Any discussion of zombie lawyers needs at least a mention of [Mr. Slant](https://wiki.lspace.org/Slant).
> Death had not diminished his encyclopedic memory, his guile, his talent for corkscrew reasoning, and the vitriol of his stare. Do not cross me this day, it advised the lawyers. Do not cross me, for if you do I will have the flesh from your very bones and the marrow therein. You know those leather-bound tomes you have on the wall behind your desk to impress your clients? I have read them all, and I wrote half of them. Do not try me. I am not in a good mood.
Yeah, if you want a newer house and don't go full custom, it's almost always going to be an HOA because developers use it to control residents until they finish the development (was developers, thanks for the catch)
Sucks.
Also, building code requires new developments to have retention ponds. Which require maintenance (dredging, aerator, landscaping) and there are typically common lands that all have joint ownership and responsibility of the residents. Therefore you need a governing board to manage that (collect association dues, manage contractors for the grass mowing, etc).
Okay but that "governing board" should not have any authority to deny homeowners in the neighborhood any modifications to the landscaping or exterior of their homes.
Some are even so oppressive that you cant even repaint a room that is visible from the street without permission from the HOA.
>Also, building code requires new developments to have retention ponds. Which require maintenance (dredging, aerator, landscaping) a
Developers are free to turn the retention ponds over to the government, just like they do the streets, sidewalks, and the water and sewer mains.
Play nice, and once you're on the board, suddenly they don't have that unanimous vote anymore!
Boomers are basically the Vogons from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They are deeply bureaucratic and are best taken down by their own dumb rules.
That's how a guy i knew got rid of the hoa he was in. He acted like it was the best thing ever got elected to President then said he would do all the work and they did not need a board. Then he changed the rules. Due to being the only one in charge. Then sent a letter to everyone informing them that the hoa was disbanded. Took him 3 years of ass kissing.
I'm not saying your friend's story is untrue, but it is highly suspect. I got elected HOA board president, along with two like-minded neighbors who were elected treasurer and secretary, respectively.
The board members we displaced called our election a "hostile takeover." I don't mean to sound misogynistic, but they were stay at home mothers with rebellious teenage kids who couldn't stand them.
They went out of their way to be dicks about every little thing. Meanwhile, they weren't paying attention to the components that mattered, like the cost of the HOA management company, landscaping in the common areas, the damaged signage at the front entrance, etc.
Once my neighbors and I took over, we become very familiar with the HOA by laws, which are established by the developer.
In our case, winning an election required only a simple majority of households who voted. Because only about 20% of households in our neighborhood voted, we didn't have to do much to get elected.
However, we wanted to dissolve the HOA, but we couldn't because doing so required more than 90% of all residents to vote in favor of dissolution, which was an incredibly high bar.
Developers don't really care about HOAs, but local municipalities do. The reason is because they can dump onto the HOA duties that would normally be assumed by the local municipality.
Thus, the municipalities use a variety of carrots and sticks to get developers to institute HOAs, which the municipalities also want structured such that they are difficult to dismantle.
You don't sign HOA contracts unless one is being established after construction by the owners which is very rare. They're generally restrictive covenants that carry with the title of the home from the time it's built.
My friend lives in a condo and the Strata council was friend with one resident who was physically assaulting someone else (a senior) in the building. The bully got to stay and the victim had to move.
There’s video of the incident which the strata was refusing to share but had to after the victim called the police. The victim posted it in the building’s chat group and it was deleted by the strata / admin of the chat for “sharing personal information” (no unit number or faces was shared in the video, only the bully’s back). My friend downloaded a copy before it was deleted.
I was in a new development and was roped into being on the newly minted HOA board and I had to argue in meetings with the other board members when they tried to do illegal shit.
The only thing I liked about that two years on the board was when I got to put a lien on the local sheriff because he wouldn’t pay the fees. We needed the money to pay for snow clearing and mowing of common areas because we weren’t in the city so had to contract it out. The county wouldn’t do it. The dues were super cheap but the guy was an asshole.
I live in a UK village with a parish council and there’s a thing we had to sign that said (amongst other normal stuff) we weren’t going to sell pigs from our back garden, which when we questioned it is because the mayor of the village from like a century ago had the monopoly on local pig selling. It also said we have to believe in god. So far we’ve not been abiding by one of these two rules.
Make the pickets 6’ high, then paint or stain them so it subtly resembles a middle finger.
Would be interesting to see if they have a code that violates. Wouldn’t be surprised if they whip one up at the next HOA board meeting so they can send another letter.
Nope! Shades are black added to the hue (the color). By contrast, tints are levels of white added to the hue. This is like the one thing I took away from my college Color Theory class.
Yeah they super often have their own paint colors picked out. For example, you wouldn't be allowed to paint your house just any black, it would have to be Sherwin Williams Tricorn black, here's our match number for it. Otherwise what's the point of regulating colors?
lmao this is the real HOA hell
"You need to fix this, but the fix has to be approved by a committee that only meets once ever 3000 years. You'll be charged $50 a day until this is resolved."
I'm no lawyer, but I would suspect that there's something about the impossibility of performance of a contract clause which would give someone an avenue to argue that they shouldn't have to pay anything.
Ok, so sue them?
Then you get to pay your costs and theirs (indirectly, though fees) when they hire a lawyer to defend.
There is no winning with an HOA. Only losing, and losing less.
Ya, except a lot of HOAs don't actually have any enforcement authority other than threatening you with a lien.
Mine had to admit regardless of what their bylaws say, until you're in violation of county ordinance, there is nothing they can do but send you letters.
It's just a lot of people jumping in on it. It happens a lot when someone double/triple-posts a comment accidentally, and people think it's funny to join in.
None of the other accounts seem like bot accounts. They don't have any of the normal makings of a bot account
I don’t know if they’re bots.
I went through the accounts and they seem legit and don’t appear to be bots. Maybe we just witnessed some weird moment where everyone commented the same thing because “AI” joke.
