i say fight on! it’s your land and you should be able to do what you want with it. neighbors don’t like it they can move! too many people are control freaks. they shouldn’t have a say on what others are doing on their private property unless it’s something dangerous to them or their property.
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In a nutshell, you’ve described precisely why HOAs exist in the first place. Many people get tired of moving, getting chased away by the lowest common denominator. Those folks just want to live somewhere where other people share their values. It’s a voluntary exchange.
Again, I hate HOAs and would never live in one. I’ve heard horror stories of the worst ones, though I’m sure most are run by reasonable people. I have the choice to not live in one, so I don’t. If you knowingly buy into an HOA, you can always take your own advice and move.
Everyone has their breaking point. I suspect your sentiments would change quickly should your neighbor start a pig farm. I think the arguments exist more over where the line should be, not whether there should be a line at all. Remember county, state, and federal laws still apply to HOAs, and there are restrictions on what you can do with your property. Nowhere in the country can you truly do whatever you want.
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i agree. the common sense state /county laws should be sufficient to regulate. no need for HOA’s to tell you what you cant have in your front yard as long as it falls into these regs. short of my sewer running above ground here i can basically do anything with my property. i agree there’s always that 1 guy but once a HOA is installed, it always winds up in a power struggle where the homeowner winds up being unnecessarily restricted.
I think we’re getting at the heart of the matter: the question of reasonableness. This is where we likely agree.
Governments, be they federal, state, county, city are all neighbors telling each other what to do or not do. You’re not arguing against the existence of county government, despite them putting restrictions on your land use. An HOA serves much of the same purposes. My in-laws live in an HOA, and best I can tell their rules are about identical as most small towns in the area: no junk in the yard and no farm animals. They both maintain the common areas such as roads and parks. Their HOA dues are similar to taxes.
but my question is why do you need a HOA when there are other regulations in place that are much less restrictive? we dont. why have to pay another ‘‘tax’’. we are taxed to death as it is in this country. why not allow small scale chicken and rabbit farming? we were raising these animals sometimes in parts of our homes for thousands of years. now its not cool anymore? b.s. not everyone has the luxury of living in the sticks like some of us do. they should be allowed to garden on their front lawn and have some hens to have their own fresh eggs and meat. its all about control and unsustainability.
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I’m residential zoned but I keep my garden in the front yard and haven’t had a neighbor complain yet because I try to maintain it. As said it’s about being reasonable. I don’t think I would care for roosters or pigs next door, but if I lived somewhere it was allowed, then that’s the neighbors choice.
I do wish I could affordably own cackle fruit but there’s a large fee locally that makes it untenable. An extra tax, not reasonable.
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First off, I don’t need an HOA. I live where I do for the reasons you described.
It seems inconceivable to you that other people have preferences which differ from your own. HOAs exist in part because of the restrictions. Some people like them. If that’s the way they want to live, I’m in no position to stop them. It wouldn’t occur to me to even try. I believe people should be able to contract with each other. That’s the essence of liberty. If I don’t want to be a party to their contract, I don’t have to be.
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Except in some areas of the country, it’s hard to find a neighborhood without a HOA. The idea that the right to contract equals liberty is really only true if both sides of the contract have roughly equal power. If HOAs are so common in a particular region that it’s difficult to find an available home that lacks one, then that’s closer to a forced “contract” and antithetical to liberty.
This is similar to the idea that employers should be allowed to offer whatever wages they want because no one is forced to accept those wages, except if all the major employers in an area set low wages, and people need to work to eat and pay rent, then workers have no choice but to accept those low wages or starve.
So in both cases, I think it makes perfect sense for someone who “accepted” such a contract to then try to force the other side to change it by whatever method they can, such as forcing your HOA to expend resources trying to enforce its rules against you, pushing for local governments to outlaw any rules you believe are harmful to the community, or organizing collective action (a strike over wages, maybe a significant number of HOA members all refusing to mow their lawns for a month, etc.).
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Lots of good discussion coming off my question. to update you, I’ve gone to see a county planner twice who suggests I rezone to agricultural. I do think I might offer up a restriction or proffer that there will be no pig farming. I now need to get an attorney to combine my separate parcels to meet the minimum acreage. That’s probably going to involve a new survey but maybe not.
Then to file for the rezoning, wait 60 days I think, then attend a meeting for public comment. Then attend a planning meeting makes a recommendation to the county who approves or denies. A lot of steps to be sure, but I would love to get out of the R1 zone and I want to be able to sell fruit on my property.
There are now three bed and breakfasts in my tiny village, but I don’t necessarily want to give up my right to rent a room or build a secondary building to rent unless I have to. It might make my land more attractive to whoever buys it after me.
I appreciate all the comments and thoughts on this. When I bought my property, the owner said it was horse friendly (not true), my land went to the middle of the bordering Creek (also not true), and agricultural zoned (not true) but I have to take responsibility for not checking her facts.
I would not live under an HOA but that is my choice. Still sometimes it feels like the restrictions put on by the county or city are really confining.
Wish me luck and I will update you.
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