It's usually obvious when something is getting worked on vs something met its forever spot in the yard.
Telling other people what they can do with their property is fundamentally reprehensible.
Cars have fluids that aren't exactly environmentally friendly.
One man's freedom ends where another man's freedom begins. Fine if you're doing small scale car repairs on your own car in a residential zone, not fine if the smell from your hacky welding job disrupts my enjoyment of my property.
If you want to do shit that impacts your neighbors, go and rent a garage in an industrial or commercial zone.
I've heard several anecdotes about people whose neighbors picked up a hobby that generated downwind impact, but the only times I've heard of the neighbor being made to stop were in cases where an HOA existed.
At that point, he'd probably get a C&D order filed against him for emissions and a decent fine on top as well.
That's why I love the German system: people are protected from the influence of bad actors, not the other way around.
FFS, if you plan on taking up a hobby that causes pollution, do at least the bare minimum and check out with your neighbors first and install appropriate mitigation measures (filters and scrubbers). Or, if you want to be a really good person, offer your neighbors some pieces of meat in exchange for tolerating the emissions.
Civic engagement with the goal of infringing upon your neighbors' right to use their property in whatever manner they see fit frequently meets these criteria. You are the bad actor.
Furthermore, policy informed by sentiments like yours have been tried and failed. Strict separation of commercial and residential activity is why places like LA and SF are the sprawled suburban wastelands they are today. You wanna live in the city? That means dealing with city stuff, which means hearing and smelling your neighbors and maybe a good old fashioned riot every 50yr or so. If you would prefer bugs, heat and the occasional devastating weather event every several decades move to Florida.
We have been running this kind of policy for decades in Germany, and the only ones complaining are people who don't care about their neighbors and society but only care for themselves and their enjoyment.
> That means dealing with city stuff, which means hearing and smelling your neighbors and maybe a good old fashioned riot every 50yr or so.
Surprise, I'm living right in the inner area of Munich. The only thing causing noise here is the street with an active 5-10 minute service bus line, and that's gotten better as the buses began to be switched over to hybrid and recently electric models. When we make a bbq event or a birthday party, it's customary here to ask the neighbors if it's OK, and to offer to come around for a beer and a steak. It's called "not being an arsehole on purpose", a concept that seems to be very foreign to Americans, at least on Reddit.
You're free to join a homeowner's association which will micromanage not only smells but also the location of your garbage can.
Last time I checked, fuel and many other fluids in cars are carcinogens or otherwise toxic. Leave that shit out of any place that isn't adequately equipped to clean it up.
> You're free to join a homeowner's association which will micromanage not only smells but also the location of your garbage can.
Here in Germany, that is usually governed by city codes anyway, no need for an HOA - trash cans usually have to be in a separate room indoors (for large complexes) or in an enclosure (e.g. [1], the first grab off of Google). We don't need micromanaging HOAs (and don't have them outside of condo complexes), because decades upon decades of experience have led to a democratically agreed set of basic rules - in this case: society has democratically decided that they don't want trash bins standing around in the open, partially because that's a fucking eyesore, partially because free-standing bins just attract vermin and pests.
[1] https://www.vidaxl.de/e/vidaxl-mulltonnenbox-fur-3-tonnen-20...
I definitely would not want to live next to someone learning how to use a welding rig.
Judging by the sheer number of Prop 65 warnings slapped on everything in California, that's hardly unique to automobiles.
Besides, it's already illegal to dump such fluids. Enforce the existing reasonable laws instead of introducing new unreasonable ones.
However, the noise of someone preparing stuff to weld with an angle grinder would definitely be annoying.
Edit: my point is just that it's weird to police car maintenance specifically, rather than general noise ordinances and/or HOA rules (for people who choose to have an HOA).
The same people complaining about car/mechanical work are the ones who have no problem with consistent leaf blowers/lawn mowers/parties/etc.
I built a single engine airplane in my suburban garage over the course of six years, and it involved lots of specialized (and loud) tools. Air compressors, rivet guns and other pneumatic tools. Before starting, I visited both neighbors and gave them a heads up to see if they had any problems with it. We agreed on night and weekend curfews for the air compressor and tools and that was that.
I swear, 90% of our laws we wouldn't even need if people weren't total assholes.
I think I just discovered a dangerous new rabbit hole…
I really wish I had a time lapse of that build.
There is no shortage of stupid, destructive behavior among humans, agree. However zoning is generally exactly to keep light industrial activity (poisons, smells, leaks) away from residential areas (children, people with illness, health). The personal Auto blurs that distinction and yes, is a source of poisons and bad aesthetics.. so there is work to do.
