maintained a little shared beach. They had a couple rules for yards, but nothing too onerous (don't have someone stay in a camper in your front yard -- a rule we actually broke, but just for a weekend or so, family visit with not enough rooms in the house). Annoying neighbors will find a way to be annoying, reasonable ones will find a way to be reasonable, the HOA is just a medium for this sort of behavior.

I similarly heard all the horror stories and was nervous buying my current house because it has an HOA.

My partner and I started sending yearly thank you gifts to the HOA board after our first year here. They manage contractors and landscapers to handle upkeep and repairs on the property, coordinate information among neighbors, contract and negotiate with service providers, and even pass along helpful maintenance tips. (Most recently it was "most people still have their original hot water tanks and several people have had theirs start to fail -- it's a good idea to start replacing yours before it becomes a problem" which, as someone newly moved in, I hadn't thought about but sincerely appreciated.) It's like having an advisor on hand who cares as much as we do because they live there too.

I still side-eye the idea of HOAs, but I'm coming around. People talk about the horror stories but "everything is fine with my HOA" doesn't make for exciting reading.

Very similar experience here. Like you, I'd heard my fair share of HOA horror stories, so my first home was in a non-HOA neighborhood.

* One house near the entrance was bordering on being uninhabitable; rotting roof with tarps covering the holes, rotting siding, gutters hanging half on. Always shocked the city didn't declare it a public hazard.

* The people behind me would drag their TV and sofa out in the front yard every time the state's football team was playing, be noisy and would leave discarded beer cans all over the lawn.

* The people in front of me left a disabled car in the road for more than a year. Suspension shot, tires flat, windows busted out and left in the rain. After a year I finally called the city, who sent a code enforcement officer out. The person's response was to push the car out of the road ... into the front yard.

* My next door neighbor mowed his yard about 4 times a year. I even offered on several occasions to mow it for him, just because I didn't want to look at it.

My current neighborhood has none of the above problems. We have a low-BS HOA that basically exists just to be sure the common areas are maintained and that the homes are maintained to a minimum standard as specified in the rules. Otherwise, they stay out of your life. I was even on the board for a few years; we issued a grand total of about 8 warnings and zero fines in that entire time - and IIRC all of the warnings related to parking. Often, just having rules and an enforcement mechanism is enough to ensure minimum standards are maintained by the vast majority of people.

Also, an underrated HOA benefit we discovered is that they are great for collectively getting the city's attention when we need something fixed. We've had problems with potholes forming in some of the roads and, for a long time, the issue was ignored by the city despite numerous homeowners complaining. Until we got our HOA's legal representative to draft a letter to the city. The next week all the potholes were fixed.

I have never had a problem with the HOA preventing me from doing something, even if it was technically against the rules. Last year our HVAC went out and it was going to be a week before we could get it replaced. The HVAC contractor loaned us some window units to keep the house cool until everything could be ordered. Technically window units are against the bylaws. I didn't even run it by the HOA, just put a sign in the window above it saying it was temporary until next week. No issues at all.

The key with HOAs is to be involved! Think of them as mini-municipalities, like a town within a town. And, as an owner, you are entitled to attend the meetings, introduce measurs to change the bylaws, vote on business and hold office in them. This is why "Karens" tend to get and retain power - because no one opposes them. In our HOA, about 60% of the houses never voted and most rarely attended meetings. Sometimes it was hard to even get quorum, and elections were often uncontested. The way I ended up as secretary was because literally no one ran for it. Don't like the way your HOA is being run? Change it. There's a pretty fair chance you'll succeed.

I know the Internet largely hates HOAs, and it is true that there are a fair number of really bad overbearing HOAs out there. A friend of mine once got cited for having grass a half-inch too high. But I think people focus too much on the extreme; there are actually a lot of fairly nice, low BS HOAs out there as well.

Let me ask you, why were you concerned about your neighbors parking in their yard or not weeding their lawn?

Let me answer you with snark:

Yeah, it's totally ridiculous that I would want to live in a neighborhood of like-minded people who would want to maintain and improve their most valuable possession.

I should be totally happy putting time, money and effort into the upkeep and improvement of my plot of land while my nextdoor neighbor adds to their collection of front-yard beer cans and beater cars.

