I wish we could make our neighbors and town board see the value in enforcing the zoning laws that have been on our town’s books for decades. But when your town supervisor lives in a mini-landfill themselves, you’re better off banging your head into a wall. To some people “country living” means having yards filled with junk and piles of garbage, to hell with all others. It’s heartbreaking to see what’s become of my town. But we’re in the minority in that view.
My town is currently fighting against someone trying to install wind turbines on their huge farm. One of the main complaints, "It'll ruin the rural and scenic views in the town." Meanwhile, one of the house you pass driving onto the main strip has an 8'x8' Fuck Biden sign on his front porch. I bet you can guess who is one of the loudest people trying to stop the project...It's actually infuriating to me listening to backwater northern rednecks talk out of their asses about COMPLETE bullshit. If I hear one more person claim wind turbines give you cancer, I swear to god I'm going to lose my shit.
I live in a HOA, and as of this past September, I am the President of the board. Our community is very small and the only common areas are the roads and a few small landscaped areas. I manage the landscaping/plowing contractors and weigh in on other small things as they come up, but for the most part there's not a ton of ridiculous nit picking. I was asked to join the board and joined hesitantly (for all the reasons you all have discussed about HOAs and their power hungry lunatic leaders), but with three primary goals: 1) change the by-laws surrounding solar, which only support shingles and not panels, 2) to have a title to my name to fight some projects proposed by our town that would affect me personally and several of my neighbors, and 3) to create some community events to get people together. Regarding our bylaws, some are admittedly silly, but some are not. While I don't have carte blanche to do whatever I want, neither does my one neighbor who would absolutely have broken down cars on his front lawn and giant Trump banners on the front of his house, or the other one who would never otherwise mow his grass, ever. I really like our neighborhood. It's quiet, there's no through traffic, it's safe for kids to play in the street. The HOA stuff isn't perfect, but all the other things about where I live are exactly what I want. So...AMA?
We have no HOA. We have a dock association and road association, both informal and loosely run for maintenance purposes. We give about $500 a year to keep up the private road, community boat ramp and dock. When we bought our place, the neighbor to the south had about six junk boat hulls and five shit golf carts on our property line, all beyond financially practical to fix up. It may be part of the reason we got the price we did. Within a year, he had removed them all and cleaned his place up. He was the only problem house in our neighborhood. His house is still an old single wide trailer about twelve feet above finished grade of yard for some reason. He either needed that elevation to reach his septic system or someone wanted a half-ass dirt floor basement under the mobile home. It looks much better than it used to, but if anyone ever buys him out and removes that thing, we'll all see a jump in our home values. He has a massive, beautiful cactus garden, which is cool looking.
The other board members have been on the board for over a decade and I'm going to have to wear them down on certain things over time. I want the board to do the must-do things to keep the neighborhood nice, not fine people for leaving garbage cans outside for too long. I'm the dissenting vote on a lot of things.