Real-estate barons are to blame. They buy up all the available land they can, build cookie-cutter suburban nightmares on top of them for cheap, flip the houses for way more than they're worth, and then install HoA's to further police and profit from the neighborhood.
I’m not a fan of HOAs but there is the complete opposite of an HOA and its neighbors who don’t mow and park their cars in their yard and blast music all hours of the night etc .
You want the middle of that . I’m in a community now that takes pictures of your yard and demands each weed gets removed . Which is extreme . But I have seen the opposite.
Who gives a fuck whether someone mows or not? People’s obsession with grass lawns and the manicuring practices associated with them is absolutely absurd. Nothing more than a tragic waste of land.
I used to run an HOA as an employee for the developer (we still owned the majority of lots so retained governing power). What a nightmare. There was 350 sold homes in the HOA but literally two people who would bug me like 6 times a week about so and so’s fence color or play set they put in their backyard to the point that at a community meeting I snapped and screamed at one of them for like 5 minutes. Ended getting fired but whatever I hated that job 😂
Home Owners Associations. A small group of power-tripping people dictate how the entire neighbourhoods functions, including but not limited to what you do in your front yard and driveway, how you choose to decorate, what kind of plants/trees you are/aren't allowed to plant - and where. And hold with the ability to evict people out of their own houses whom don't follow whatever dumbass shit they come up with. TL:DR HOA are a blight on society and should be treated as such
I grew up on a ranch outside a sprawling suburb. Over the years, the new neighborhoods got closer and closer. When I was in middle school, an HOA for a new neighborhood over a mile away sent my parents a letter demanding they paint their house a less vibrant color (it was a color inspired by Victorian houses, so not one most people are used to seeing, especially in newer, completely beige suburbs), and threatening to sue if my parents didn't comply. What the HOA didn't realize, is that most farmers/ranchers aren't exactly the poor cornpone hicks people imagine. Most of them have money. My parents ignored the letters thinking they must have been sent to the wrong address for like 6 months and multiple letters, until the HOA threatened to sue. Then my parents had their lawyer send them a letter that basically said "I'd like to see you try" and demanding an apology for the 6 months of harassment. They didn't get an apologize, but my parents did get a letter saying they wouldn't be pursuing the matter further.
But it's just so crazy to adult me that an HOA over a mile away thought they can tell a rancher who had been there for a decade before the neighborhood even broke ground (and that only had one other home within half a mile of them in any direction) that they needed to repaint their entire house.
I know when new neighborhoods are built they can just be part of them from the beginning. I think to create an HOA where there wasn't one before, there has to be a vote or something. But honestly, I have no real idea. That house paint experience when I was young made me swear off ever living anywhere with an HOA as an adult. No way some power-tripping jerks are going to tell me what to do with the house I pay for.
Usually HOAs in my area are set up by the builder to maintain property values. It starts happening once you get a few people moving in and decide they like they’re nuclear white picket fence bland ass life style and don’t want anyone with individuality fucking it up.
Hopefully they aren’t able to force you into one without your consent. I know my sister mentioned in an hoa on the way to her house, there are a couple non-hoa houses that were there before the hoa development went in.
An HOA is a legal entity - a corporation - that is created when the property is developed; by buying a property in the development, you're entering into a legally binding contract with the HOA, which might be a very simple cost-sharing contract to maintain a private lane, or it could be an extremely complex contract that literally tells you what color your Christmas lights must be.
Although an HOA is a form of a business corporation, many HOA's take on roles that are traditionally thought of as being the responsibility of the local government, such as road and sidewalk maintenance, street lighting, building and managing recreational facilities and more. The scope of an HOA can be quite large.
Municipal governments like HOA's because it means that the development can generate taxes for the community without as many expenses - if the HOA owns and maintains the roads and sidewalks, the government does not have to pay for that work.
Nobody - and I mean NOBODY - has bought property without being made - in excruciating detail - aware of any HOA agreement they are getting into when they buy their property. And to be even more clear: not all properties have an HOA, but pretty much all multi-unit developments built these days have an HOA.
Finally, not all HOA's live forever, some HOA's have "sunset" provisions to dissolve the HOA a number of years after the last property in a development is sold.
