Monday, July 13, 2009

homeowners associations.

Does anyone else despise their homeowners association? I do.

I completely understand why they are in place. Make sure the neighborhood looks nice, that there's no broken down beater cars in the street, and people are not living on a sofa bed in their front yards. Ok. Good enough. 

Why then, must they constantly harass you when your trash can stays on the curb 2 seconds longer than they deem necessary? Do these people not have lives of their own? Do they not have jobs that they go to every day? Why is it that they think in any real situation that I would be at home at 11 am to pick up my trash cans after the garbage man comes on Mondays and Thursdays? Who is home at that time? 

Scratch that... I do not CARE who else is home at that time to pick up their trash cans. The fact is, my husband and I are not doodling around the house all day every day catering to the whims of the HOA. We have jobs. We have responsibilities. None of those responsibilities include making the hour commute home at 11 am to pick up my trash cans and put them back in the garage, and then making the hour commute back downtown to go back to work. 

Apparently life would be easier if that were the case. I would not be getting letters in my mailbox. I would not be getting certified death threat letters from the HOA, and I would not be getting FINED for doing something at MY house that I PURCHASED with MY MONEY. 

I believe that makes it MY property and anyone who wants to tell me what I can and cannot do with it can shove it. Get a life HOA.

By the way... I'm sure they haven't noticed, but HOA's all across the country are coming under scrutiny for this very thing. HOA's are going out of business, getting sued for trying to take people's homes away. (Really?? You're going to take my house that I OWN away from me because my grass is 1" higher than you want it to be??) You'd think they would be more careful about choosing their battles.

I feel that I should also mention that I do not live in a master-planned community, nor is it even a community that has been built in the last 10 years. So I have to feel like this is pettiness, rather than what could be viewed as a concerted attempt at keeping one of the brand-spanking-new "hoity toity" neighborhoods on the Better Homes & Gardens List. 

Needless to say, my patience is running thin. They got an earful this morning, and I will do whatever it takes to make this right. There is no reason in the world why they should be trying to take advantage of homeowners who are already paying them dues. Especially when it's over something as stupid and petty as this is. Something that I absolutely cannot control under any circumstances.

UGH. I'm stepping off my soapbox now...


5 comments:

  1. The only HOA I ever had the "pleasure" of being a part of allowed you 12 hours to bring in your garbage cans. In other words, if the trash man came at 11 am, you had til 11 pm to bring them in. That created very little problems for us, obviously. You should write a letter back to them, explain your situation. If they still harass you, I'd find a lawyer friend to write them a letter. It's completely unreasonable for them to expect people to bring in cans during a work day.

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  2. We had one of those homeowner assoc. in our last neighborhood. It's like some people have nothing to do but spy on their neighbors! Geeze get a life!!

    BTW - I tried to leave you a comment twice yesterday and both were eaten by Blogger!

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  3. I heart soap boxes. They smell like old soap. New soap smells like it thinks it's better than everyone else. I hate old soap. But I love soap boxes. Yeah. So that happened.

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  4. I complete understand. BUT....if you had the hoosier neighbors I do, you'd want a set of rules to get them out of the Sanford & Son mode.

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  5. That's ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. I've gotten a couple of notices over the years for storing my trashcan where part of it could be seen and even tho I griped, I understand. But wanting residents to get their cans in during the day on which they were emptied? Curraazzzyyy!

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