Alright, so let's remove the extreme scenario. Let's go somewhere in the middle and forget about beer cans and rustbuckets. What sort of different uses of property are you OK with your neighbors doing? What if a neighbor wants to turn his front yard into a mini orchard? Or a big garden? Or build a shed in the back without a permit? Or paint his house an unusual color? Say, he takes care of his property and isn't trashy, but just uses it differently than you do. How do you feel about that? Where's your line?

What did all those neighbors do to you? Are you somehow damaged by being forced to gaze upon an unkempt lawn?

Addendum: "Unkept" IS a word, more appropriate than "unkempt" here! Screw you, spellchecker!

How is it undemocratic? They agreed to the terms of the HOA when they bought the place... They move to some place and then are upset when people don't like them doing certain things? This is a weirdly entitled view.

Is there a standards body for HOAs? Are they regulated? If they have equivalent legal status to a government or a police department, are there constitutional rights which they cannot violate? Can two competing HOAs exist in the same geographic area, and home owners are free to setup additional ones if the incumbents don’t meet their needs?

>Is there a standards body for HOAs? Are they regulated?

Each state generally sets its own standards for HOAs. There are legal frameworks, insurance laws, etc. which are fairly similar across the country.

>If they have equivalent legal status to a government or a police department, are there constitutional rights which they cannot violate?

They do not have equivalent legal status to a government or police department. HOAs are limited in their powers by federal, state, and municipal guidelines. Every state has its own laws in this regard. There are also federal laws prohibiting certain bylaws, e.g. the Fair Housing Act prevent HOAs from enforcing racially discriminatory covenants.

>Can two competing HOAs exist in the same geographic area, and home owners are free to setup additional ones if the incumbents don’t meet their needs?

I don't know exactly what you're referring to, but generally speaking, nobody is forced to buy in an HOA neighborhood unless they want to, there are generally a multitude of HOA-managed (and non-HOA-managed) neighborhoods to choose from within a single town/school district/etc. The only exception might be things like specific lakes/small island communities, where the entire geographic feature is managed under a single association (e.g. for lakes they generally pay for the maintenance of the lake itself, stocking fish, removing trash, etc.)

Gish-gallop much? Looks like you were answered anyway though.

That phrase is new to me. Thanks for sharing.

I suspect HOAs are even less democratic than you describe. My wife was president of a small HOA for the last 5 years or so. Most of the community wasn't involved at all. My wife's main job was to work with the management company to keep things sane and the few other people who were involved in check and preventing overreach. At the same time it's hard to change the existing HOA rules. I don't even know where the HOA comes from. It predates almost everyone who still lives here. I suspect the developers put it in place. So likely none of the current residents had any input in the rules and bylaws. At one point someone pushed for dissolving the HOA. That was quickly abandoned one the management company laid out the legal process which was overwhelming and didn't seem worth it to anyone

This is just the eternal conflict between people's freedoms.

Negative liberties ("freedom from") are limited and relatively easy to regulate. If you ban people from killing each other and stealing their property, almost everyone agrees it's not a huge burden. While these liberties sometimes come into conflict, such situations tend to be rare.

In practice, people care more about positive liberties ("freedom to"). In particular, they want the freedom to live a good life. Unfortunately people have different ideas of a good life, and those ideas usually require other people living their lives in a certain way and providing various services. If you try regulating this, you start quickly making choices who is allowed to live a good life.

Because laws are insufficient for a good life, people make voluntary agreements to ensure it. If certain kinds of agreements (such as HOAs) become popular, they can effectively prevent some minorities from living their idea of a good life. But the agreements are only a symptom, not the cause. The real cause are other people. Without HOAs, the same people would try getting actual governments regulate the same behavior. And failing to do so, they would often feel that the society prevents them from living a good life.

I was an HOA board member in Las Vegas for a while. I was absolutely voted into the position and had to stand for reelection every year. The board voted on enforcement actions, and based on public requests and debate occasionally drew up amendments to the regulations (usually clarifications and closing loopholes) for popular ⅔ majority ratification.

> Growing vegetables on what should be a lawn is verboten in many locations, if not by the government than by private association bylaws.

So again, USA is country with most freedom? Freedom™, but you can't grow vegetables on your own property. Or you will be punished for having too long grass. Lmao

What the author is describing are rules of homeowner's associations and other similar organizations.