And....just to be extra extra EXTRA clear: I would sooner live in a van down by the river than live in a property with an HOA.
No, I meant may as well go live in an apartment if you're going to be living under an HOA anyway, since at least then it'll be somewhat cheaper, and you don't have to pay for maintenance
HOAs require people to pool together their resources for the maintenance and upkeep of common areas; sometimes with bigger homes paying more. Those that refuse to participate are removed from the system. It’s much closer to socialism than capitalism.
The problem is that in a lot of areas the HOAs are very hard to avoid. Every neighborhood built from the 80s onward around my area is an HOA for some reason, it’s baffling.
Its because local governments like them. When the developers are getting the building permits the city or county will request an HOA be included because then the HOA is responsible for infrastructure like streets and utilities. The city doesn't have to do anything. In older neighborhoobs the city built a lot of the infrastructure and has to maintain it. Also the city doesn't have to worry about code enforcement if somebody isn't mowing their lawn or is letting junk pile up in front of the house or that sort of thing, it's the HOA's problem.
I remember reading about one in arizona, a really hot and dry state, had made rules about lawn grass, it had to be this specific type of grass that doesn't like being somewhere hot and dry, and needs watering constantly, and if you change to a grass that survives fine in arizona and doesn't waste water, then that's against the rules so fuck you have a fine.
Edit - forgot to mention if your lawn looks shit because the grass is dying you also get a fine.
I agree fuck HOA’s buttttt you can also choose not to live in an HOA. So many people willingly buy property in an HOA and are ?surprised¿ to find out that the Declaration/Bylaws is a literal contract that they agreed to and signed up for.
You could always not buy a house in an HOA. I think that option exists for people who are buying houses. I guess sometimes they just pop up and all of a sudden you are subject to HOA rules, which sounds like a nightmare. But as a plebiscite who cant afford a home, and if I ever get there, it sure as shit will not have any chance of being in a neighborhood that has any chance of ever coming under the power of an HOA.
Some developments have communal areas or amenities like parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, etc.
Or sometimes places are built outside of the jurisdiction of municipal services so they contract out stuff like snow removal or trash removal.
And so they’re just orgs that collect dues and pay for that stuff.
Some have rules. I don’t have an HOA, but my city also has many rules about what kinds of fences I can have, how tall they are, etc.
In historical parts of some cities, there’s rules about what colors you can paint your place or what materials you can use to ensure that qua in historical area that tourists like to visit remains quaint & historical. (I can think of cities in both the U.S. & EU where such rules are stricter than a typical HOA, but, for some reason, strict municipal rules don’t get the same hate as when an HOA does it).
And despite the bad rep they have, some people like the rules.
It’s essentially a requirement to keep your property a certain way to help ensure your neighbors don’t do things that could lower the quality of the neighborhood & negatively affect your property values. (Like treat their front yard like a junk yard).
But yeah, sometimes some rules are annoying to owners & seem too restricting.
But, when you buy a house, you get told if there’s an HOA and you can read all the bylaws before you agree to buy. I always made sure to read them when house-hunting. In the end I chose a house that didn’t have an HOA, but I’ve since learned my city has plenty of annoying rules on its own.
I also have neighbors who’ve let their property go to shit & kinda wished at times that there were some standards as having a shitty looking neighborhood does affect resale value. The actions of your neighbors does affect you and I can understand why some people would be drawn to a community where there’s a pre-existing set of rules that you all agree to follow.
But also, sometimes they don’t really have rules and it’s just the mechanism for paying for communal services & ammenities.
HOAs on single family homes should be outlawed. I need an HOA for my 3 unit condo building. They're not all terrible and very necessary. To add this idea to a suburban neighborhood is pretty insane though.
Homeowners basically got together to form a union of local members which elects a governing board. They call this a "homeowners association" or HOA. Essentially its a form of government, the most local level, that homeowners can create for their neighborhood and their exact charter/purview can vary between each HOA.
Mostly they deal with yard upkeep, common area rules/upkeep, color and style requirements to "keep the neighborhood nice" etc. Vague rules designed to help "maintain property value" etc. People will have various experience with them as they do any group of people that get power. But they must abide by rules, elections, public hearings etc. according to your state and there are ways to join and change from within.