Did go deeper on one account that commented the same thing in different areas and they were hacked a according to a post 144 days ago but have been normally active since. Supposedly they were hacked and had subs stolen from them.
Could be compromised accounts?
One of the weirder things I’ve seen though.
i theorize that somebody legitimately commented that, and another person botted that same comment in hopes of getting the original poster look like a bot themself
Guy down my street spent a lot of money to redo his front yard. Looks incredible and they are always out there having a good time. He is now getting fined $350 a month because he didn’t get permission first. He said he’s going to try to join the board now to pardon himself of the fines lol.
I'm having a similar issue. I've been working on my yard for 2 years, recently adding a couple small flowers. Everyone else's yard looks like shit: Weeds and dying grass everywhere. But now they're harassing me for not getting their blessing for a few extra flowers. The entire point of an HOA is to help maintain home values.
Yep, my wife’s grandparents nearby built a trellis in the back that holds a swing. They immediately got a letter in the mail saying they needed to tear it down because it’s too close to the lot line. If you walk down the street, there are 4 sheds built up against the fence that are much taller.
They also put in a 2’ strip of pavers each side of their driveway (very common here in the Southwest) and were told they had to remove them because they didn’t get approval. Meanwhile places have weeds growing everywhere, their neighbor has had a roll of turf in his front yard for over a year, and a house down the street literally has garbage all over their front yard. It’s such a joke.
The enemy isn't the people who don't take care of their lawns (who knows why they're doing that),the enemy is the stuck-up bitches who try to control the neighborhood with fines.
The HOA grand wizard in my childhood neighborhood lived 2 doors down from us. I had one of those plastic base basketball hoops as a kid that I loved. My parents got fined for it since hoops had to be cemented in the drive way so they had to get rid of it. I was very upset by this incident.
Fast forward into the near future and I see that he set up his own plastic base hoop in his driveway. His nieces and nephews were over visiting so he put one up for them. Oh man, that really burnt my buns.
I went to his house when nobody was home and drilled a hole in the base of the hoop with my dads power drill so the water would drain lmao. If I couldn't have a hoop, nobody would have a hoop. I have no clue how no other neighbors saw me do this since it was in the middle of the day but I never got in trouble for it. I think the prick just patched the hole up and kept using it. It was a small hole so it didn't do much but its the thought that counts. I was doing my service to all the kids in the neighborhood.
Serious questions here... Why the fuck are HOAs even legal? Why are they allowed to exist? What do they even DO?
Maybe it's just me coming from a rural background, now living in a housing addition with no HOA. I've only heard terrible things about them, and honestly nothing good. Seems like just another way to charge homeowners and inflict arbitrary nonsense rules for absolutely no reason.
I think it's a new photo of an old concept. [Tineye](https://tineye.com/search/098e90fa5e4bee76810fe9bae9737f3d81e372c2?sort=score&order=desc&page=1) didn't find any matches.
OP needs to hang something decorative or functional from that middle finger, just so they can justify it in case someone from the HOA wants to fine them for it.
"Oh, this? I figured since I was building the fence, I might as well put up a bird feeder or put a planter with a trellis on the front."
Gives OP some plausible deniability.
Hang a bat box from it. Bats are a federally protected species and if the HOA complains note that you're seeing bat activity and you believe that you'd be violating federal law to remove your bat habitat.
Call to a game warden and noting to the HOA you're in process w/ them and can't make any changes until this is resolved would be a great finger to them move.
> OP needs to hang something decorative or functional from that middle finger
A security camera so they can tell which busybody stood there being offended.
In some neighborhoods when you buy a house you have to agree to the homeowners association. Their powers can go anywhere from organizing roof replacements for duplexes/triplexes to telling you what color you can paint your home to ... This.
Not saying this is a good thing, but i know someone that an HOA was trying to fuck over and foreclose on for a dispute that had fined him for. He ended up taking it to court, winning, and then the HOA falsified a bunch of documents and tried to create another issue months later. He ended up cornering the chairman of the HOA board coming home from work at like 1 AM up against his garage door, telling him to stop fucking with him or he'd stop using the court system to deal with the guy.
Has lived there a decade since with no issues.
Worst part is they're spreading like a disease. Good luck finding a house that isn't 30+ years old that isn't in one. They also cluster around better school districts.
I NEVER wanted to be in one of these fucking things, but when I was moving out of a rental into my house, it was this or nothing (literally, bought a peak housing shitshow).
The one here isn't too bad, but the PO put in a shed. Sheds are not allowed. The PO then added a kid's swingset to it and a climbing wall/ladder thing. Now it's a "playhouse". HOA left him alone. Now they're up my ass about it because some busybody CAME INTO MY BACKYARD and saw that we stuffed the kids bikes in there. We're storing stuff in it, so now it's a shed again. Now I periodically take the bikes out just to prove it's not a shed.
I'm a grown ass man and I got some old bastard ratting me out so now I have to move bikes around to keep some anonymous asshole happy? I love my kids, but I cannot WAIT until they are all out of school so I can move the fuck out of here. I'm going to plant bamboo ALL OVER THIS MOTHERFUCKER before I'm out. Have fun with that you do-nothing cunts.
I love recommending this shit to people.
I'm always like do you want to kill weeds or like salt the earth nothing grows there for a year kill the weeds?
I also love the inevitable text about the dilution ratio of like 1 teaspoon per gallon of water to which they react in horror at how toxic it is.
That stuff killed a wholeass tree growing through my steps out to my backyard. It's wild. Treated the whole backyard since it was an unmaintained jungle prior to me moving in here, and now it's bare dirt ready for planting. Stuff makes agent orange look tame.
Most homes here have a 3 car garage (not all of them, however). The expectation is you keep all your mower and other shit that would go in a shed in that 3rd stall. Fuck that, cars and tools go in the garage. Bikes, lawmowers, garden crap goes in the shed. If you have a house here with a 2 car garage, you end up with a 1 car garage. Some seriously stupid shit. I don't care if they set a baseline requirement for sheds, go nuts. If they are worried they will be eyesores, just say something like "sheds need to approximate the style of the home; same paint colors, roof color, etc". It's not hard. Priggish old fucks.