Individuals freely enter agreements with homeowner's associations which dictate land use. One is also free to choose to live in a place not governed by these rules. But, they are not the law of the land and they do not implicate a lack of freedom in the U.S. relative to other countries. Its quite silly to suggest as much.

Another wrinkle is that many more areas are technically cities; which usually comes with rules like no bees, chickens, goats, etc. Yet just a block or two away and one could live in a township which rarely has such rules.

Generally though I think your point stands, the USA is big enough and varied enough one can usually chose a nearby location which permits hobby farming.

Simple question - if you want to leave HOA and after that grow vegetables, can you do that? If not - it has nothing to do with freedom. It's only propaganda of having the most freedom when citizens of a lot of "non free" countries (by American standards) will laugh at your absurds.

I'm not saying USA is not free country - of course you are free. I'm only saying that telling that you have the most freedom is at least funny.

"most freedom" is a thing you brought up yourself to start a silly flamewar. This stuff is in the guidelines:

Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Looking at the /r/fuckhoa subreddit it seems that those homeovner associations are on level of North Korea and Soviet Russia - someone can come to your property (didnt happen in Eastern Europe even during communism), spy on you, fine you for not parking your car at the garage, fine you 500 dollars for putting a motorcycle outside your house, fine you for having drapes of different color, fine you for having a dog... and many more.

I cant figure out how this works in a country with more guns than people. If those egomaniac HOA people enter someone's property - wont they get shot?

I received two letters recently from my HOA:

1. Trash can was outside more than 24 hours after trash pickup. Do it again and you’ll be fined.

2. Outdoor Christmas lights in a tree more than 30 days after Christmas. Remove within 10 days or get fined. Those lights have been there for years from the previous owners. I never turn them on and just ignore them. Well, they are gone now.

> I cant figure out how this works in a country with more guns than people. If those egomaniac HOA people enter someone's property - wont they get shot?

1. This is just bigotry. You have been fed lies from culture and the media about what American's with guns are like. The vast, vast majority of gun-owning Americans are responsible and level-headed. Despite what most people gather from the news and pop culture people don't just take potshots at people entering their property.

2. People enter into these associations _voluntarily_. People who start to complain about the rules after agreeing to them just didn't read anything they were agreeing to. And no, this is not fine print. Every HOA I've been a part of provides a binder and a website with all the info you need to make the right choice.

3. Freedom, including gun and home ownership, are about personal responsibility. It is an important cultural value in the US and I understand that it is not something that is valued elsewhere. Which is why people like you end up so confused.

> it seems that those homeovner associations are on level of North Korea and Soviet Russia

The HOA is an agreement that is designed to keep a neighborhood from going downhill by residents parking on the street, or turning their yard into a parking lot, or from painting their house some atrocious color. As normally designed, they are little more than a codification of "don't be a jerk."

The problem comes when people get involved. The sort of person who really, really wants to be on the governing board of the HOA is exactly the sort of person who should NEVER be allowed anywhere near a lever of power. These are the sorts of people who are out on the street with calipers to see if your lawn is over the prescribed length, or measuring the height of your mailbox. They take great joy in meddling with other people's lives, and they hide behind the veil of "I'm just enforcing the HOA contract!" to be douchemobiles.

Whether this is an improvement over "either get your car out of your yard or I'm gonna punch you in the nose," is an exercise left to the reader.

What's wrong with parking your own car on your own property?

Because one car becomes one car and a boat, and then it becomes one car, a boat, and a project car that is always being worked on. Then the brother-in-law moves it for a while, and it becomes two cars, a boat, a project car, and an assortment of quad-bikes.

Does it always go this way? No. Does it go this way often enough that people worry about it? Yes.

I can assure you that places without HOA generally don't have all that many atrocious houses. Nor do they have whole yards turned into park lots.

I'm going to assume you aren't American, because it sounds like you're working off of some fairly skewed views of the country. The vast majority of gun owners are pretty much normal people who don't want to shoot anyone for any reason. The vast majority of HoA's are not overbearing or crazy. The Venn diagram of "crazy gun owners willing to shoot anyone on their property" and "over the top HoA's" is going to show essentially no overlap. The former almost always live in rural areas and the latter are usually found in upper class suburban neighborhoods.

You shouldn't take reddit creative writing seriously.