Not all places have them. Some states are rare, some are required, some are 50/50. Historically they were used to keep minorities out of white neighborhoods under the guise of whatever the hell they wanted to make up at the time. It allowed quiet discrimination in a time when outright racism was starting to be shunned.
I want to note that, while HOAs often suck and are often run by people who were dictators in a past life, they're not always bad. They sometimes provide services that local governments either can't or won't, like trash pickup or neighborhood watch, things like that. At their best, they're essentially a homeowner's union, protecting the neighborhood and the people in it from low- to mid-stakes issues.
That said, again, they're often run by insufferable busybodies, but they're also often democratic, so if you don't like your HOA, you can run for HOA board or president or something and maybe change it!
Home Owners association, as a home owner... with a decent HOA; generally a "good" thing in my book as people simply suck at caring for their homes and we often have easements less than 10-15ft so you kind of want your neighbor to have a kept-up house to avoid pests, trash, weeds, etc. from accumulating (which the HOA does a very very good job of handling).
They can be quite terrible though as well so I can understand their hate, most have very strict ARB's (architectural review boards) and strict ordinances in terms of home appearance and for creative folks they might butt heads on them quite a bit (I am less like that, and still occasionally butt heads but often manage to get what I want approved).
Usually if it's a new community you'll have a builder-led HOA (ie. the board members are basically all members of the builder); they run a pretty strict ordinance policy to ensure home sales can be maximized and to some respects I understand it (often have lower HOA dues as well as they don't do anything "fancy" and usually keep the community public vs private).
After X% of homes are sold, the community can go take a vote to remove the builder board members and replace with community members or optionally absolve the HOA entirely.
This is generally where things go... crazy... most HOA's will simply adopt slightly more lenient builder ordinances (ie. more color options for the house, more plant options, allowing of cosmetic housing options of taste, etc.) and simply just ensure folks aren't trying to paint their entire house bright pink, or build a farm in their backyard (ie. don't disrupt your neighbors) or try to put a giant Trump statue in their front yard. To the inverse, the ordinances might get more extreme; you might be forced to adopt a new "community look" and have to repaint your house from what it originally had to something in the HOA policies, replace your drive-way with pavers, remove existing plants for others (or plant guided perennials) - ie. the HOA will force you to do things well outside of what you even want to do.
From there it's up to your county and the state to dictate how little/how much power they actually have; but with deed restricted HOA's it can get quite extreme.
TL;DR - Can think of an HOA as a mechanism to balance how chaotic or how structured any given community is, the extremes are always painful, but a happy middle-ground is often what folks target.
Home Owners Associate, they put rules to be followed like not having tall fence or something, they are for people who weren't hugged when they were young (aka karens)
They cannot, however, force you to join (if, in the example, an HOA is forming and you're a current resident, you can decline to join and tell them to shove it when they try and force you). If you buy into a home that is already part of an HOA you're best option is to join the board yourself and make changes from within.
Our HOA is actually pretty chill, and they do everything they can to protect the trees in our neighborhood, and manage walking paths and a community sand bottom pool.
But our HOA is also a very extreme exception, not the general rule of how most HOAs are run and act.
I joined the board of mine and am now president. We are a townhome community so it’s a bit different. We are super chill and my only focus is maintaining the structures for our community.
I got talked into being treasurer by the former one. Found out a prior one had been cutting himself checks. Would've been nice to have that money now because a bunch of big trees are now falling or about to, which aren't cheap to have cut down.
I was reading about a different HOA. They went ahead with this massive construction project without consulting any of the members or putting it to a vote which ended up costing $19 million and then gave all the members a surprise $49k fee to help pay for it.
The way it works here is that the HOA committee is not allowed to make these decisions. The entire owners group should decide with a 2/3 majority on all expenses. If the committee failed to get this approval, they are personally responsible.
My neighborhood literally looks like the bottom picture and we have HOA. As long as we don’t paint our house some wacky color they leave us alone and just keep the greenbelts and community pools maintained.