Two items -- people from Asian countries, or the Global South, or others, do have really different cultural aesthetics than Germans about houses and yards; secondly there is a different fundamental agreement in America about how to allocate rights and responsibility to land owners. Is it not true that most Germans do not own a home? Is it true that the Catholic Church in Germany is the largest apartment owner, by a large margin?
Yes, only about 47% own the home they are living in [1] - partially due to a strong history of government-provided and cooperative-owned housing, partially because land values around suburban and urban areas have exploded so far that young people can't ever hope of owning anything.
> Is it true that the Catholic Church in Germany is the largest apartment owner, by a large margin?
Good question. The Catholic Church is extremely intransparent, so serious estimates can't really be made [2]. The real estate market is extremely fractured - even the largest players Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia, with something like 550k homes, own just 2% of the market combined [3]. The Catholic Church has been estimated at about 130k units in the past [4], so they are while certainly a large player still not the largest, not even close.
[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Wohnen...
[2] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/katholische-kirch...
[3] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/vonovia-deu...
[4] https://www.domradio.de/artikel/zwischen-investment-und-sozi...
I think the policy in question is stupid, but so is being absolutist about it.
In my neighborhood, with lot sizes around 6000-9000 square feet, this seems like a reasonable compromise.
I'm happy to live next door to a grumpy old dude with six derelict cars rotting in his back yard. It keeps my property value low, which in turn keeps my taxes low and keeps the type of people away who would otherwise have an issue with my doing metalworking in my own workshop because of the noise.
They implement this entirely through covenants and deed restrictions, with no state involvement at all, as I understand things.
Literally, the sights and sounds of the neighbor running a garbage dump is less reprehensible to me than dealing with a bunch of racist busybodies in an HOA. At least if you have a problem with the neighbor, you you can put on some headphones or build a privacy hedge. If you have a problem with the HOA they can fine you indefinitely because they don’t like you (with some convenient excuse like the flower beds aren’t trimmed right or the grass isn’t green enough), and then foreclose on your house, kicking you out on to the street.
These are homes. Property value whiners need to find a neighborhood of empty investment houses to police.
I keep my property simple and tidy, but if anyone dared complain about it I would seek out the most absurd yard art possible in hopes of offending them and anyone that thinks like them out of my neighborhood.
We already have laws re environment.
What really seems to happen with these discussions is dog whistles for “i don’t want them poors next door.”
But the “concept” of one’s property as investment “outranking” one’s property as a homestead is, in my mind, part of the core concern here. Maybe it’s too “meta” but we already have laws re noise, etc as well as a system in place to modify broken laws.
Appreciate your reply!
Military vehicles often have dedicated drip pans that they put under the vehicle every time they are parked because it's easier to do that than fix the leaks.
In the units I was in, any vehicle that had any fluids in the drip pan would get a thorough check next Monday to find the leak and would be in the shop as soon as the part came in.
Sure this isn't going to be an issue with a car on blocks for a few months, even a year, but I've seen cars essentially abandoned long enough if you wanted to move them you'll have to literally dig them out and remove them in pieces.
I'm positing (without evidence) that for most people it would be a factor, so the home owner would suffer some amount of real money harm. Much less harm in rural Alabama, much more harm in lower Manhattan.
I would not even accept a free home in an HOA neighborhood.
Out of curiosity, do you also think that the majority of Americans feel that way? My guess is it's gotta be at least 90/10 that would be less likely to move next to a broken down car place, certainly enough to affect the buyer pool in a city.
If my property just looks untidy, it's much harder for me to accept you have a case.
There's not a lot of room for downsizing.
Cry me a river about your house value. If you want to invest then invest in people. Homes should not be your investment vehicle. Homes should be homes.
If you have a filthy neighbor then you should help them to not be filthy. Unfortunately laws can have real costs that some people can't afford.
Does your neighbor have a garbage dump on their property? Perhaps you should offer to take their garbage to the dump. Perhaps you should offer to pay for their garbage service. Perhaps you should offer to help them store their collectibles somewhere that won't destroy them from the elements. Perhaps you should try to understand your neighbor instead of decrying your precious lost home value.
When one of these folks moved in next to my parents my attempt to come introduce myself and drop off a sixer of beer was met with a shotgun.
I also have experience on this, and let me tell you: neighbors' rights end at the property line (laws otherwise notwithstanding). I don't give a flying fuck about your resale value.
It's certainly not neighborly to be asocial but there's absolutely nothing wrong it and I'm glad you learned quickly that your new neighbor doesn't want to be disturbed.
