me: “So what you’re saying is, should I wish to build, say, a shed, I need your permission –?”
HOA covenant: “—Permission, approval, blessing—whatever works for you. But yes, that’s the gist of it.”
me:
HOA covenant:
me:
HOA covenant:
me:
HOA covenant:
me: “Well that kinda blows, don’t you think?”
HOA covenant: “For you, sure. But for me? Well, let’s just say you’d be surprised what a bunch of hot little housewives’re willing to let me do to get a jungle jim erected in their backyards.”
HOA covenant: “No puns intended.”
Oh, dear.
What you need to do now is start politicking for the Presidency (or Chairmanship, depending on how it’s organized) of the Home Owners’ Association. Then you can start accepting the gifts of grateful homeowners for your services instead of paying the bribes.
It would at least be something new. As a general rule, the President/Chairman of the HOA is the spouse of the least successful lawyer in the neighborhood, and the Vice President/Chairman is either the least successful real estate agent or that person’s spouse. Sadly, shooting them isn’t an option—it violates the Covenant about loud noises.
Regards,
Ric
Well, Jeff congrats on moving in.
And I think it’s best if the wife doesn’t see this post of yours.
Desperate housewives, indeed. You’ll probably need to start setting boundaries asap.
But not with the HOA.
Anyway, congrats. Hope all is going as well as it can.
Is the HOA covenant’s name Jim?
Does this mean you are back?
And Holycrap! WP is reporting NK just finished their nuclear test.
Back? Hah! There are vases to pick out and hall mirrors and wall clocks to hang.
Oh. And I still have to write a screenplay.
But I’ll be posting more frequently starting the middle of this week, I think.
Of course, I have no idea what’s going on in the world—I thought this whole foley thing had something to do with sound effects. But that’s because we didn’t have TV, and our newspapers weren’t being delivered.
So. What’s been happening?
First, congrats on the move.
Get yourself elected to the HOA board, ASAP. Most times it’s more of a case of volunteering, than any real contested process. At least then you’re on the inside.
Unless you’ve got a really restrictive covenant, most of your issues will arise from the people on the board, not the covenant itself. Then again, I’m lucky enough to have one that is probably less restrictive than it should be…
(Yes, the whole idea grates at my leave-me-the-hell-alone property rights attitude, but there’s no real way out from under them. So, work from the inside. It’s all about protecting property value.)
Be prepared for almost every single issue before the board to be heavily influenced by the abject terror of liability and litigation.
too bad you aren’t in FL. my mom swears the jooooos that run their HOA are biased against the not “chosen people” in her neighborhood. course she also thinks the guy across the street is probably a terrorist. I have no advice since we lucked into a wild free-for-all neighborhood. good luck.
Well, actually the whole Foley thing could be alot of sound effects. It’s already gotten boring.
Come back soon.
Hmmm. Sounds like the housewives might end up with paper cuts in inconvenient places….
Maggie, that’s funny.
I have a friend from Mexico, married to a guy from India. And their HOA seems to consist of only those two groups.
But they’re both convinced they are looked down upon for not having more cracker friends! They make me park in the lot across the street, so I have to walk a ways and everyone can see they have a white friend!!
And, of course their neighbors are terrorists!
Sorry to hear you have a HOA. Hopefully they will be good masters.Bored busy-body housewives whose children have left are not my favorite people.
Congrats, of sorts. When I was in a large development, the Pres. of my “condo” (100 units) had to send me to stop the rules & regs people from passing rules for all 12 “condos” against flags, but allowing statuary “if in good taste.”
Of course, that was pre-9/11. Now they probably bar terrorists, except as renters. But petty tyrants and and benefit-seekers probably still populate the Boards.
So….
Your saying it going to be awhile before we can call you Jeff “ two sheds” Goldstein .
We applied for a permit to put up a shed two years ago, still haven’t gotten a reply. Of course, this was around the time I was giving them hell for harassing us for putting up a high-definition TV antenna (we won that one).
If JH of Four Star Realty is the management company rep for your HOA, just forget about getting anything done. He’s ridiculously worthless, and even his co-workers don’t like him.
Home Owners Association? WTF?
You don’t need no stinkin home owners association to
tell you what to do.