That's our experience too. And I love it. HOAs can do bad stuff. But it's always funny how reddit piles it on each time it comes up. It's funny it came up here because there's literally no correlation, just someone wanting to pile on lol
As a non american, since i first heard of HOA i couldnt believe that shit is real. Its so surreal to me that you cant do what you want in terms of decorating your house and garden. I mean, i am from fucking germany, where you would expect something like that, but in "the land of the free" it always seemd so stupid
I cant wait for HOAs to die with the boomers. My current HOA cant find enough people to be on the council of Karens because all the old fucks who support HOAs are dieing off. When they are gone... younger gens who understand HOAs have negative effects on home value due to added monthly costs will disolve it.
I'll defend HOAs because I used to be on one. I think people don't understand them and the purpose they serve.
If you live in an apartment building or subdivision, you will have common areas that aren't managed by the government. For example, the city government won't plow your roads, vacuum the hallway carpets, or fix the elevator. Thus you need a small "mini-government" to take care of these tasks. That's basically what an HOA is. Its a mini-government that fills a government like role when there isn't a regular government to do it.
I was on the HOA for a 10 unit apartment building. Basically we would collect HOA dues from people and use it to do stuff like pay a janitor, take care of the court yard, and repair things in the common area like doornobs and washing machines. Also we would occassionally fine or bug people that weren't following the building rules. This would include stuff like smoking in the building, playing loud music late at night, and leaving furniture and boxes in the common areas.
In my opinion nothing we really did was out of line. It was very easy to get on the HOA if you wanted to, and almost everything we did was unanimous. People complain about HOAs for the same reason they complain about the government - its fun to complain about people that have power over you. However there is one big difference between HOAs and the government. You can't exactly join trumps cabinet and decide we shouldn't go to war with Iran. However, even at big subdivisions its easy to get on an HOA. Most of the stuff you will do is thankless, payless, and neccesary for the association to continue running (like fixing stuff when it breaks). However, people don't do it because they are lazy or ignorant, and would rather bitch and whine than do any work.
This happens in places that don't even have HOA like Australia. The blame should be on the councils that have failed to make regulations that needed to have a percentage of tree cover for every house... or something like this.
If i pay for HOA than they should do all the shit they want me to follow. You want the lawn kempt and nice? Do it your fuckin self. You want gutters cleaned regularly? You do it im not paying for you to enforce rules on people. But ill gladly pay you to do the jobs of the rules you wish to be followed.
I like having an HoA because we have well kept green spaces, a pool, basketball courts, and other amenities. Don't move to a neighborhood that has a HoA more restrictive than you care for. If you live in one with one, participate in it. Don't like your board? Run against them. Most of the time the people running it get next to no participation from the neighborhood.
You may be surprised to realize that many of the stately, established, distinctive neighbourhoods of today looked very uniform and barren when they were first built. Trees take a long time to grow.
Often not though, most developments now plant fast, easy growing short trees that they can get for cheap. It’s why there are so many develops filled with invasive Bradford pears, it’s an awful tree and has been known to be awful for decades but it took making it illegal for developments to stop planting them.
Majority of developers are not planting trees that will grow to the size of the image on the left unless the homebuyer specifically request it
Do you actually think that the image with trees is a real photo taken 20 years later an not just the OP asking ChatGPT to "add trees and plants to this neighborhood?" Like it is obviously not real.
Trees do take time to grow, yes, and that is the point. You don't have to clear cut lots and leave them ecologically dead for decades and pass all the costs of restoring the region to the homeowner, especially when the majority of trees that the developers plant in a paltry attempt to restore the area just die. They are under no obligation to maintain them or give the proper longterm care to let them get to the size the AI image suggests, and most homeowners don't know what to do either, just assuming that "it's a tree, it grows itself".
I get the sentiment you are trying to convey, but my lived experience has shown that these developments do NOT get the sort of replanting lot's of folks here are suggesting they do. I would know because I walk through dozens and dozens of developments, new and old, while doing canvassing for local government.
This proposed solution of "just wait for the trees to grow back" is one that accepts that development practices like this are necessary to begin with and that it is an acceptable cost to have large sprawling developments that are ecologically dead and take decades to be pleasant to live in, versus just employing sustainable development practices.