Again, I don't care about your home's sale value. But demonstrate to me that something I'm doing on my property affects your safety and I will take action to rectify the problem. If I don't then you certainly have laws that can help you.
That's why I'm a proponent of these types of laws. You take an action that costs me $X, and then the state comes along and says and you can undo the damage, (easy in this case), compensate me, or go to jail and they'll sell your house.
Again, just to be crystal clear here: I don't think there should be a law punishing you for working on your car, or painting your house an ugly shade of green or growing your own tomatoes or whatever. But here in the United States houses are the biggest purchase most people make and if go to such an extreme you make it so I can't sell mine, that's no longer you living your life without hurting anybody.
In the case with the gun-toting the rude neighbor, he ended up being more than rude, and went to prison for abusing his children. The bank that took his house cleaned it up, so it all ended sort of tragically. I often wonder what could've gone differently to lead to a better outcome there.
That's quite reductive and very typical of people who only care about money.
> I hope you move somewhere next to other neighbors who are on the same page, and it all works out fine, and i mean that non-sarcastically.
I did, in fact, move where there isn't an HOA.
> here in the United States houses are the biggest purchase most people make
Yes, they are.
> and if go to such an extreme you make it so I can't sell mine, that's no longer you living your life without hurting anybody.
I completely disagree. It's not that you can't sell yours. It's that you can't sell yours for a profit. Too bad, homes should not be profits.
If you want your home to be for-profit then you should run a home business instead. Then it's crystal clear that you don't own a home but instead own an investment vehicle with all of the not-caring-about-actual-humans that goes along with it and all of the business taxes for it too.
Only thing i'd like to respond to is that my view has nothing to do with making money or using the house as a business. Whether the house is worth the same, more, less than I bought it for is irrelevant to the question of if I am suffering financial harm from my neighbor's action.
If you do something that costs people money, then you make them whole, whether in occurs on your property or not, and whether they're in a mansion in the hills or a 500sf 1br condo.
I agree that houses shouldn't be investments and our current system is crazy, but it's completely orthogonal to the point at hand, except in the case of pushing more Karen types to take their financial stresses out on their neighbors =P.
By that logic, you're costing me money simply by owning land instead of me, or by working for yourself instead of for me. I demand you make me whole! /s
No, that logic does not hold up to the reality that people matter and that different people have different opinions about what to lawfully do on their own property. That inherent difference is fundamentally what is at discussion here. I argue that it is effectively impossible to hold your neighbors' (and their properties) responsible for your own properties value unless you can demonstrate problems with safety or the environment.
I'm not a real estate investor. Let's say I'm moving to a big city. My current house's value is the difference between a 2 bedroom and a 3 bedroom apartment there.
Sure, absolutely. But different people have different definitions of "garbage dumps". To me, the only real garbage dump is that wherein pests can thrive or toxic materials can leak.
I've seen the other side of things where something that's simply "not new" but completely functional is considered garbage.
> Let's say I'm moving to a big city. My current house's value is the difference between a 2 bedroom and a 3 bedroom apartment there.
If that's a problem then that's your problem. I assume you'd be moving for work, in which case bring it up with your employer. You should not treat your home as a monetary investment vehicle. If I were moving for family or to get away from neighbors, then that's simply the cost for peace of mind. That's a cost that I have decided to take upon myself. That's a cost that I will have decided to spend to improve myself. That's absolutely not a cost that the neighbor has imposed upon me.
you're the reason HOAs exist, it's a shame because HOAs suck but at least you have some idea of standards the neighborhood shares and holds themselves to.
Racism is the reason HOAs exist (both originally, and, though their direct ability to implement it has been reduced, still in their major function and effect.)
I don't think one can say racism is the major function, especially in other societies that have HOA-like systems. Admittedly they tend to be the lighter version of HOAs and not the type that act like Disney Village dictatorships who find any excuse to fine residents. If the HOA is made up of residents (rather than administered by an outside party) they tend to be more representative of the wants and needs of the development and inhabitants they govern.
Not talking about RWAs in India, but, since you bring it up, there's been plenty of coverage of an upswing in racism in India, too.
> I don't think one can say racism is the major function,
Its fairly well-documented as both a historical motivation and a current function.
> especially in other societies that have HOA-like systems.
I’m not talking about “other societies” and “HOA likr systems”.
> [...] they tend to be more representative of the wants and needs of the development and inhabitants they govern.
And when those residents were selected for racism by advertising the development with (for older developments) direct and (for newer ones) coded appeals to racism, guess what one of the prominent shared wants is?
In my experience, HOAs hurt mostly retirees who don't have the same cash flow as recent purchasers of homes. Again, in my experience, newcomers to the States seem to be the most vocal in asserting the bylaws, presumably to ensure their investment keeps increasing its value. In second place come the people who are considering selling their house and also want to maximize value.