You have an incredibly narrow minded and immature view of freedom.

Some people _like_ living in neighborhoods with these bylaws/HOAs. You are fully made aware of the bylaws before you purchase the property and you can decide for yourself whether or not it works for you.

I live in the US and in my immediate area there are neighborhoods without these bylaws, some with, and there is even agricultural use land mixed in. So if you don't like the places with the bylaws there are many other options. In the US you have the freedom to choose among many different ways of life.

Freedom isn't about being able to do whatever you want, wherever you want, at anyone's expense. It is about being able to find and construct a life that makes you and those around you happy. The _only_ way to do that is to not have one over-bearing set of rules (even if the rule is there are no rules), but to allow people to voluntarily set up their own systems of rules in their own communities.

> In the US you have the freedom to choose among many different ways of life.

So... like in almost any other country in the world.

> if you want to leave HOA and after that grow vegetables, can you do that?

No. The contract you freely enter into governs this. This is sort of like asking, "Can I decide not to pay you, per our contract, after you've rendered services?" No. And that restraint doesn't make me "less free". Not by any common understanding of the word "freedom", anyway.

The U.S. has some 300+ million citizens. I'm not sure we can make monolithic statements about how each of us views the relative freedom of our country. Personally, I wouldn't know how to make such a comparison. However, I strongly suspect we're "more free" than, say, a person living in Iran.

Depends. The HOA is a contract with your neighbors, so if they agree the HOA can be ended. See a lawyer, state law and your contract for details that very much matter and are different fof each.

A few houses ago my hoa could be ended automatically after 2018. I moved out just after then, but the only limit I remember was no more than five cows were allowed, I didn't find that a problem.

Unsure is the emphasis on "freely" is sarcasm but people absolutely don't have freedom when it comes to accepting HOA terms. If the house you can get has a shitty HOA then you're stuck with it. It took us dozens of offers (all well over asking price) before we finally had one that got through and there's no way we'd be able to be picky about HOA.

> people absolutely don't have freedom when it comes to accepting HOA terms

Of course they do.

If you don't like income tax, move to WA. If you don't like sales tax, move to OR. (If you like them both, move to CA!). These choices have inherent compromises.

If you don't like HOAs, choose a different neighborhood. Again, inherent compromises.

But freedom of movement is guaranteed to all (non-incarcerated) US citizens. If you choose not to exercise it, that's 100% on you and your choices of prioritization.

Freedom of movement is only one kind of freedom. Freedom of growing your own carrot on your own property is another.

Just don't say that you Americans are more free than other nations. Because you are simply not.

And what was the point of coming into this thread and pushing that attack specifically at the US? The world is overflowing with highly regulated economies, including all across affluent Europe. The article didn't claim the US was more free than xyz, people in this thread weren't claiming that either. You set up a straw issue so you could knock it down.

You're relatively new here, so here's a tip: what you're doing (trying to incite, posting flamebait) is specifically against HN's guidelines.

1. It's not me, who invented and repeat "America - land of freedom".

2. It's not me, who is constantly telling that I live in the country with most freedoms (I don't say you do, I'm just long enough in the internet to know how it is _in general_).

3. It wasn't any flamebait. I just laughed at this ridiculous thing. It's you all who felt offended and are bashing me because (of cource, as always) _I don't understand it_.

4. If you want - I can do you a favour and stop posting my comments here. It's still worthless tho

You are responding to the wrong person.

And also mischaracterizing the state of things. Some HOAs say you must have a lawn, not a garden, in your front (or street-facing) yard. They do not prohibit you from growing carrots in your back yard. They do prohibit other things.

I'm not a fan of HOAs. But HOAs are voluntary communities. You sign the contract, you are bound by the terms. That's true in your country too.

And as for American Freedom.. It's just part of the exceptionalism mythology. Just like the One True God, or the World Champions of Sport, or what have you. Intelligent people have a more nuanced view. Unintelligent people are more common, alas. And so the world turns...

> Just don't say that you Americans are more free than other nations. Because you are simply not.

But your example is shit, because Americans are free to move a place without an HOA (I’m in one).

You are conflating "free choice" with options that perfectly align with your preferences. I made no such claim. You are absolutely free to not buy a house.