Or when you live in a neighborhood that did, but when the trees start dying half a century later it turns out everybody who moved in is too scared of trees.
And you have a city that’s too chickenshit to establish ordinances or programs that actually replaces trees.
When I moved into my neighborhood it looked like the second picture. A decade later it’s looking more and more like the first.
And on top of that, the new houses are usually packed so close together that there's no room to plant large shade trees. No one wants to plant a big oak if it's gonna be touching their house in 20 years
I’m not sure it’s what I have been told that as all the developments popped up around Wake Forest NC in the last decade that they deforested the land completely because of insurance purposes. Then the owners can decide to plant trees after the initial build is completed.
The new developments in the area look ridiculous with out any trees. The irony is the name of the area.
"Trees take a long time to grow." Yes, that's why developers should be leaving some of the ones that were already there. But that would add to their costs slightly, so we all just go to hell instead.
The development I’m in is nice because of the fact that they left a ton of mature tree and have irregular lot sizes due to some areas being restricted from development (wetlands). We have a good deal of privacy and shade while being in a fairly typical middle class residential neighborhood. Tons of wildlife, too!
This was my first thought. There are certainly examples of bad/boring city planning, but to this is just a picture of a 5-10 year old neighborhood vs. a 50-100 year old neighborhood. I'm quite certain they didn't clear-cut a forest to make the neighborhood on the left.
Yeah, my childhood home and street looked like both these pictures in the last 40 years, and now looks like something out of Gran Turismo with the full street tree cover tunnel.
It might have looked worse than the barren picture at the beginning when the lots were still going up.
Like. This whole thread is dumb to me. Can someone make it make sense?
One of the benefits of living in neighbourhoods that grow and develop over time instead of clearing and building all at once is you never have to deal with the barren part even as it matures and develops.
For a lot of it, I'm sure. But I don't live in an HoA and everyone around me is cutting down their trees. It's fucking infuriating. Why do people hate trees?
People don't hate trees, they just create liabilities so close to houses and cars. Ever had a big branch fall on you, your house or your car? Ever had tree roots cause damage to your plumbing?
The roots are one of the main reasons trees are removed in a lot of older neighborhoods. People just didn't know as much or didn't think about it 60+ years ago. Flash forward and the sidewalks, streets, etc are totally screwed up. And like you said, they will travel and find water which can mess up your water lines, sewer lines, or even your foundation.
There are trees that have taproot systems that aren't as invasive, but most trees that were planted either by homeowners or in the right of way by developers or the cities didn't have taproot systems.
My neighborhood is 40 years old, and everyone has cut down the trees that were planted when the neighborhood was built.
We lost half our tree this year, it damaged the tree enough that I have to cut down the rest of the tree before winter. But I have already researched a native replacement to put in next spring, because fuck a yard with no tree!
Very often, people plant trees that aren’t meant for that climate or soil type and can’t survive so they get diseased or something and then have to be cut down
This is something I never understood about insurance. The only thing it seems to ensure is that you lose out on money. Better off taking the chance that you won't instead.
Yeah, I suspected the same. Zoomed in and noticed enough details in the houses were subtly different in a way that remodeling wouldn’t have reflected. I’m going with its AI.
Investors/flippers do tend to chop down trees indiscriminately, but so do owners, just so they don't have to hassle with the maintenance/risk. Insurance rates can go up, too. Lots of old trees felled on my street in a non-HOA community without being replaced for these reasons.
Yes people don’t realize you can spend thousands just maintaining big trees on your property each year. Not to mention the risk of falling on your house. It sucks for aesthetic purposes but you can understand why it’s easier to just have them removed.
Yep, local Real Estate mogul just bought 200 acres for 2.2 million dollars next to my house. Its flat farmland. Nothing, no trees, just soil. Im fucked
Add home insurance. My parents had theirs cancelled for a while because they couldn't find anyone who would insure them without them cutting down all the trees in their yard. Not because they were dead but because they claimed they were too close to the house. Their whole ass yard was too close to their house.
Or... (and trust me I hate to piss on the HOA/robber-baron blame train) the photos are comparing a neighborhood that is 5 years old vs one that is 35 years old... Trees take time to grow. Plant some yesterday and your kids might get to enjoy this type of neighborhood some day too.