Artificial human created abstract excuses to save a buck are not real externalities, they're problems people create for themselves and therefore nobody else's problem.
Your house NEEDS TO BE MAINTANED. If paint is chipping and looking awful THE CITY will force you to take care of it.
But there is a big difference between that which concretely harms you in the moment, and that which makes your home more or less attractive to home buyers.
Because if the proponents expressed their real reason, it would sound petty or racist, and as they don't want to sound petty or racist, they have to invent "ridiculous over the top st[r]awmen" to hide their real underlying reason from view.
People who don't want to risk having an eyesore next to their house should choose to move to a neighborhood with an HOA. People who value personal freedom on their property should choose to move to an area without that. In theory, everybody should be happier.
HOAs only have power of people who actually care about being a good neighbor. They're basically only useful for harassing honest people and maintaining shared spaces. You only need a HOA if your community has a pool/park/community center/parking lot that is owned by said community.
Source: I live by a dump. You wouldn't even know it was there if it weren't for the obvious dump traffic.
I think this sounds nice in theory, but you open to door to neighbours expecting payment for positive externalities as well. "I just renovated my driveway and slightly increased your property value, pay me."
It also seems absurd to manage relationships between people living meters from each other by the same mechanisms we manage the operations of multi-billion dollar corporations. What next? Charging your kids for services rendered after raising them?
Sounds similar to the result of having an HOA/condo association, shared payment for maintenance upkeep and improvements
in most german citys there is a set of acceptable colors to paint your house in (i.e. there is most certainly some authority that tells you what you can do to your property in any regard)
Out of respect for cultural differences, I won't protest you having this rule in Germany, but it doesn't sound great to American ears (I do acknowledge that Americans have disagreements about such things, but I think I speak for the norm that this sounds like people being busybodies).
Not defending it, just observering that the difference for much of the US population is who is enforcing it, not if the rule exists.
But what we should be doing is capping HOA-covered SFH at a max % of an area, to ensure people still have freedom to live in non-HOA housing if they chose.
If someone wants to give up their freedom for pretty sidewalks, good for them. But it shouldn't be the only option.
Instead, a lot of areas have local government mandating/empowering HOAs for the sole purpose of not having to deal with their community issues, at the expense of placing people under the rule of petty, non-professional tyrants.
Hell, I have three broken down vehicles on or near my driveway for years and no one's said a thing to me about it. At least they're on their own wheels and not up on cinder blocks :-)
How people want to live can be irritating, but we all moved out here for the space and more freedom to live our lives, so we have to try to get along. I'll put up with the noise from your shotgun at noon, but when you start setting off cherry bombs at 9PM, then I'm going to be pissed and you'll hear from me.
If they're on 10 acre lots with trees where I can't even see it, and my neighbor is just doing reasonable stuff to run a small business on ground with no zoning, who cares? On the other hand I can still hear it, so we might share similar positions on noise after hours.
Property rights are not absolute--just like free speech is not absolute.
You have to pay your property taxes and, as discussed on this thread, there's zoning which may restrict commercial activity in a residential area. There are doubtless other bylaws in a given place related to noise, smells, etc. The government can take a property by eminent domain as well.
It's about being reasonable. And what's reasonable on a 10 or 100 acre rural farm is different from what is reasonable in an upscale suburban community with houses on 1/4 acre.
I don't want to go around proposing a HOA-style contract with every single person in earshot / downwind every time I move, and hope we can come to terms I can afford.
> it's easier to force people to abide by rules that you can't get them to voluntarily agree too
The issue is that some people's concept of "ownership" means "I can do whatever I want on this property, even if it imposes a high cost on others". You can pick your scenario, from "My home, my 3am drum practice" to "My home, my burning of this pile of nuclear waste". There's no magic way of assessing the "true" costs to me by your actions next door, so we need these laws.
If you live on more space near less people, then you need less of these laws, maybe none!
I understand (and agree) that for every "My neighbors yard is a literal cow pond" there's some Karen who is mortified at the shade of off-white I painted my house. There are also unlimited historical cases of the government misusing these laws to keep poor/minorities out. The reality is there are a lot of selfish assholes out there, and so laws help give you a little recourse when one moves in next door.
I don't feel unreasonable saying I want to sleep from 11pm-7am, and be able to sell my house some day with a value based solely on the greater market and what I do to it, not the crazy guy down the street.
That said, I live in a very dense city. I'm not moving to rural Alabama and expecting to impose that on anybody 2 miles away.