And, I promise you, you can find a home to purchase that is non-HOA. It just might not be in the area that meets all of your other preferences. But this is your choice. This is not evidence of a lack of freedom. You are not coerced into buying any house.

Suppose it's the 1960s, and you want to buy something to eat. Your choices are "Go home and make food." and "Go to a smoke-filled restaurant and buy food." The choice of "Go to a non-smoking restaurant and buy food." doesn't exist in that environment, because there are no such restaurants. It would be silly to state that this is a free choice indicating a preference for smoke-filled restaurants, because there is no alternative that maintains the option of going to a restaurant.

Depending on the location, the only houses available may have mandatory HOA membership. If the choice is "Join an HOA or add 30 minutes to your commute.", that isn't a free choice. If the choice is "Join an HOA or find a job in another city.", that isn't a free choice. Depending on the area, mandated HOA membership may be the de facto law of the land, even if it isn't the de jure law of the land.

Choices must always be compared to their alternative, and using a non-existent Hobbesian state of nature as the alternative is overly simplistic.

While I agree with everything you said, it's a bit ironic that the comparison drawn is between an HOA putting restrictions on what you can do in service of collective benefit as something negative, to before such restrictions was put on restaurants in service of allowing people to get food without second hand smoke.

I understand people will have different preferences, but someone making tar or smoking fish on their lawn 24/7 affects all neighbors, while an HOA rule restricting that only affects that one person, and everyone else can enjoy their yards unsmoked.

Good point, and I realized that partway through writing it, but couldn't find a good way to tie it all together. It's more that I get frustrated at "freely entered agreement" being used as justification in any argument, as it's usually a wild stretch of the word "freely".

A problem I have with HOAs is that towns and Counties will often invest significantly in new construction areas that have HOAs from initial development. The government builds new parks, schools, etc directly adjacent to HOA neighborhoods. If you want close access to these public amenities you need to buy in the HOA.

So, in a way HOAs are sort of endorsed/franchised by the towns and counties which create them.

There are some issues with the word "freely" because in many cities all new construction is HOA-encumbered. So you have the choice between new construction with an HOA and old (quite possibly run-down) and no HOA. That's not a free choice, it's Hobson's choice.

It's about as free as entering into an arbitration agreement. You freely decide to get yourself a cellphone or credit card, and there aren't any on the market where you don't have to sign your rights away. It approaches shrinkwrap license territory.

The HOA is used by the developer to retain control while they sell off all the new construction. They can milk it for fees because they have controlling interest

> many cities all new construction is HOA-encumbered

“Many cities” and “all new construction” are going to need serious citations. If your lens is through big home builders, then it looks like that but it’s completely false.

Except for the part where nearly 70% of new development is within HOA-controlled subdivisions.

Sure, you can avoid them if you want to live in a rural area or buy an older home. But almost anything in the suburbs built since the 1970s is in an HOA.

HOAs can be good. But many of them are run by narrow minded petty despots. Or worse, outsourced to a corporate management company.

I specifically chose my neighborhood based on the HOA. I like that every yard has a lawn and that I don’t have to listen to neighbors chickens. I like knowing no one is allowed to paint giant murals on the siding or drill for oil on their front lawn.

The only way to guarantee things like this don’t happen is with some sort of rules in place.

If that means I hate freedom, oh well.

I think HOAs are an elegant way to segregate the population into "people who want to live under HOAs" and "people who would hate to live under HOAs".

Nobody is likely to be happy when these two groups have to live next to each other, so it's an elegant solution to sort the population into more compatible subsets. Everybody wins.

As do private dirt roads. Very handy.

I'd rather live in a real suburb - e.g. large plots, wells, septic. I'm not ideally fond of dirt roads in general, but nobody is going to be road racing a 1AM. It's at worst a minor inconvenience.

But for 80% of people its a deal breaker. Good! Now I found something I don't mind too much that saved me loads of money. And dirt roads come with no HOAs as a bonus.

Find something where your preferences run counter to the masses and profit!

I wish lawns produced something useful. Half of the grass clippings in my neighborhood end up going out with the trash on Monday night. If only they could be used to produce food or fuel locally.

or just leave them to produce fertilizer.

That rule about vegetables I've only ever heard applied to front yards which on American front yards looks pretty weird anyways. Most of our homes have backyards where it makes a lot more sense to put vegetables.