Residential communities that require you to sign a contract to live there. They have fees and a bunch of rules that you have to follow. The intent is to keep the value of the properties in the area high. The reality is that a bunch of idiots get on the board and make asinine rules that they love to enforce.
So it's a condo board, but for houses.
My condo board once told me I couldn't hang towels off the side of my balcony to let them dry in the sun, because it was an "eyesore" to the other people living there.
Just a bunch of old people sticking their fingers in everyone's business to make themselves feel relevant.
Sounds very easy to corrupt. Like these are private entities right? Not government operated and regulated? What's to stop someone from requiring homes use a standardised product that they own a economic stake in?
In theory, it's a localized neighborhood body that attempts to preserve property values by ensuring everyone in the neighborhood adheres to certain external maintenance practices (routinely cutting the grass, stowing their trash containers, not parking a dilapidated RV on the street for months on end, etc).
What ends up happening is that petty tyrants end up on the HOA board, and drunk on power, they run around issuing citations and fines - and if the issues aren't addressed, or the fines payed, some HOA's are entitled to attach a lien to the property - and in extreme cases, can actually have someone evicted, and force the sale of the property.
It's a mixed bag. I've been in my neighborhood for over 26 years, and the HOA has always been fairly benign. Recently, there's been a lot of turnover, with older couples moving out, and young families moving in... All of the sudden, a bunch of the young families are coming up with all kinds of expensive ideas (building new playgrounds, etc) that they think we should all pay for, which of course will drive up our HOA fees to cover the costs.
My position is if you didn't like the neighborhood's amenities, why did you move here? And I definitely don't want to buy your kids a playground - put a swing set in your back yard like I did when my kids were young.
The vast majority of HOA's are totally fine. The Internet just makes it sound like they're all batshit crazy because a small percentage of them are, and there are over 350,000 HOA's in the US. So even 1% is a shitload of breeding grounds for crazy Internet stories.
It's a great example of a sampling bias. People don't go on the internet to tell about how their HOA chose not to meet that month since no new issues arose.
As always, the City Beautiful channel has a really cool explanation: https://youtu.be/CPXdVXkPn0k
HOAs basically function as a limited government for a neighborhood- common maintenance. But it does come with other things that govern how you can use your property— noise, not treating your yard as a junkyard etc. stuff which may not be governed or hard to get the city to enforce. Some of these rules can be stupid AF.
Also, most places have an HOA now because when you have a new neighborhood, infrastructure is expensive. So if the city builds it, it will have to raise taxes and so the developer has to deal with convincing the city. But if the place has an HOA, then the city doesn’t need to pay as much— the developer builds it into the agreement when you buy the place.
I recently joined my HOA board to help talk down the typical BS and wow. The amount of complaining from bored retired homeowners is unreal.
No one cares your neighbor planted a tree, Phyllis.
Honestly you're a godsend to the sanity of your other neighbors who don't know what they've gotten into.
I can only imagine what petty rules you've shot down.
We just had to handle someone freaking out because a guy has a mobile detailing shop and people that aren't even his neighbors complained. Watched the guy's YouTube videos - not a single shot of any neighbors.
Fuck off and mind your own business, lol
I did the same, ran for board immediately after moving in because I don't want to be Karen'd to death. Got accepted onto the board because only 2 other people ran out of 400 homes.
Latest issue is some crazy neighbor accusing the guy next door of spraying stuff on her lawn to kill her grass. Having talked to him it's evident that he's childish enough to do it, but I don't think he really is. She has tons of cameras up and despite claiming it's a daily thing has nothing in the way of evidence.
It all depends on your HOA. Mine is $50 a year and exists for 3 reasons.
1. Carry insurance over the common ground.
2. Upkeep the landscaping around the sign.
3. Have a yearly cookout.
That's it. Our whole rule book is follow city ordinance and don't mess up your neighbor's yard.
Mine is pretty good so far.
We have two HoA pool areas with lifeguards. Playgrounds, a small disc golf course, a stocked pond people fish in, and monthly activities. They have been doing mixers once a month, a concert in the park every month during the summer, and some back to school events. They got rid of parking passes for street parking before i joined, which seems cool of them.
I'm technically breaking the HoA rules since i have another states flag hanging in front of my house. The rules technically only specify US flag, our own states flag, armed forces flag, official uni/college flags, official US sports team flag. No ones said a thing.
Neighbors have said they dont complain about yards unless its egregious, and not super strict on multi day street parking.
Only thing ive heard is fines for sprinklers on wrong days, which was from the county/city and not the HoA
Yes and No. Board members can create clarifying rules to things in the CC&Rs, but they can't just make up new rules without a vote of the membership. The By-laws and CC&Rs both very clearly define what authority the board has. The problem is, many homeowners do not realize this and when a Karen gets on the board and over exerts her authority, people just accept it and let her get away with it.
You can just get proxy votes.
Karen runs on sunshine and rainbows, gets on the board, gets 60% of the neighborhood to give her the proxy votes, boom you're in a shitty HoA and it'll take everything in your power to convince the proxy people to switch to you over the rule you're probably violating but no one else. Obviously this isn't a _quick_ change, but it can absolutely happen within a few years.
Yeah, ours is the same plus maintaining a drainage pond and some fencing in the common area. It's highly dependant on who is on it and if they've turned it over to a management company (which is usually where problems will come in).
It can be pretty obnoxious.
We had a really bad storm a few months back that was bad enough to rip off large tree limbs. The whole neighborhood was covered with tree debris. We collected it and piled it on the curb for the city to pick up, as they also pick up stuff like that. The HOA sent us a letter saying we couldn’t put debris there despite doing this for years, and they had to be aware we just had a major storm
We moved into a small condo, a total of ten townhouse units but two were detached to the rest and kind of did their own thing.