Paint the house flourescent purple with pink trim, erect a 30-foot Rohn-25 tower and immediately begin applying plaster, so as to sculpt a huge phallis in your front yard. Tell them it’s a religious rite that should buy you some time. Only twenty more days till ‘weasel stompin day!’
Not much. But tomorrow South Korea may have a northern, as well as east, west and southern shorelines.
Please make it stop. Soon.
Bush is gonna have to get the “Blame the Democrats” card back from Hastert ASAP!
Jeff, now that you’re back (sort of) maybe some of the more entertaining trolls will grace us with their presence.
It’s been quiet ‘round here, lately. Too quiet.
Homeowner’s Association? Crap. Can you have them round up and “erased?”
I hate it when anyone tells me what to do. Maybe you’re better at putting up with that. I hope so.
When we were looking for a house 15 years ago, we saw one we liked, but the owner complained bitterly about her HOA. She said she had to fight the HOA to be allowed to paint her exterior (the house’s exterior, not her personal exterior) the color “my decorator” wanted. The offending color was a hideous shade of pink. It was called “shrimp.” She was (need I add?) Jewish. Though in fairness to her this was not in Florida.
Why is it that everyone I’ve met whose house is painted the color “shrimp” is Jewish? Who knows, but I’ll bet it would also be true if there were a color called “Chinese food on Christmas.”
Tim P:
Egad, man, are you a ham?
Don’t forget, Rohn-25 is not self-supporting, so guy wires may be required for a load of concrete. Jeff could string lights from them and call it a Wiccan Night Worship Center. Then he might be able to negotiate a change in religion for a couple of sheds…
I owned a condo for 7 years. Never again.
Is shrimp kosher?
Marcus wrote:
Really?
Hope Jeff’s wife is not an “exchange” freak like some are. Hang on to those receipts, is all I gotta say.
The great thing about having a Home Owner’s Association is that it puts that whole PATRIOT Act, losing all your liberties, we’re all gonna be slaves to Big Brother thing into proper perspective.
We moved into a neighborhood where the builders set up and operated a kind of HOA, but either never bothered to interest the residents in keeping it going, or the residents couldn’t be made to get interested. So, the neighborhood covenants operate on the honor system.
So, do as everyone is saying and get yourself elected to the HOA board. Then build a coalition to abolish the HOA. If there are common assets like a pool or tennis courts, privatize them.
If you think that’s bad, just wait until you leave your trash cans at the curb for longer than the allotted time. We received a tersely worded letter stating that garbage cans are to be de-curbed on the evening of trash collection day at the latest. Never should the sun rise twice and see your cans next to the curb.
Oh there were words, and not nice ones. I think I even quoted Stephen King, calling the HOA guy an officious little prick.
Oh yeah, HOA’s. The last and only place I lived in with an HOA was the place my wife talked me into, all new construction and the HOA was loaded with builders, realtors and flippers. So, no fences, no sheds, no on-stret parking, all mailboxes had to be identical and no one was allowed to park overnight in their own driveway. Cars had to be in the garage or you would get a little pink warning notice in your mailbox in the morning.
I went to a meeting, told them I had four young boys and therefor there was too much crap in my garage to fit a minivan and a wagon, and if I was going to be forced to park in there I’d need to build a shed.
They said no, and I had to park in the garage. So I dumped six bikes, a couple of sleds, two “power wheel” battery driven cars (broken), a ton of other assorted broken plastic “outside toys’ and a couple of soccer goals on my front lawn. I didn’t have a backyard yet, the grading and seeding wasn’t done until the next spring.
The houses on either side were for sale, and in three weeks, I got my shed. And when the cop moved in across the street we were suddenly allowed to park in the driveway again.
That place was beautiful, but damn, I hated it.
geezer, it sure ain’t. That’s the irony of the situation.
Current events tied to your particular situation:
Vladimir Putin seems to be leading the way on how to deal with an HOA although close second Hugo Chavez seems to have manipulation down,and third place North Korea needs to add subtlety.
Fourth place Iran is run by an HOA if the gibberish level from leadership is any indicator.
I once stumbled into an HOA meeting at a condo I own in the mountains… they were having it around the pool which was cool, but after getting oriented I was struck by the idea that these people need a hobby…. and well, the sad thing is that being on the HOA is their hobby and represents the zenith of their contribution to society.
I live in a county where the City Council(s) and the Architectural Board(s) of Review are a massive public funded HOA. Getting anything done requires wads of cash and massive forces of architects, lawyers and permit expediters.
