My city has no interest in taking on new development storm ponds. There’s no special reason why the city allowed us to maintain it. There would be a reason if it was the opposite, where the city demanded they take over the ponds.
My city defaults to developer and community responsibility for storm ponds.
Interesting. That is unusual at least in Canada.
Yea Fatboy is describing one fairly common way new developments work today and I don’t get why it’s confusing. A developer buys a plot of land and develops it to city regulations, why would the city assume costs associated with that plot of land?
PVN missed the part about the development owning the pond I think…
it’s not confusing. developers set them up this way because HOAs that have ownership of actual assets have a lot more power than ones that don’t, and as has been pointed out, there are lots of people who like having mini-fascist regimes to protect “property values”.
the confusing part is why we’re discussing some weird scenario where the city takes ownership of those properties, when that scenario won’t happen both because the HOA boards don’t want it to and the city doesn’t want it to.
Yeah, and the political values of the people that tend to want HOA arrangements are going to lean to “when we take this out of the hands of the stupid, inefficient city government it will work WAY better!”
Maybe it works differently in the US but the developer creates the HOA long before anyone buys any homes. The owners have no say it either is an hoa at creation or it’s not.
This is correct in the USA as well.
Also, I know all we hear about are the HOAs that are fining people $1,000/day for hanging a flag or whatever, but there’s thousands of HOAs that just quietly do the work that nobody else in their community wants to do - keep the grounds maintained, pay the bills, fixing the roofs, and generally staying out of people’s business.
LIke I said upthread, my HOA is very handsoff. It really only exists because we have to maintain the community property and there really isn’t any other mechanism to do it. We stopped community inpsections a couple of years ago because our current home owners /renters are really good and we don’t see the need to bother with inspections when everything is going just fine.
Our dues are also really low because we don’t own much community property. $400 a year. We’re considering firing our management company and doing it ourselves, but I’m not sure I want to take on the work.
I mean, I think this is kinda bullshit. When I was a kid, I mowed my lawn. My mom paid bills when it was needed, etc. We didn’t get letters saying to mow the lawn a certain height or to trim the bushes.
This idea that HOA are needed to make yards pretty and keep an eye on things is such upper middle class suburban entitlement. It’s an encapsulation of what’s wrong with America today.
right, the people who buy into the development know what they’re getting into (usually)
Arguably, it’s a method to enforce a very white way of how things are supposed to look.
That’s not really what a board is designed for though. Sure this pointless micromanaging happens too often but boards are required to manage the finances and shared assets. I don’t know how this would be done without an hoa/board?
Sorry, you’re right - I misworded what I meant. When I wrote “HOAs do the work that nobody else in their community wants to do”, I didn’t mean personal lawn care. I meant the care and maintenance of the community property and the paying the bills for that. What I was referring to were the community volunteers that sit on the board and make sure that that happens, while most of the community just complains and won’t even spend the hour every 3 months to show up to a meeting.
There’s some HOAs that do take care of yard maintenance (my mother lives in one in Vegas and it’s great for her, she’s old and really doesn’t want to do the maintenance).
Also, in response to you about mowing your lawn and stuff like that - yes, that often times takes place, but there’s sometimes a homeowner that just refuses to. I guess that’s okay, but I’d prefer to live in a home where the neighbors don’t have 2 or 3 cars up on blocks in the front lawn. I understand that might make me elitist. I’m wiling to accept that.
Clovis and I are on and have been on HOA boards. I’ve been on mine in various roles (president and treasurer) for the last 10 years.
We’re speaking from experience of actually being the HOA. You guys are speaking from the experience of reading articles talking about an HOA board fining a resident for something stupid.
If you are actually speaking from the experience of being on an HOA board, then the above doesn’t apply. If your only experience with an HOA board is being the homeowner that is hassled by them, you should have joined the board so you would have some say in how the HOA operates. That why I joined mine. I didn’t want us to be the type of HOA that hassles residents, so I’ve guided the board in that direction. Also, my development is all 4 and 5 bedroom houses, so it’s almost all working families with kids. None of us have the time to put a ton of effort into going out and measuring the height of somebody’s lawn. we don’t have any bored retirees in our community that have the time to bother people.
Very occasionally we’ll get a complaint about somebody playing music too loud way into the night. That’s not even an HOA issue, but I’ll usually spend the time to go over to the homeowner and ask them to be more respectful of their neighbors at night. That usually solves the problem. That’s the way we’ve approached most of our issues here.
A kid in the neighborhood just recently somehow managed to cut off all the bark of one of our trees. We went over to the home and talked to the parents and they were took full responsibility and offered to pay to have it replaced. The HOA board decided to pay half the cost because the homeowners were so pleasant about it.
Yea I think it’s all unnecessary bullshit. I grew up in a normal neighborhood. I didn’t live in a “community” that, let’s face it, shuts out the parts of society they don’t like.
HOAs have no authority to choose who buys or not. They don’t shut anyone out. They make sure the bills get paid and the reserve fund is managed.
I’m also on a board, actually the president. We don’t really have any issues though because the last time someone complained I ran over their stupid cat.
Yea but let’s face it. It’s not enough to be able to buy a house. You also have to afford the HOA fees on top. And that weeds out borderline residents.
That takes us to a much bigger discussion but if you buy a home with no hoa the things the hoa manages don’t disappear. You just pay for them out of pocket or via your property taxes.
The hoa is a sort of shared insurance.