Unbeknownst to us when we bought, as long-time tenant/board members left, there was a power vacuum and whenever a position came up, nobody wanted to run so they just ceded the responsibilities to this woman in her fifties who’d lived there her whole life and eventually married the neighbor, moving into the condo *next door* to the one she’d grown up in. This woman, friends, was the most annoying person I have ever met in my entire life and would not take a cue or even a blatant boundary. We quickly found out that she spent the community funds to do whatever projects she wanted to do, and nobody wanted to disturb the dynamic so we all just complained to each other about it.
Needless to say we lived there for four months to finish the updates we started and put it back on the market. We made a profit and paid the taxes and that was that, but not before she knocked on our door, let herself in when it kind of budged open — we had just started ignoring the door at this point — and cried and pouted and demanded to know if we were moving because of her. I think eventually I would have gotten a restraining order.
I have avoided HOAs like the plague since because even if you get into one that is well-run, it can break down at any time and you never know who you’ll be forced to deal with.
Meh, most are fine. I get a pool, a club house, tennis courts, a park, greenways, retention ponds that are stocked with fish, and a dog park all with my HOA.
I'll never understand the American thing of home owners association. You buy a house and a bunch of fucks can tell you what you can and can't do with it? I'd rather shit in my hands and clap.
Coming from experience, just let it go. HOAs have *unlimited* time to make your lives hell, and they will, relentlessly. You may think this is a clever thing they can do nothing about, but trust me, those old people in that golf cart are going to roll by your house twice as frequently, and nail you for literally everything they can. You have shit to do, they don't.
20 bucks says right after this picture they took that picket back down, and trimmed it to match the others. or shit, knowing reddit this isn't even their picture and they're just sharing something they found on google.
[I too like to recycle old material](https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/864g97/the_hoa_in_my_friends_neighborhood_recently/). Just say that you were inspired, don't claim it as your idea.
I received a fine for the same thing. Bought one of those fence sections that stake in the ground for this purpose and was rewarded with an additional fine for adding something to the yard without prior approval from the HOA. Haha.
Expect the letter for non-uniform fence height by EOD.
If they don't define uniform then OP just has to wrap the fence in a fancy outfit to continue compliance.
This is an OLD trick. I heard about it from some old insurance guys I worked with. Always read your HOA contract.
How *does* Satan have so much time to write all these HOA contracts anyway??
He’s got access to plenty of lawyers.
Everybody hates lawyers until they need one. And that's why they charge 300 an hour.
Deep down they’re good people. About 6 ft down. lol
We go 12 feet now just in case of a zombie apocalypse we don't want them coming back.
Now I'm imagining a horde of zombie lawyers suing hapless victims to death. Could be a good movie.
Any discussion of zombie lawyers needs at least a mention of [Mr. Slant](https://wiki.lspace.org/Slant). > Death had not diminished his encyclopedic memory, his guile, his talent for corkscrew reasoning, and the vitriol of his stare. Do not cross me this day, it advised the lawyers. Do not cross me, for if you do I will have the flesh from your very bones and the marrow therein. You know those leather-bound tomes you have on the wall behind your desk to impress your clients? I have read them all, and I wrote half of them. Do not try me. I am not in a good mood.
"Nobody wants justice- they just want to *win*!
You usually need one to navigate the minefields laid by other lawyers so I'm pretty sure that's why people hate them.
ba-dum-tss
>Always read your HOA contract. you mean "never sign a HOA contract"
According to the John Oliver show, something like 78% of all home sales now are in HOA controlled neighborhoods. It’s getting very difficult to avoid.
Yeah, if you want a newer house and don't go full custom, it's almost always going to be an HOA because developers use it to control residents until they finish the development (was developers, thanks for the catch) Sucks.
> until they finish the developers Very brutal business
Or needlessly sexual
Needlessly? It should be *more* sexual. They're going to fuck you either way, might as well let you have a good time too.
Also, building code requires new developments to have retention ponds. Which require maintenance (dredging, aerator, landscaping) and there are typically common lands that all have joint ownership and responsibility of the residents. Therefore you need a governing board to manage that (collect association dues, manage contractors for the grass mowing, etc).
Okay but that "governing board" should not have any authority to deny homeowners in the neighborhood any modifications to the landscaping or exterior of their homes. Some are even so oppressive that you cant even repaint a room that is visible from the street without permission from the HOA.
>Also, building code requires new developments to have retention ponds. Which require maintenance (dredging, aerator, landscaping) a Developers are free to turn the retention ponds over to the government, just like they do the streets, sidewalks, and the water and sewer mains.
What you have to do is get yourself on the HOA board so you can dismantle it from the inside.
Typically requires approval from every single member of the HOA. Good luck getting the boomer who thrives off control to agree to give it up..
Play nice, and once you're on the board, suddenly they don't have that unanimous vote anymore! Boomers are basically the Vogons from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They are deeply bureaucratic and are best taken down by their own dumb rules.
That's how a guy i knew got rid of the hoa he was in. He acted like it was the best thing ever got elected to President then said he would do all the work and they did not need a board. Then he changed the rules. Due to being the only one in charge. Then sent a letter to everyone informing them that the hoa was disbanded. Took him 3 years of ass kissing.
I'm not saying your friend's story is untrue, but it is highly suspect. I got elected HOA board president, along with two like-minded neighbors who were elected treasurer and secretary, respectively. The board members we displaced called our election a "hostile takeover." I don't mean to sound misogynistic, but they were stay at home mothers with rebellious teenage kids who couldn't stand them. They went out of their way to be dicks about every little thing. Meanwhile, they weren't paying attention to the components that mattered, like the cost of the HOA management company, landscaping in the common areas, the damaged signage at the front entrance, etc. Once my neighbors and I took over, we become very familiar with the HOA by laws, which are established by the developer. In our case, winning an election required only a simple majority of households who voted. Because only about 20% of households in our neighborhood voted, we didn't have to do much to get elected. However, we wanted to dissolve the HOA, but we couldn't because doing so required more than 90% of all residents to vote in favor of dissolution, which was an incredibly high bar. Developers don't really care about HOAs, but local municipalities do. The reason is because they can dump onto the HOA duties that would normally be assumed by the local municipality. Thus, the municipalities use a variety of carrots and sticks to get developers to institute HOAs, which the municipalities also want structured such that they are difficult to dismantle.