If you look at this article about it I think you can see why it would be banned: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/illegal-kitchen-garden_n_1687...

Oh wow. That's so much nicer looking than a typical suburban front lawn. What a shame.

Though I can see how the same thing without constant upkeep would go to hell in a hurry.

There are plenty of rural areas of the US where there are little to no building codes. Cities and municipalities of course do, but if freedom to build what you want, how you want is desired, you can find those areas easily.

> to filter out the riffraff who can’t afford larger homes.

When I was poor, I just wanted a home I could afford in a safe neighborhood. Now that I have money, I just want poor people to be homeless.

/mockery

Residential zoning is just so wrong. It’s trendy on the left to say it’s “racist” and it is that, but it’s also classist and elitist and WASP supremacist (e.g. banning multigenerational families, which are common among both Hispanics and lower-tier whites).

I live in a pre-zoning code suburb in Maryland. The current minimum lot size is 20,000 square feet. Our house and most of the neighboring houses are on 2,900 square foot lots. At least on this side of the neighborhood, nobody tattles on each other for doing unpermitted work. The result is real diversity and a tightly packed community. (Though as housing prices increase, our neighborhood, being so close to DC, is under threat from PMCs.)

IIRC, we call it racist without the scare-quotes because of it's disproportional effect. That's how that word works.

> That's how that word works.

Incorrect. In ordinary usage, “racism” means prejudice based on race. There are efforts by some to muddy its meaning, to encompass both racial prejudice and “disproportionate effect,” but that’s not the common usage.

> In ordinary usage, “racism” means prejudice based on race. There are efforts by some to muddy its meaning, to encompass both racial prejudice and “disproportionate effect,” but that’s not the common usage.

Thank you. For some reason I've never been able to explain it so succinctly when two people I respect get into an obviously semantic argument around something being or not being racist and then getting lost in the weeds of the intentions of the long dead.

Just so we're all clear, the racism of prohibitions on intergenerational housing --- which is what BLM is talking about when they talk about the "nuclear family" or whatever it is they said to spook the normies --- is racism, not disproportionate impact. Single family zoning was designed to keep specific ethnicities out of "white" neighborhoods. It's not an accident.

Do you think that there is a large gap between prejudice and disproportionate effect? I'm just curious how this break down for you.

I don't know, I'm just saying these policies were motivated directly, maybe exclusively by racial animus.

> I'm just saying these policies were motivated directly, maybe exclusively by racial animus

We have similar motivations to thank for our cabaret laws in New York, which literally fined restaurants without the proper licences if their patrons danced.

> In ordinary usage

Sounds like you are referring to a connotative value which is common to a subculture of English speakers. I learned to use the dictionary definition from sociology 101.

You definitely didn’t learn the “dictionary definition” in any sociology class, but rather a redefinition of the term developed in social sciences circles that’s used mainly there.

https://www.google.com/search?q=racism&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=...

> noun prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized. "a program to combat racism"

That's nice that you think the dictionary definition is an newer academic construct

I’m not sure I understand your point. The dictionary definition, as I quoted above, refers to prejudice. Is that what you learned in sociology?

Yes, prejudice was discussed, but prejudice is not descriptive of the social force that we talked about in sociology.

The definition you quoted included discrimination which is another umbrella term like disproportionate effect. Why is it so hard to understand that racism is what racism does?

Discrimination is also another term that in ordinary usage requires intent to discriminate.

I don’t find the concept “hard to understand” I’m just talking about what commonly used words mean. “Racism” is a word that describes individual animosity. It’s confusing to try and overload it with other meanings.

> ordinary usage requires intent to discriminate

Disagreed. Our laws about discrimination against protected groups do not care about intent, nor do I care about intent when I am talking about a piece of code that serves to discriminate between one chunk of data and another in some fashion. In fact, even when I talk about people who discriminate, I rarely care about their intention.

> overload it with other meanings

I find the dictionary definitions suitable. I believe you have been arguing in favor of the overloaded social (connotative) meaning on this thread. Color me impressed.

> That's nice that you think the dictionary definition is an newer academic construct

If you have to change the dictionary meaning of a word to make your argument work, it's your argument that is broken, not the dictionary.

"Minimum square footage requirements have been put in place to filter out the riffraff who can’t afford larger homes"

Disgusting.

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