My HOA has the nerve to come INSIDE my property and inspect my yard when I'm not home. I have a large yard and in the back WERE NOBODY CAN SEE I have a compost pile and they want me to take it down. Can they do that?

Possibly. I've read that perhaps 20 percent of homeowners have signed their rights over to Home Owner Associations, often run by storm-trooper wannabes.

You will have to check your agreement to see if you agreed that they may enter your property at anytime without your permission. If not, and you wish to fight them on this, let them know you'll be calling the local police to charge them with trespassing.

Prepare for war then, These neighborhood na*zis will find other things to charge you with and many agreements allow them to sieze and sell your home to collect on unpaid fines.

I'm not going to ask why you would sign one of these agreements. I'm sure you're asking yourself the same thing.

Wayne

My BIL & SIL golf at a course in Maryland that abuts a residential community of mucho dinero houses. One new homeowner wanted to put in a small perennial garden outside their back door and a couple of trellises for climbing roses which was all within their property line. But their property bordered part of the course. (They probably also wanted some protection from flying Titelists and a change of scenery from too many monogrammed J.Crew golf shirt-wearing neo-con yuppies.)

Well, BIL & SIL and the rest of the storm trooping-McCarthy-ites who belong to the golf club contacted the community's HOA and bitched. (This subject, btw, came up at a Christmas dinner about two years ago and it still makes me barf up my Christmas cookies.) I asked them if the 'flowers' were any way infringing on the course.

"No", came the snooty response from the both of them, but even though there's a bank of trees and shrubs between their property and the course itself, their flowers might creep through and probably will because we could tell what kind of people they were. We met with them once and they were quite opinionated and obstinate about refusing to dig out and remove the flowers. And they spoke loud, too, and in an almost unintelligible accent."

(Uh, that's code, btw from BIL & SIL meaning: Ethnic)

"So, all that told us they'd probably let the flowers run amuck on the course and become all unsightly, which is beside the point because they HOA doesn't allow the community residents to put in any kind of a garden."

"Oh", I baited them, "so you could tell all that about them from your one meeting w/them, could you? Tell what kind of people they were and predict their behavior, too, based on that as well?"

"Yes, and they don't even golf!"

Damn! That tore it!! $hit, I mean, they didn't even golf!!! That was justification right there to have had those troublemaking, individualistic, (no doubt) treehuggers, shot right there in their backyard and buried under their flowers!

I remember grumbling through the rest of the dinner and couldn't hold back any longer, "They actually sound like people I'd like. Like gardeners."

That's when Mr & Mrs. John Birch got all defensive.

"Well, they signed a Home Owners Association agreement when they bought in, and those are the rules! Besides, the last thing we need there is someone putting up a compost pile or some wormy bug attracting thing!"

"Yeah, like I said, they sound like people I'd like, and I personally agree. I can't imagine why anyone like that would want to live there!"

The rest of the dinner, I remember, was rather uneventful.

Fascists.

Sad to say, new2green, the goose-stepping HOAs have the ayes. Many communities won't even let you buy in unless you sign, so you're kind of blackmailed into signing your individuality away for the trade off of living in the home you really want.

Boy, my little piece of dirt looks so much more appealing now. It sucks to have somebody tell you what you can't do in the privacy of your own property.

I'm not a fan of HOAs either, but they are not alone in their view of compost piles. My city has an ordinance against compost piles. I justify mine by having my "pile" actually be in a tumbler. I have a pile of leaves next to it, but kitchen scraps will only go into the tumbler. The city's main complaint is that they don't want rats. I figure my contraption safely negats that arguement against compost piles. Now, why would a self-respecing rat eat the garbage in the pile instead of the squash from the vine, I do not know. That is for greater minds than mine.

No way in a million years under any circumstance would I buy into an HOA..Its bad enough living in town with city resrictions, but those HOA groups get totally out of line. Cant have your garage open after 8:00 PM, cant park on the street, cant garden, cant tear out your flower beds, cant, cant, cant,...One more step towards a communist country we are becoming. Once again, I say it, America, the land of restrictions.

A city that has an ordinance AGAINST compost piles?? Restrictions I can see. But against seems a little backwards. My town (suburb) actually talked a little about how to compost in one of it's newsletters. I think it had a few restrictions like how many feet from the property line and maybe there was something about no meat in it. They even talked in another newsletter about a type of garden that is a little recessed to hold excess water (instead of just having it all run off) and what kind of plants to grow in there.

Well, here I live in the wilds of Alaska.... outside of the city limits.... but it turns out that (AFTER I bought and moved into this house)they designated my area as part of the "watershed" for the town.

And there are PAGES and PAGES of restrictions. There is a number and weight limit on the dogs I may own (but not what I get to do with their poop), there is a limit as to how large my lawn may be, and how large my vegetable garden. The number of horses I may own is restricted, I may never have a pig (not even a little feeder pig to slaughter in the fall). I may only have vehicles in good repair...the list goes ON and ON!

It totally boggles the mind.

The other thing that gets me (but this is state wide...not the insane watershed restrictions) is that I am not aloud to put native fish in my pond, unless I agree to let it be open access for public fishing. But I am aloud to put invasive non-natives in it.

thats just insane, all these restrictions are understandable to a degree, but some are just crazy

Wow, they would have a fit about my place. A few years back I tilled up most of the front yard and planted vegetables. Two of my compost piles are just a few feet from the street. And eventually my front walk will pass through the kitchen garden. Most of my neighbors are complementary. They also enjoy the bags of extra fresh produce that I frequently place out front, free for the taking when stuff is growing faster than I can eat or process it. (Lettuce, fresh beans, carrots, tomatoes, onions, radishes, peas, peppers and other fresh garden goods go a long way toward fending off the busybodies.)

But seriously, the CCR's that are part and parcel of almost any new subdivision these days frequently do prevent you from doing things you want to do. There is a solution however, go to your HOA meetings, get yourself elected to the board. The HOA can ONLY act through it's board, and if you are on it, preventing it from acting all whacko, you have done a favor for your neighbors too.

Among the actions you can take are to float amendments to the CCRs that encourage sustainable organic gardening practices in the name of responsible stewardship of neighborhood resources.

You can also encourage more drastic action, such as cutting the Association's annual assessment and encouraging frugality in the hiring of counsel to enforce the rules.

I'm glad the city people only looked at my front yard and not the backyard. Good luck with your situation; I'm wondering if there's some kind of way you could hide or camoflauge your compost pile.

--J--

The moral of the story - read before you sign. I don't think it's so much an issue of "neo-cons" as it is arrogant elitists neo-libs!

Dirt

BTW - I work in one of those gated communities and never lack for entertainment.

I had HOA's before and SWORE never to buy a home with one, but I guess I screwed up. The worse, the "president" of the Architectural Committee is my next door neighbor who has nothing better to do than watch what's going on in my house. I applied for a permit for a fence(from the HOA, the city doesn't require one)but they denied saying I didn't provide enough information, only the plans, pictures and layout of the project. Maybe they need my checking account, passport, driver's license, etc.
I want to move to the woods!!!

quote:

Originally posted by new2green:
I had HOA's before and SWORE never to buy a home with one, but I guess I screwed up. The worse, the "president" of the Architectural Committee is my next door neighbor who has nothing better to do than watch what's going on in my house. I applied for a permit for a fence(from the HOA, the city doesn't require one)but they denied saying I didn't provide enough information, only the plans, pictures and layout of the project. Maybe they need my checking account, passport, driver's license, etc.
I want to move to the woods!!!

Did you ask them what other info they require? If you get a complete list of what they require, they can't use that excuse to refuse the app. They would have to come up with another excuse.