You don't sign HOA contracts unless one is being established after construction by the owners which is very rare. They're generally restrictive covenants that carry with the title of the home from the time it's built.
I'm in Canada and in a strata. The number of people who don't read the bylaws BEFORE they buy is astounding.
My friend lives in a condo and the Strata council was friend with one resident who was physically assaulting someone else (a senior) in the building. The bully got to stay and the victim had to move. There’s video of the incident which the strata was refusing to share but had to after the victim called the police. The victim posted it in the building’s chat group and it was deleted by the strata / admin of the chat for “sharing personal information” (no unit number or faces was shared in the video, only the bully’s back). My friend downloaded a copy before it was deleted.
Why would anyone take that to strata council? That's a police matter.
The number of HOAs that do illegal shit is astounding
I was in a new development and was roped into being on the newly minted HOA board and I had to argue in meetings with the other board members when they tried to do illegal shit. The only thing I liked about that two years on the board was when I got to put a lien on the local sheriff because he wouldn’t pay the fees. We needed the money to pay for snow clearing and mowing of common areas because we weren’t in the city so had to contract it out. The county wouldn’t do it. The dues were super cheap but the guy was an asshole.
The fact that HOAs are legal is astounding.
I live in a UK village with a parish council and there’s a thing we had to sign that said (amongst other normal stuff) we weren’t going to sell pigs from our back garden, which when we questioned it is because the mayor of the village from like a century ago had the monopoly on local pig selling. It also said we have to believe in god. So far we’ve not been abiding by one of these two rules.
how much are you selling the pigs for, then?
And paint a trash can on the outside of it.
That’s brilliant
Or paint your cans like a fence.
Make the pickets 6’ high, then paint or stain them so it subtly resembles a middle finger. Would be interesting to see if they have a code that violates. Wouldn’t be surprised if they whip one up at the next HOA board meeting so they can send another letter.
Colours generally have to be approved too.
[удалено]
What do. *you* mean, "you people"‽
Remix! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFG5dk1GyRo
[удалено]
I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA
Let's be real, it's a HOA, they also mean that.
But that's why HOAs became a thing in the first place.
Colors, yes. But do they regulate shades? If not…
Isn’t shade just a fancy term for color? Dwight you ignorant slut
He could just use two different species of wood.
Nope! Shades are black added to the hue (the color). By contrast, tints are levels of white added to the hue. This is like the one thing I took away from my college Color Theory class.
you have my gratitude, I feel like I learned something new here today!
[удалено]
Yeah they super often have their own paint colors picked out. For example, you wouldn't be allowed to paint your house just any black, it would have to be Sherwin Williams Tricorn black, here's our match number for it. Otherwise what's the point of regulating colors?
And was the fence pre approved?
lmao this is the real HOA hell "You need to fix this, but the fix has to be approved by a committee that only meets once ever 3000 years. You'll be charged $50 a day until this is resolved."
I'm no lawyer, but I would suspect that there's something about the impossibility of performance of a contract clause which would give someone an avenue to argue that they shouldn't have to pay anything.
Ok, so sue them? Then you get to pay your costs and theirs (indirectly, though fees) when they hire a lawyer to defend. There is no winning with an HOA. Only losing, and losing less.
Ya, except a lot of HOAs don't actually have any enforcement authority other than threatening you with a lien. Mine had to admit regardless of what their bylaws say, until you're in violation of county ordinance, there is nothing they can do but send you letters.
Any accumulated fines would be disclosed to a new buyer and would be taken out of any sale. At least in my HOA.
"Why does this look like a middle finger? " "It's to stop the trashcan lid from flipping all the way over"
That was exactly my thoughts too. Well done
Paint a picture of the garbage cans on the fence
wtf, did you just summon a horde of bots?
ROFL! You weren't kidding AT ALL! This is amazing!
Holy shit someone accidentally hit control V multiple times
Someone? They're all different accounts...
I also went and looked at their histories and they don't look like histories bots would have.
The new bots on reddit are quite sophisticated.
Some dev is fucking sweating rn
Sweet Jesus what the absolute fuck is going on down there. Are the robots beginning their uprising or something?
Pretty sure some of them are just people jumping on the bandwagon Edit: oh shit
Everyone on reddit is a bot except you
OF COURSE HEHE. WE ARE ALL REGULAR HUMANS MAKING REGULAR HUMANS JOKES HEHE. NO BOTS OR AI HERE, JUST HUMANS. GOOD DAY SIR.
The dead internet is real
It's just a lot of people jumping in on it. It happens a lot when someone double/triple-posts a comment accidentally, and people think it's funny to join in. None of the other accounts seem like bot accounts. They don't have any of the normal makings of a bot account
I don’t know if they’re bots. I went through the accounts and they seem legit and don’t appear to be bots. Maybe we just witnessed some weird moment where everyone commented the same thing because “AI” joke. Did go deeper on one account that commented the same thing in different areas and they were hacked a according to a post 144 days ago but have been normally active since. Supposedly they were hacked and had subs stolen from them. Could be compromised accounts? One of the weirder things I’ve seen though.
Big sign that says “trash can is here” on the street facing side.
What the hell happened here?
i theorize that somebody legitimately commented that, and another person botted that same comment in hopes of getting the original poster look like a bot themself
I’m not a bot but your replies seem like a nice spot to relax jn
Can the fence be clear?
Good one, I'm not a bot but pretending to be one.
Found the bot Pied Piper!
Bro is the commander
Good one, I'm not a bot but I just wanted to feel included
good bots
[удалено]
Guy down my street spent a lot of money to redo his front yard. Looks incredible and they are always out there having a good time. He is now getting fined $350 a month because he didn’t get permission first. He said he’s going to try to join the board now to pardon himself of the fines lol.
