I am LIVID......

frothing at the mouth, kicking and screaming!!!!!

We suffer from living with a HOA - today I received a letter from them telling us we have 24 hrs to remove the WEEDS from the flowerbeds (OR they will fine us $50.00!!!!!) - I just looked at the letter incredulously - they have GOT to be kidding - soooo, tomorrow smart*** me will call them and sweetly inquire WHAT particular weed they are referring to - surely not any of the close to 100's of perennials I have planted there for the last 4 years!!!!! Hmmmm, maybe I WILL provide them with a list over the Latin names and see which one they can pin-point as a weed!!! Seriously, did they take a look at the yards of some of my gardening challenged neighbors???

OK, feel better now - I have vented - and I WILL ridicule them if they dare to call ANY of the perennials weeds!!!!!!

I hate HOAs. At my old house, they once sent a letter demanding that we paint our shutters that we had just had painted about a month before. Another time they sent one demanding that we mow our lawn inside our 6 foot plus privacy fence that had been growing all of the two weeks we were on vacation and couldn't be seen by anyone unless they climbed up the fence.

You got get 'em, Bec.

Break out a can of whoop-weed on them - we don't have weeds....why? Because we are THAT good...nuf said. Tell them you're gonna sic Izzy and Chuckie's bad butt on them.

GORM!!! Not Chuckie! :-)

they have nothing better to do? bunch of making- themselves -important you know whats. I think Gorm is plotting evil spells on them...

[told me he PREFERS Chuckie]...evil laugh

H.O.A.'s are a "pain in the a..."!

They OBVIOUSLY are very mis-informed! They don't know a weed from a plant!

Ggggrrr, I would write a note back to them and tell them that you'll be happy to take them on a tour of your beautiful garden. Perhaps, they'll even learn something!

You actually PAY to belong to this ignorant group?

Sorry, I have never understood HOAs

H - ypocritical
O - stentatious
A - nnoying

PIA

Having lived without a HOA for the majority of my life, I figured it would not be a big deal to buy a house in a new neighborhood with an HOA. We were going to keep our trailor offsite and had no intentions of making any changes to the house for the short time we were going to live there (a move was planned after 6 years). I joined the HOA as an advisor and it was eye opening! I couldn't believe how many people would rat out their neighbors because a shed color wasn't considered complimentary to the house by these same folks. The stay at home moms and retirees would take long walks around the 'hood looking for transgressions and I swear I saw one stop the stroller one time and pull out a notebook to make notes! I was supposed to be working from home but since these walks all occurred around the same time every day, I would be at my windows watching to see who was going to be written up for that day.

The sad thing was that one person who was not well liked and got the largest number of petty complaints (grass was an inch taller than allowed - even though it had been raining continuously for two weeks; sidewalks weren't cleared of snow 4 hours after snow had stopped, things like that) was so distraught, she comitted suicide...
I was so glad to get away from that mess and move to my 27 acres here where I can paint my house orange if I want and no one can complain!

This message was edited Jun 3, 2008 2:10 PM

What really infuriated me about our HOA was they spent all the fees on whatever the old man who was president forever wanted while the only playground in the neighborhood was unusable because it was never maintained. We finally raised enough of a stink about that that they fixed it up a bit.

He also decided that it was great idea to plant trees all in the grassy area across the street from our homes because he didn't like seeing our children out there playing.

Generally, nobody with good sense wants to spend the time to serve on these associations so you end up with some OCD on a power trip, pushing whatever their hobbyhorse might be.

Legally, they often don't have much of a leg to stand on with all their letters. The original owners of my old house had put up a little post and chain fence in the front and the HOA took them to court about their refusal to take it down. The HOA lost. Another waste of homeowners' fees.

Talk about a waste of fees, there was a couple that sued the HOA because they wanted to put up a 6 ft privacy fence around their 60x80 foot lot with a McMansion on it. They said it was to keep the kids from trespassing and falling into their in ground pool (I still say they just wanted privacy because everyone could see them in their pool).

The covenants only allowed split rail with chicken wire so they wanted the covenants amended which would have cost the HOA and ultimately everyone in the development thousands of dollars. The result was that the HOA had to hire a lawler to fight the lawsuit and as a reuslt our yearly fees went up. The jerks lost the case

I did point out to them that everyone received a hard copy of the covenants at closing AND they were also online so if they hadn't read the rules, shame on them. Also, told them that they could have spent the money they paid to their lawyer on a pool alarm or sliding cover if they really wanted to keep kids from "falling" into their pool.

People just have too much money and no common sense sometimes - r their egos are so big that they think everyone will agree with them because they are "special" in some way

I just tried calling - but, no answer of course - arghhhhhhhhh

I have had my battles with them previously - but, now I have learned which ones to pick :-) This one I AM picking - I'll also make sure I plant even more stuff - that'll learn them!

Luckily our fees are fairly minimal - but, of course they go up every year - they spend more time painting numbers on parking spots than they spend on anything else - I did call in a complaint against one of my neighbors recently - his car alarm keeps going off EVERY night - if it doesn't get taken care of I will leave nasty note - since I work erratic hours I am up at all hours of the day and when it goes off at 2 AM for hours on end I tend to get peeved

Shirley, most zoning codes require a fence and not just an alarm or cover to keep kids safe from a swimming pool. The HOA should have had sense enough to allow for that. Are you supposed to be at home or awake 24 hours a day in case the pool alarm goes off?

