Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for May 30, 2019

These Home Owners Associations are getting stricter by the minute!

HOAs are run by power hungry old ladies (of any gender) who have nothing better to do than stick their noses into everybody’s business and get all excited about (finally) being in charge. Having neighbors is hard enough without having nosy neighbors who have no off switch.

Doesn’t the H.O.A. care about the environmental damage he’ll cause to the lake?

Sounds just about right.

HOAs suck.

Weren’t they originally formed because of underlying racist motives?

Could someone explain this? From Europe, this cartoon is completely incomprehensible.

HOA’s, the death of the neighborhood, environment and people who cross them.

I would never join any HOA that would have me as a member!

I live in a freeform neighborhood thank god! How anal retentive do you have to be to live in one of these?

As executor of an estate, I had to deal with a HOA that tried to prohibit us from conducting an estate sale. A small contingent of neighbors wanted to enforce their parking-in-the-street regulations. What a PITA.

I hate being a ‘lesson to others’.

I’m a member of a H.O.A. where I live. Total membership in my H.O.A. is 1, ME, so I’m gonna do what I damn well please with the land I OWN!

When we were searching for our first house, one HOA outlawed clotheslines, even in the back yard. Bad sign. We did not investigate further.

Over time, HOA groups used reasonable approaches to maintain the overall ‘curb appeal’ of their subdivisions, which helped keep the area attractive to future buyers and the selling prices in line with the market. But now, vicious and divisive confrontational attitudes show up at any gathering, so getting people to become HOA board members is much more difficult. Reasonable people don’t want to volunteer just to face the tension and hassle. Sad but completely understandable.

I lived in 3 HOA neighborhoods. The only one I had issues with was the first one, and the issues didn’t come until I became a member of the board. Seeing the background shenanigans was enough to not only make me quit the board, but I moved out of that neighborhood. I kept my head down and off the boards in the next two neighborhoods. I now live HOA free and I recommend it.

Back near were I grew up a large area was developed for high end homes and vacation places. They have an HOA. Once, they sought to have the local sheriff break the lock on a homeowners garage to remove the truck inside because the registration had expired (HOA rule “no unregistered vehicles allowed”) while the fellow was deployed to Iraq. The sheriff responded to ask them how they knew the truck was unregistered if they had not been trespassing on his property and spying into his garage?

There was a classic “X Files” episode that never seems to be rerun where they were investigating the disappearances of several people in a neighborhood. Spoiler alert, the HOA had an ‘enforcer’ which took care of homeowners whose gates squeaked and porch lights burned out.

We have a local one (not my sub) that requires garage doors to be down at all times that a vehicle is not going in or out. On the plus side, that way you could keep the garage as messy as you like.

Exactly how I feel about HOAs.

I believe the resident being escorted will get a sinking feeling shortly.

HOAs are a good study ground for what I call “The Hall Monitor Syndrome.” What is the minimum amount of power you can give a person before it start corrupting them?

We got a nastygram from our HOA with an anonymous complaint about my old truck being parked out on the public street . A got a call from the city about my “abandoned vehicle” warning me that they would be out the next day to “mark the tire” to see if I would move it within 7 days. I told them they would have to go to the service station because that’s where it was getting its annual inspection. They replied “never mind.”

Our HOA didn’t like cars parked out on the street, especially old clunkers like mine. Now that they all have high school and collage age kids, it’s an entirely different story.

They should prohibit carts.

Local municipal boards can be of the same ilk in refusing building permits if the building isn’t of a certain frame type, fronting material, etc.

Aren’t HOAs self inflicted????

I don’t think the ropes are necessary anymore.

In South Carolina the HOA is regulated by the State and our HOA reminds its members at every mailing that they have to do what they’re doing, it’s the State law or we all get fined… WTF …

sometimes swimming with the fishes looks refreshing.

https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess122_2017-2018/bills/104.htm

The Covenant conditions for that HOA must be incredibly restrictive.

The concrete foot bath or “cement overshoes” is a technique the Mob used on people who didn’t pay their debts or protection money. If they didn’t pay they would end up “swimming with the fishies” in “cement overshoes”!

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. is in an HOA that has an owner’s meeting every four years. The HOA has a board that can evict the tenant upon “Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Be sure to attend the next HOA meeting.

The problem is not HOA’s, but the people that make HOA’s necessary.

I got my revenge on a particularly aggressive HOA, by managing to get myself elected president of the neighborhood group, just as the town we lived in became an incorporated city.

I convinced the board and the members that since the city would now be instituting new zoning rules and regs. that the HOA was no longer necessary and disbanded it!

Boy! Did this open a can of worms!!!!!