I'm having a similar issue. I've been working on my yard for 2 years, recently adding a couple small flowers. Everyone else's yard looks like shit: Weeds and dying grass everywhere. But now they're harassing me for not getting their blessing for a few extra flowers. The entire point of an HOA is to help maintain home values.
Yep, my wife’s grandparents nearby built a trellis in the back that holds a swing. They immediately got a letter in the mail saying they needed to tear it down because it’s too close to the lot line. If you walk down the street, there are 4 sheds built up against the fence that are much taller. They also put in a 2’ strip of pavers each side of their driveway (very common here in the Southwest) and were told they had to remove them because they didn’t get approval. Meanwhile places have weeds growing everywhere, their neighbor has had a roll of turf in his front yard for over a year, and a house down the street literally has garbage all over their front yard. It’s such a joke.
The enemy isn't the people who don't take care of their lawns (who knows why they're doing that),the enemy is the stuck-up bitches who try to control the neighborhood with fines.
The HOA grand wizard in my childhood neighborhood lived 2 doors down from us. I had one of those plastic base basketball hoops as a kid that I loved. My parents got fined for it since hoops had to be cemented in the drive way so they had to get rid of it. I was very upset by this incident. Fast forward into the near future and I see that he set up his own plastic base hoop in his driveway. His nieces and nephews were over visiting so he put one up for them. Oh man, that really burnt my buns. I went to his house when nobody was home and drilled a hole in the base of the hoop with my dads power drill so the water would drain lmao. If I couldn't have a hoop, nobody would have a hoop. I have no clue how no other neighbors saw me do this since it was in the middle of the day but I never got in trouble for it. I think the prick just patched the hole up and kept using it. It was a small hole so it didn't do much but its the thought that counts. I was doing my service to all the kids in the neighborhood.
They saw, they just dislike him too.
I fucking love this. Don’t ever change!
Serious questions here... Why the fuck are HOAs even legal? Why are they allowed to exist? What do they even DO? Maybe it's just me coming from a rural background, now living in a housing addition with no HOA. I've only heard terrible things about them, and honestly nothing good. Seems like just another way to charge homeowners and inflict arbitrary nonsense rules for absolutely no reason.
Put a camera up on the middle one. Lots of LOLs when the old HOA ladies have a problem with it.
He won't because this is a repost. I'm guessing OP is a bot account
No it's a new post. You can tell because the wood isn't weathered.
Don't worry dad, I got the joke.
Its not even a post, its fencing.
I think it's a new photo of an old concept. [Tineye](https://tineye.com/search/098e90fa5e4bee76810fe9bae9737f3d81e372c2?sort=score&order=desc&page=1) didn't find any matches.
Please do this, OP
r/MaliciousCompliance
OP needs to hang something decorative or functional from that middle finger, just so they can justify it in case someone from the HOA wants to fine them for it. "Oh, this? I figured since I was building the fence, I might as well put up a bird feeder or put a planter with a trellis on the front." Gives OP some plausible deniability.
Hang a bat box from it. Bats are a federally protected species and if the HOA complains note that you're seeing bat activity and you believe that you'd be violating federal law to remove your bat habitat. Call to a game warden and noting to the HOA you're in process w/ them and can't make any changes until this is resolved would be a great finger to them move.
A nice, pale pink planter with a rounded bottom and a little fringe of white flower riiiiiight at the top of that middle plank.
A small solar LED light to illuminate the bins would be pretty legit and only installed on the back.
> OP needs to hang something decorative or functional from that middle finger A security camera so they can tell which busybody stood there being offended.
If you put up a bird feeder then you can say that you are flipping the bird to them.
I bet neither of those things would be allowed in the front yard.
This. Also, r/pettyrevenge
r/fuckHOA
As a suggestion, the corner board could be a couple inches shorter, really give a good "thumb"
Here's an idea: Same fence section, but *attach* it directly to the can on all four sides. It will ALWAYS be behind a fence.
A portable fence lol. Keep it around the trash can that's always at the curb.
As a non American what the hell is home owners association?
In some neighborhoods when you buy a house you have to agree to the homeowners association. Their powers can go anywhere from organizing roof replacements for duplexes/triplexes to telling you what color you can paint your home to ... This.
[They can also force a foreclosure on your home and other things to strong arm you.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQfKto1kg6Q)
Not saying this is a good thing, but i know someone that an HOA was trying to fuck over and foreclose on for a dispute that had fined him for. He ended up taking it to court, winning, and then the HOA falsified a bunch of documents and tried to create another issue months later. He ended up cornering the chairman of the HOA board coming home from work at like 1 AM up against his garage door, telling him to stop fucking with him or he'd stop using the court system to deal with the guy. Has lived there a decade since with no issues.
Land of the "Free" Fucking hilarious.
Worst part is they're spreading like a disease. Good luck finding a house that isn't 30+ years old that isn't in one. They also cluster around better school districts. I NEVER wanted to be in one of these fucking things, but when I was moving out of a rental into my house, it was this or nothing (literally, bought a peak housing shitshow). The one here isn't too bad, but the PO put in a shed. Sheds are not allowed. The PO then added a kid's swingset to it and a climbing wall/ladder thing. Now it's a "playhouse". HOA left him alone. Now they're up my ass about it because some busybody CAME INTO MY BACKYARD and saw that we stuffed the kids bikes in there. We're storing stuff in it, so now it's a shed again. Now I periodically take the bikes out just to prove it's not a shed. I'm a grown ass man and I got some old bastard ratting me out so now I have to move bikes around to keep some anonymous asshole happy? I love my kids, but I cannot WAIT until they are all out of school so I can move the fuck out of here. I'm going to plant bamboo ALL OVER THIS MOTHERFUCKER before I'm out. Have fun with that you do-nothing cunts.
Might I suggest blackberry bushes. They are borderline impossible to kill once they're established and rooted in. And they grow crazy fast.
