Hacker News Reader

Comment by searealist | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to live in a neighborhood where my neighbor's yards are full of poop. This is true even if the unit is unoccupied.

View on HN

If a deer walks through your yard and poops in it do you go out there and pick it up? Like these are wild animals, they aren't talking about a someone raising geese or something. Wild animals poop, it will quickly disintegrate into the soil. At worst you might run a lawn mower over it to spread it out better.

Yes. It's your responsibility to maintain your property if you choose to live in an HOA.

The HOAification of America has gone too far. There are some places where it's hard to find a home not subject to a HOA. I don't think "well live somewhere else" is a reasonable answer to that complaint. That's definitely a "I got mine, so eff off" sort of response.

Who wants to invest in a neighborhood that can be ruined by a few bad apples not maintaining their properties?

Why would people need to invest in a neighborhood? Houses are for living in.

Because it is and always was a large purchase and you want it to maintain its value.

Quality of your life depends not only on your house but also on houses around you. When I go out, I want to see nice, well maintained houses with no garbage outside. What happens without HOA in low middle class and poor areas are broken cars, garbage everywhere and unkempt lawn. In wealthy neighborhoods you generally do not need HOA as people maintain their property on their own.

We were house-shopping a bit ago, and at one place while the realtor was showing us around there was a knocking at the door. The realtor answered it, and it was an older man, a neighbor, saying that one of our cars was partly off the pavement and on the gravel in the driveway, and that it wasn't allowed. We needed to move our car, we were breaking the rules.

Realtor looked at us. "You're probably not interested in this house, right?" Nope. She read us right. We would never live in a place under the thumb of an HOA.

>The HOAification of America has gone too far

The HOAification is likely a symptom of broader cultural changes (bad changes, IMO).

I imagine HOAs were formed to address the movement of "undesirables" into the American suburbs.

Only in newly built out places that didn't have preexisting and sufficiently expansive local governments that could be utilized for such tasks. Those municipalities simply passed local ordinances, many/most of which are still on the books and continue to be used for arbitrary enforcement exactly as envisioned the better part of a century ago.

Goose poop is not very smelly since it's mostly fibre from their all-grass diet. It's not like a backyard full of dog poop. It's no worse than applying manure to fertilize the soil.

Source: I've stepped in goose poop many, many times up here in Canada and it's the least bad poop to step in.

You're definitely not the kind of neighbor I'd like to have. Animals poop. That's life.

Then don't move into an HOA? Some of us have standards: no cars, poop, or weeds on lawns.

There are now places where everything is in an HOA. That's gotta suck for folks who have to live there because of work or other commitments.

I don't understand why people believe their standards should apply to other people's property. I don't get why you simply being near them in proximity means you believe you're entitled to control over their land.

We've let residential property as an investment go waaaaay too far. And now we have little suburban dictators running around everywhere enforcing whatever the fuck they want, to protect their investment.

I live in rural America specifically because I can do whatever I want to with my property without some retired busybody up my ass.

Spoiler: my property isn't a mess and the house is well kept. Because it's better for me that way. But I can also build a small shed if I feel like it without worrying about other people. And I can pee outside on a tree. That's a bonus as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com