I live in a small lot suburb with roosters and I have been known to angle grind at 3 am. Neighbors say nothing. I say nothing about screaming kids, blaring music, and the dude doing late night Tuba practice. This is just people living life.
If you value total silence and no evidence of lifestyle diversity around you, then perhaps rural Alabama is a better fit for you.
Yes it’s their yard, but it’s also our neighborhood. Yes they should have autonomy but also should know how to operate within civil society. There are limits. They need not be onerous and get down to small details, but people need to be roughly reasonable.
Can I call in emergency scares and call them “artwork” of the performance kind? Things aren’t things just because I say they are a thing. One can’t walk thru a TSA line with a weapon and “call it art”.
A society which threatens its members with state violence because they dare to repair their own property themselves on their own property is hardly "civil".
Not everyone has the luxury of keeping all the cars they own in running order at once.
The fact you clearly do not understand this is exactly you have have no business making rules for other peoples property.
When you make laws to restrict behavior like this, you are really trying to get rid of the poors.
If you want to help discourage this type of behavior long term, vote for better public transportation.
The problem with "let people do literally whatever they want" with their property is that it infringes on my freedom to live happily/healthily on my property.
If my neighbors blast music until the early hours of the morning and they don't turn it down when asked politely, is it "reprehensible" for me to call the police to enforce my village's noise ordinances? What if they're burning refuse and it spews over into my yard and ventilation? Or if they have an uncovered fire pit close to the property line?
That's not even getting into the long term effects on the community, like if people store or dispose of hazardous waste on their property (we all share the same water table!).
I don't think it's "fundamentally reprehensible." It's part of living in a free society that balances the rights of one against the rights of all.
Leaking oil into the ground and air conditioning gasses into the atmosphere is already illegal. It sounds like preventing car repair is purely a nefarious regulation, whether it be an attack on rights to repair, or preventing depreciation of some over inflated asset. I would love to explain this away with simple ignorance. If so, let's just repeal this ridiculous regulation.
Like another poster said, "this is why we can't have nice things." A few bad actors breaking ordinances that are unenforceable means the ordinances become more strict.
That said - last week my neighbor had his car up on a jack, in the street, for 2 days straight. He was repairing something under the rear of the car in cold weather. He's "allowed" to do this because none of us are mean and called in a complaint so the city didn't know about it.
Have you ever tried a restoration? I haven't. But I've watched a few on YouTube. The amount of problems and delays (e.g., getting hold of rare or specialised parts) that can mount up is beyond belief. M539 Restorations spent a year working on an Alpina B7 and went through 3 engines (I think, it might have been 4 - I have a recollection of him buying one and immediately returning it but that might have been a different project) doing so (they're notorious for scoring issues).
What I have done, and am in the middle of, is refurbish a house. Similar issues. Take a 70 year old house where nothing is square and the last owner was a bodger and everything is a PITA. It's all doable, but it's a PITA. I recently had to wait about 8 weeks for materials for a particular job to turn up. That's especially bad, but having to wait a week or two if you need to go a bit off piste with materials or tools isn't. Being blocked by the weather (e.g., it's too cold in the attic for materials to cure properly) is also something that can happen.
The reality is it's just not possible to know how long a restoration or refurbishment is going to take when you start it, and you the one guarantee is that you'll find unanticipated problems you need to solve along the way, all of which adds to the time it takes.
(And this is all ignoring wider circumstances: you get laid off, or some surprise expense means you need to lay off spending on the restoration for a while, you fall ill, somebody else in your family falls ill, etc. Life's messy. Stupid rules about how long restorations and refurbishments should take are not helpful.)
All you can do is keep steadily moving forward until it's done.
If laws like this were really trying to go after environmental impacts then the city could mandate that cars get put over an fluid reservoir. You can buy them super cheap at most stores and we used them in the military because of similar concerns with JP-8 and oil.
A lot of people don't have that. In life I try to walk the line of, "You can do whatever you want until your actions violate my rights in some significant way."
Not necessarily paying for materials, but just the labor part is usually a huge burden to many, such as the elderly. Hey, I have a lawn mower. It's no big deal to mow your lawn once in a while for you. Usually I'm too lazy to care about minor stuff like tall grass. I did help a neighbor fix a downspout since the contractor said she'd need fascia to put in a modern gutter and wanted $1k to do it. One hour of my time and about $25 in parts and scraps later, she has a working downspout. Isn't this what being neighbors is supposed to be?
It depends, but those things can happen in a much shorter timeframe. I have a (running and usable) car sitting for a couple months and there's no oil spots but by the tires and weeds it could appear as if it's been there longer than the year I've been there.