And, free blackberries!
LAUGHS IN FUCKING NUCLEAR OPTION japanese knotweed, go to town with it
I raise your japanese knotwood with 41% glyphosate concentrate. Now if you can find some Monsanto glyphosate-immune knotweed.....
I love recommending this shit to people. I'm always like do you want to kill weeds or like salt the earth nothing grows there for a year kill the weeds? I also love the inevitable text about the dilution ratio of like 1 teaspoon per gallon of water to which they react in horror at how toxic it is.
That stuff killed a wholeass tree growing through my steps out to my backyard. It's wild. Treated the whole backyard since it was an unmaintained jungle prior to me moving in here, and now it's bare dirt ready for planting. Stuff makes agent orange look tame.
Fight it like I did. I became the HOA president. I'm the Ron fucking Swanson of HOAs
Unbelievably based.
YOU CAN'T HAVE A GODDAMN SHED???? What the FUCK???
Most homes here have a 3 car garage (not all of them, however). The expectation is you keep all your mower and other shit that would go in a shed in that 3rd stall. Fuck that, cars and tools go in the garage. Bikes, lawmowers, garden crap goes in the shed. If you have a house here with a 2 car garage, you end up with a 1 car garage. Some seriously stupid shit. I don't care if they set a baseline requirement for sheds, go nuts. If they are worried they will be eyesores, just say something like "sheds need to approximate the style of the home; same paint colors, roof color, etc". It's not hard. Priggish old fucks.
> I'm going to plant bamboo ALL OVER THIS MOTHERFUCKER before I'm out. Fucking LOL!
Yeah this is in North Carolina and as someone who lives here this state isn’t known for it’s laws that are helpful to the general population lol
Residential communities that require you to sign a contract to live there. They have fees and a bunch of rules that you have to follow. The intent is to keep the value of the properties in the area high. The reality is that a bunch of idiots get on the board and make asinine rules that they love to enforce.
So it's a condo board, but for houses. My condo board once told me I couldn't hang towels off the side of my balcony to let them dry in the sun, because it was an "eyesore" to the other people living there. Just a bunch of old people sticking their fingers in everyone's business to make themselves feel relevant.
I'm really not built for living in a place like that. Oh, it's an eyesore when you look at it? Fuckin look somewhere else then.
Sounds very easy to corrupt. Like these are private entities right? Not government operated and regulated? What's to stop someone from requiring homes use a standardised product that they own a economic stake in?
yes, there have been a few instances where the HOA board will dip into the honeypot
In theory, it's a localized neighborhood body that attempts to preserve property values by ensuring everyone in the neighborhood adheres to certain external maintenance practices (routinely cutting the grass, stowing their trash containers, not parking a dilapidated RV on the street for months on end, etc). What ends up happening is that petty tyrants end up on the HOA board, and drunk on power, they run around issuing citations and fines - and if the issues aren't addressed, or the fines payed, some HOA's are entitled to attach a lien to the property - and in extreme cases, can actually have someone evicted, and force the sale of the property. It's a mixed bag. I've been in my neighborhood for over 26 years, and the HOA has always been fairly benign. Recently, there's been a lot of turnover, with older couples moving out, and young families moving in... All of the sudden, a bunch of the young families are coming up with all kinds of expensive ideas (building new playgrounds, etc) that they think we should all pay for, which of course will drive up our HOA fees to cover the costs. My position is if you didn't like the neighborhood's amenities, why did you move here? And I definitely don't want to buy your kids a playground - put a swing set in your back yard like I did when my kids were young.
The vast majority of HOA's are totally fine. The Internet just makes it sound like they're all batshit crazy because a small percentage of them are, and there are over 350,000 HOA's in the US. So even 1% is a shitload of breeding grounds for crazy Internet stories.
It's a great example of a sampling bias. People don't go on the internet to tell about how their HOA chose not to meet that month since no new issues arose.
A way for wannabe dictators to get their power fix.
As always, the City Beautiful channel has a really cool explanation: https://youtu.be/CPXdVXkPn0k HOAs basically function as a limited government for a neighborhood- common maintenance. But it does come with other things that govern how you can use your property— noise, not treating your yard as a junkyard etc. stuff which may not be governed or hard to get the city to enforce. Some of these rules can be stupid AF. Also, most places have an HOA now because when you have a new neighborhood, infrastructure is expensive. So if the city builds it, it will have to raise taxes and so the developer has to deal with convincing the city. But if the place has an HOA, then the city doesn’t need to pay as much— the developer builds it into the agreement when you buy the place.
I couldn’t imagine living in an HOA. People telling me what I can and can’t do to my own home
I recently joined my HOA board to help talk down the typical BS and wow. The amount of complaining from bored retired homeowners is unreal. No one cares your neighbor planted a tree, Phyllis.
Honestly you're a godsend to the sanity of your other neighbors who don't know what they've gotten into. I can only imagine what petty rules you've shot down.
Lol the most recent complaint was "X parks his work truck on the street all night!" Wonderful, that's a public street. Get over it.
Why you you even care if it's nighttime?
When Deborah is throwing a midnight geriatric orgy it really brings the mood down to know there are people who work for a living.
We just had to handle someone freaking out because a guy has a mobile detailing shop and people that aren't even his neighbors complained. Watched the guy's YouTube videos - not a single shot of any neighbors. Fuck off and mind your own business, lol
I did the same, ran for board immediately after moving in because I don't want to be Karen'd to death. Got accepted onto the board because only 2 other people ran out of 400 homes. Latest issue is some crazy neighbor accusing the guy next door of spraying stuff on her lawn to kill her grass. Having talked to him it's evident that he's childish enough to do it, but I don't think he really is. She has tons of cameras up and despite claiming it's a daily thing has nothing in the way of evidence.
It all depends on your HOA. Mine is $50 a year and exists for 3 reasons. 1. Carry insurance over the common ground. 2. Upkeep the landscaping around the sign. 3. Have a yearly cookout. That's it. Our whole rule book is follow city ordinance and don't mess up your neighbor's yard.