HOAs are like kids in school/police/etc. You hardly ever hear about the good ones, only the bad ones. So “everyone” seems to think HOAs are bad. I, myself, would never live in a HOA community, but my family likes to do quirky things that are usually not HOA friendly. Therefore, I will not burden an HOA with my family. We plan to buy property and build where no one can see us and therefore we are essentially free to be as quirky as we want without upsetting neighbors. :o) I can understand why people like HOAs (well run ones, that is). I think some people like the clean, organized look of HOA communities without thinking about WHY they look that way. “I want to live there, but I don’t want to put in the work to keep MY PLACE looking like that. I will do what I want – heck with what other people think.” Not realizing that attitude is what can turn HOA communities into a war zone.

If there’s not a HOA or, even if there is, there’s still city or county regulations about what you can and can’t do on your property. Sure, some people fuss about these restrictions, but try living next to a hoarder whose backyard pool is full of disease-bearing mosquitos, whose broken down vehicles are the homes for rats and snakes, and whose junk sprawls into your property, and you’ll learn to LOVE those regulations. To add insult to injury, your property value will fall dramatically by living near the slovenly jerks, and people will take one look at that neighbor and not even pay those lower price. (True story. It’s happening to a relative.)

HOA’s can be beneficial (covenants can protect, or even add to, property values) and HOA’s can be overbearing (impinging on the owner’s right to decorate, landscape or otherwise enhance their property). I have owned 5 houses in my life so far, my way of handling the problem? Don’t buy a house in a neighborhood that has an HOA.

For those who think that the only motive for forming homeowner associations and condominium associations was racism: many of these organizations came about when developers started creating ‘planned developments’ that featured shared open space recreational and drainage amenities, rather than just standard subdivisions with individual yards. In order to ensure that the open space was maintained by those who owned that space, rather than the general public through its local government (even though the ‘general public’ wouldn’t be allowed to use that open space), developers created home owner associations (and condominium boards). Those entities took over once the developer finished the project, and charge maintenance fees to keep up the pool, tennis court, common green area (i.e., drainage features), dog walks, jogging trails, etc. In exchange for all these features, residents sign paperwork they never read about what color they can paint their front doors, whether they can park on the street or have to park in their driveway, if they can have outdoor parties, etc.

My son pointed out to me (when the neighbors cat visited my deck on a daily basis to pee on my sliding doors) that there are two definitions of good neighbors: 1. …one who takes care not to inconvenience or annoy his neighbors2…one who minds his own business and lets them do whatever they please

Home Owners Association

Apparently, H.O.A. means Home Owner’s Association. Comics should not require a Google search.

I want to form an HOA with the following rules.

. No watering, fertilizing, or poisoning on lawns.

. No use of gasoline-powered tools.

. NO BLOWERS!

. No loud music, especially bass.

. No planting of alien plants, except food crops.

. No cutting down mature native trees

IOW, except for noise restrictions, the opposite of the typical HOA.

HOA stands for Home Owners Association. Perhaps he put an unacceptable statue in his yard. Or painted his mailbox a non-acceptable h.o.a. color. h.o.a.’s are a-holes.

I wonder what inspired Wiley. Which of the three is a self portrait? I suspect the guy with the concrete boots

The mafia in the US is reputed to have put the feet of their victims in cement and tossed them into deep water. Mob justice by “cement overshoes.”

HOAs (home owner associations) are formed in residential complexes to oversee the maintenance of common areas/land and to make sure that the owners keep up the maintenance of their own properties, as they agreed when they bought their home. The HOAs can sometimes be very dictatorial. We once received a notice because we failed to bring in our trash cans.

Thus the joke: mob justice is used to enforce HOA rules.

When we bought our house, we were assured that the covenants (neighborhood rules) for our neighborhood were no longer valid since there had been no HOA for a decade. 25 years later, one of the original residents thinks it is still active and is trying to revive the dratted thing. We would have to ask their permission to add a garden, cut down a tree, have a trailer, paint the house, etc. They have called city Code Enforcement on us so many times that the city will no longer come. We have never once been found in violation.

One of the amusing things I have noted about HOAs is in the area of King of HOAs, which I will call by the generic term, “The Villages.” Nearby is a town with a sign that indicates no HOAs allowed, and lists all the nasty things you can do on your own property in that town.

When an HOA goes mob or nazi, the members have failed.

Unless still controlled by the developer, HOA boards are elected bodies. The members have the power and responsibility to find and elect good board members but to make any changes in the HOA rules they find both constructive and lawful.

He is from “Organized Crime”. The victim has “Cement Shoes”… Who H.O.A. is I have no Idea…

Should have taken those Christmas lights down earlier!

Looks like he left his garbage can on the curb too long (overnight?) after pickup. HOAs are nearly omnipotent. Each homeowner signed an agreement to follow the rules, and this person didn’t take his committment seriously. He is being executed, gangster style, having his feet set in concrete abd dumped in the water to drown. Pretty grim humor.

We told our realtor “no HOA neighborhoods” We had enough of them a couple of neighborhoods ago. We do have a county nuisance board if things get too bad and someone has to be forced to clean up their property for safety sake.

Hey Wiley…looks like you whacked a wasp nest with this one. HOA? Thumbs down.

That will teach him to paint his house without getting permission first, even though he painted it the exact same color.