I always expect violence to break out in chambers, but years of dominance has cowed the population…. when told to paint our home “sandstone” and remove two of the three bathrooms and all the lighting (to meet energy savings calcs) we never complain, we just moo and bleat and wander down the hall to write a 4 to 5 figure check for “fees”.
My front yard is now peppered with lawn jockeys. They are part of my “heritage” and so are outside of the jurisdiction of the HOA, lest they wish me to publicly brand them -ists of some sort.
So. HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW, HOA BITCHES?
No HOA for me. No pink flamingos on the lawn either. One lady up the street has a religious statue – I don’t think that counts against her. It’s small, and fairly inconspicuous. Nice neighbors, so we won’t order the six foot concrete Buddha…
We have one guy up the street who is, how do I say it, really into Halloween. The eight foot tall blow up illuminated pumpkin appeared on October first.
If we couldn’t leave any of our vehicles on the driveway, I’d need a five car garage. Boomerang kids will do that to you. You automatically lose one spot due to trash cans, mower, snowblower, wheelbarrow, etc.
the HOA was loaded with builders, realtors and flippers.
Can I say… a CURSE on fucking flippers? In CA especially, the speculation in real estate the last few years has placed the majority of housing prices outside the reach of the majority of people.
They ARE starting to get their comeupance… I’m seeing houses languish on the market..signs up for months and the foreclosures are on the rise.
But the state of denial by sellers and brokers is still staggering.
The bubble has bust, idiots. LOWER your price!
HOA’s is teh devils!
Then there’s Thousand Oaks, CA. Where the city has certain regulations including the colors you can paint your house.
I’m against them on principles and the fees. That they’re often corruptible & petty is just noxious icing on a shitty cake.
No HOA for me, but the township behaves like one. I need permission in triplicate to change the water in my birdbath.
When I was growing up in Memphis in the ‘70s there was a guy (a lawyer, later disbarred) who got ticked off at the local building regs and decided to put a contemporary exoskeleton around his colonial house, designed to come within inches, degrees, etc., of whatever maximums were allowed by law. It took him the better part of 15 years to finish, too. Before it was over he owned half his block.
Zillow doesn’t have a birdseye of the property, but maybe they will soon. Corner of S. Mendenhall and Cottonwood. Must be seen to be believed.
If you think of it, HOA’s are nothing compared to Historic Districts. And Historic Districs are nothing compared to having the entire downtown named a National Historic Landmark.
Like we were Savanna or something. Still, I guess it’s pretty cool. Unless you need new windows, a new roof, or the house needs painting, you need a garage, or your porch is falling down. Or if you want to put in a pool, a direct-vent gas fireplace, get rid of the old brick flue from the old coal boiler that takes up a square yard of your kitchen, etc…
Hi Jeff,
Please come back soon……
Anotomically correct wind dancers ought to impress the HOA.
I wonder if they make them in the shape of a giant penis?
Just put one of these beauties in your front window. That’ll impress ‘em.
Well, I saw one in the ad named ‘sky tickler’ that looked like it might have been one adorned with what we used to call a ‘French Tickler’. But what do I know about yard art?
Yep, hegmonic overlord associations.. very bad…
Historic districts… HOA paid for by tax payers… I hate them… ‘well you should have thought about that before buying here’.. yeah? well fuck you!
Though I happen to love shrimp… I am not fond of their colorations… I think shrimp should be blue, well because I like blue… and if the house must be ‘shrimp’ colored… well… maybe I can dig up a picture of a blue shrimp… yeah, that’s the ticket…. set precidence.. learned it all on TOH…. just beat them silly with pictures of contrary decisions they have made historicallyy, its a shoe in!
It’s like you spend so much time just trying to find something you like… and the wife is all “I have to have THIS one”, well anything to make the old girl happy (shit rolls down hill theory) and then there is this HOA thing… and you’re all like ‘that can’t be that bad’… then the latin kicks in: caveat emptor! Crap, forgot to prognosticate that whole bit…. shoot….
TW: europe… like dang, you actually made me type the word: europe.. without ‘stupid appeaser cheese eatin monkeys’ in front of it… cruel, truly cruel….
The post was commentary on the workings of the U.N. and the E.U.
Wasn’t it ?