HOAs were originally supposed to just collect fees for an supervise maintenance of common areas. They went very quickly into trying to make sure everyone had identical ticky tacky houses, fences, yards.

I much prefer it out here in the country with one guy who has a huge Dale Earnhardt 3 painted on his shed and another has his handpainted wooden squirrels and woodpeckers all over his yard. LOL

SAVE THE FLAMINGOS ROTFLOL

Amen! LOL

Interesting about the HOA. I had never lived where there was one until we purchased our present home--back in the woods on a lake! We had been in the house about 6 months and here comes the letter telling us our yardman had trimmed the grass near the lake and blown it into the water! Now you can't see another house from the lakeside of our property so am wondering how in the world did they discover this supposed infraction? Started watching and sure enough every day about dusk here comes this elderly person, notebook in hand, going just the lake's edge very slowly. Get a life!!

BTW, grass trimmings? Turned out to be pond grasses most people try to find for their fish tanks.

HAH! I fixed them! Called and spoke to "head cheese" at HOA - she has seen my garden and is fully aware I have perennials - removing letter from file after I whined :-)

We're holding a victory parade for you, complete with a laurel wreath for your head and one of us whispering memento mori in your ear.

Hail Bec!!!

LOLOLOL - thank you, I feel sooooo much better after complaining!!!

Great news! Celebrate big time.

What is their address? I'd love to send them an envelope of WEEDS. LOL

You don't think someone in your neighborhood cried to the HOA after the swap and told little lies do you. I know the HOA approved having it there, but there always seems to be "that one" in a neighborhood who wants to do something nasty in someone's cornflakes.

'It don't take all kinds but we got 'em anyway"

or the Far Side cartoon where God is creating Earth, guy in the white beard and robe with planet earth o n his work bench. He has a couple of jars of creatures that he's used to seed it. He's in the process of dumping a few "Jerks" on Earth and thinking-bubble, "Just to keep it interesting"

This message was edited Jun 3, 2008 8:00 PM

LOL Don't you just miss Far Side in the worst possible way? sigh

What I'd want to know is how the letter got sent without the big cheese knowing anything about it? Do they just sent out letters without any procedure or approval?

We are so lucky, we have a very 'mellow' HOA, dues are $ 10/yr, we get a membership directory, newsletter, they encourage to keep you to keep your yard looking nice, but in our neighborhood, that encompasses alot of different styles-perfect, trimmed lawns & 'cottagey', overgrown perennials. The people who volunteer in the HOA do a great job & are not intrusive-we do a couple of neighborhood things-picnic, 'trash-away' day, open house in Dec., but it's laid-back-I love this neighborhood, & I'm glad this is where we've ended up (for the time being))...

YEAH Bec! Go out and celebrate by planting MORE perennials & annuals in your yard!

Oh I am sure "Head Cheese" knew - apparently they have someone that does the meandering around the neighborhood - she reports any "infraction" and out goes the letters :-) Looking at my neighbors yards - they must have sent out TONS of letters

Send them alist with all your plant names including latin ones too. Explain to these poor ignorant people that these are not weeds but real plants. Explain that they may be liable to pay for any plant that you are forced to remove.

Also sit down with your contract if you have not already done so and read it twice. and fire back! I'd be livid too.

'Tis all good now - the "head cheese" knows I have tons of perennials - she has also removed the "letter of infraction" from our file - she did explain that the person who does the inspection rounds tends to get "a little carried" away...

Then why do they have that person doing the inspection rounds? Let's just infuriate all our homeowners, shall we?

The person who does the inspections needs to be educated or else removed. That is the craziest excuse I have ever heard.

I agree wholeheartedly - and what gets me is I pay to get infuriated!!! LOL

I think it is all about control, look up at the post about the people wanting to put up a fence, they had pool. In my area you have to have a fence or no pool, common sense. For that HOA to fight that, was stupid.

Remove the Yard Nazi!!!

zinnialover said it- if that person has no clue she needs to be 'fired' or attitude adjusted--to only cite something that really looks WRONG.
or her citations need to be checked before the letters go out. But who wants to go to that trouble?
My neighborhood is so old, our association is the 15 dollar a year/ yard sale/no rules variety.

Yard Nazi............... I have never laughed so hard, but really that is about what it amounts to. I lived in town for years and I remember the drive to cut down or top (I call it hacking the top, looks horrible) all the trees by the sidewalks. They had a fight , cut a few and gave up. Now I live in the country and have multiple gardens with many tall plants, butter flower , penstemin , tall lilies, tall b.buttons, you get the idea. Many of these came from my garden in town, while I never had a yard nazi , just tree toppers here, I did have one person stop and comment on my WEEDS, they got a plant education that day, I also had many people stop and offer their extra plants.
Takes all kinds I guess.

Somebody should make a "yard nazi" garden statue like the gnomes. Then you could paint HOA on the base, LOL.

LOL, remembering the human woman in "Over the Fence" and her tirade ending with "but I'm the President of the Home Owner's Association!!!" She had a ruler for measuring grass height, too. I'm glad you got it sorted out, Becky.

No, they had a fence, they wanted a 6 foot privacy fence; they were just being sneaky and trying to say it was for safety. Imagine a block of brand new McMansions, cheek to jowl down a block and the backyards all have white plastic privacy panels fencing in their little tiny yards.
This was out in the county where there were Amish farms all around, it would have looked like a prison compound in the middle of nowhere.