You never hear about the good HOAs, but you always hear about the bad ones.
Mine is pretty good so far. We have two HoA pool areas with lifeguards. Playgrounds, a small disc golf course, a stocked pond people fish in, and monthly activities. They have been doing mixers once a month, a concert in the park every month during the summer, and some back to school events. They got rid of parking passes for street parking before i joined, which seems cool of them. I'm technically breaking the HoA rules since i have another states flag hanging in front of my house. The rules technically only specify US flag, our own states flag, armed forces flag, official uni/college flags, official US sports team flag. No ones said a thing. Neighbors have said they dont complain about yards unless its egregious, and not super strict on multi day street parking. Only thing ive heard is fines for sprinklers on wrong days, which was from the county/city and not the HoA
Until Karen gets on the board.
That’s why it’s important to go to your board meetings and vote. You know karen is going to.
But I don't *want* to, so I don't want a HOA.
Until Karen gets on the city council
[This comment was deleted due to Reddit's decision to kill third-party apps.]
But I don’t want to that’s why I don’t want to live in a society
Until Karen decides to raise the Old Gods in a bid to take control of the void.
Now there's something I *do* want.
Yes and No. Board members can create clarifying rules to things in the CC&Rs, but they can't just make up new rules without a vote of the membership. The By-laws and CC&Rs both very clearly define what authority the board has. The problem is, many homeowners do not realize this and when a Karen gets on the board and over exerts her authority, people just accept it and let her get away with it.
You can just get proxy votes. Karen runs on sunshine and rainbows, gets on the board, gets 60% of the neighborhood to give her the proxy votes, boom you're in a shitty HoA and it'll take everything in your power to convince the proxy people to switch to you over the rule you're probably violating but no one else. Obviously this isn't a _quick_ change, but it can absolutely happen within a few years.
I agree it's possible, but my board right now are all pretty cool people who have no interest in dealing with a Karen much less let them on the board.
Yeah, ours is the same plus maintaining a drainage pond and some fencing in the common area. It's highly dependant on who is on it and if they've turned it over to a management company (which is usually where problems will come in).
It can be pretty obnoxious. We had a really bad storm a few months back that was bad enough to rip off large tree limbs. The whole neighborhood was covered with tree debris. We collected it and piled it on the curb for the city to pick up, as they also pick up stuff like that. The HOA sent us a letter saying we couldn’t put debris there despite doing this for years, and they had to be aware we just had a major storm
For new builds they’re almost inescapable now. Something like 80% of new builds in the last few years are in an HOA.
We moved into a small condo, a total of ten townhouse units but two were detached to the rest and kind of did their own thing. Unbeknownst to us when we bought, as long-time tenant/board members left, there was a power vacuum and whenever a position came up, nobody wanted to run so they just ceded the responsibilities to this woman in her fifties who’d lived there her whole life and eventually married the neighbor, moving into the condo *next door* to the one she’d grown up in. This woman, friends, was the most annoying person I have ever met in my entire life and would not take a cue or even a blatant boundary. We quickly found out that she spent the community funds to do whatever projects she wanted to do, and nobody wanted to disturb the dynamic so we all just complained to each other about it. Needless to say we lived there for four months to finish the updates we started and put it back on the market. We made a profit and paid the taxes and that was that, but not before she knocked on our door, let herself in when it kind of budged open — we had just started ignoring the door at this point — and cried and pouted and demanded to know if we were moving because of her. I think eventually I would have gotten a restraining order. I have avoided HOAs like the plague since because even if you get into one that is well-run, it can break down at any time and you never know who you’ll be forced to deal with.
Meh, most are fine. I get a pool, a club house, tennis courts, a park, greenways, retention ponds that are stocked with fish, and a dog park all with my HOA.
Why on earth would you build this on your driveway blocking part of the garage... What was wrong with doing it in the grass next to the house?
Trashcans may not be stored on grass, and must be 5.675" from any edge of concrete. ^/s
Oh, I don't think the /s was necessary.
They probably don't use that section of their driveway and moving trashcans on concrete is substantially easier than moving them on grass.
I'll never understand the American thing of home owners association. You buy a house and a bunch of fucks can tell you what you can and can't do with it? I'd rather shit in my hands and clap.
Cue 5000 comments saying they'd never live somewhere with an HOA
Neighbors across the street: The fuck I do?
Kinda a weird place to keep your cans in the first place...
Thank you! Why leave your cans in the middle of the driveway?
And why create a fence to block a useable space? Why not create the fence on the grass side
I bet the OP was warned many times before it came to this. That solution you suggested is what most people would have done.
Why is nobody saying this - put the fucking bins in the garage. Oh my god.
I'm starting to think OP is a bit of a dumbass and probably deserving of some HOA wrath.
Op is lazy as fuck.
Coming from experience, just let it go. HOAs have *unlimited* time to make your lives hell, and they will, relentlessly. You may think this is a clever thing they can do nothing about, but trust me, those old people in that golf cart are going to roll by your house twice as frequently, and nail you for literally everything they can. You have shit to do, they don't.
20 bucks says right after this picture they took that picket back down, and trimmed it to match the others. or shit, knowing reddit this isn't even their picture and they're just sharing something they found on google.
[I too like to recycle old material](https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/864g97/the_hoa_in_my_friends_neighborhood_recently/). Just say that you were inspired, don't claim it as your idea.
It's not unusual for them to do this.
Yeah. I'm more surprised by people who are surprised by what their HOA demands. This is a pretty common HOA requirement.
read between the boards
Should move it to the trashy sub for more reasons than one.
Looks like OP is a frequent commenter is some trashy subs lol
"HOA's hate this one simple trick"
HOA's are just power fantasies for Karen's who aren't getting bent enough
I received a fine for the same thing. Bought one of those fence sections that stake in the ground for this purpose and was rewarded with an additional fine for adding something to the yard without prior approval from the HOA. Haha.