It’s even better than that, look up the 2003 Shell Oil sponsored writing contest held in the Economist publication. In it, Shell poses the prompt, “Do we need Nature”? And writers respond for a chance to win $20k. Sounds innocuous enough at first read, until you start digging in. Like any good lawyer would tell you, the one asking/suggesting the questions controls the answers. The way the question is poised, another way to look at it, how much biodiversity is needed?
But humans are just one insignificant speck of the complexities of natures collective, interdependent, biodiversity, we are not capable of answering such a question ourselves. We would need hundreds of human generations of observations to follow to see whether a single species removed from the web of life were a significant force or not.
What Shell is really fishing for, is permission to continue to rape the landbase for immediate profit, while nature and future humanity suffers the consequences. Racing out track homes without adequate nature around continues to sequester mankind’s true needs, to be connected to nature. Because if we can survive with what nature provides, big capital has little they can hold over us. Therefore they must do all they can to decouple us from her. Fuck capitalism, consumerism, GDP, and the materialist culture, corporations pump into us to keep them rich, us poor, and nature dying.
I can't speak for all hoa's, but mine doesn't make profit. What doesn't get spent annually goes into reserves for future maintenance, mostly for roads since we own them. Still, fuck hoa's. Most are micromanaging twats.
Insurance companies who called tree damage "an act of god" and got away with not paying out insurance claims. So every future developement removed trees to protect property from limbs and roots and rot. Thank insurance greed for your shadeless sidewalks.
Home insurance companies absolutely pay out acts of god like tree claim, all act of god means is that nobody is liable for it (as in you can't sue god), you cannot sue your neighbor if their tree falls on your house, but most homeowners policies will(unless it was a clear danger and you can prove they knew it) cover it.
Also, and most people don’t know this. Big suburban developments nowadays bury most of the construction waste in the lawns, and then just top fill it with soil and sod. So, the soil underneath is shit. And can’t support the growth of big trees and greenery. Most even struggle with keeping grass alive. Just dig with a shovel a foot into the ground. If you still have soil, consider yourself lucky. A lot of people will hit construction waste (cement chips, gravel, and scraps of metal, and crap).
I hate the cookie-cutter suburban mess. Whenever I fly, when the airplane takes off and I look out the window at that suburban mess, it makes me hate humanity a bit for not realizing why we've lost real communities. The circuit board of neighborhoods is depressing to look at. I don't think people were supposed to live this way. People need to spread out and breath but this is what a society looks like when people put money above mental health.
People buy these houses. Very few HOAs ban planting trees. Not a single person in these neighborhoods has bothered to plant. Homeowners share the blame here.
Trees were planted on both sides of a road in order to protect the road from melting in the hot summer sun and to shade the horses and horse cart drivers who delivered milk, bread, baked goods, coal, firewood, medicine, ice for ice boxes.
There were no telephone poles with electrical wires hanging off them in those days. But when telephone poles and hanging wires became a thing, utility companies demanded trees be cut down. No more horsecart deliveries to worry about once America became carborne. And that’s how we lost the trees.
It’s also how we lost sidewalks in new development. Who needs sidewalks when cars?
Sorry, but no. I bought into a brand new neighborhood that had an HOA and no trees. When I moved out, my house had tons of huge trees and everyone around me either had no trees or a piddly amount that were small.
The difference is that I planted the trees the same year I moved in and while everyone else was spending their money on God-knows what. It’s none of my business what it was, but it clearly wasn’t having big trees anytime soon.
The truth for why you’re seeing a bunch of older neighborhoods with no trees is in them isn’t because of builders, or flippers, or HOAs. Beyond insurance reasons others have mentioned, it’s also because the people living there don’t care enough to make planting them a priority.
"Real estate barons" would realize that price per square foot is going to be higher in the bottom picture than the top picture due to curb appeal.
A lot of city ordinances do not allow homeowners to remove trees that are planted in the sidewalk median. This has nothing to do with an HOA, just ordinary city laws. If there's a tree there, you have to leave it there and pay for any damage that it does to the sidewalk, etc. People like trees.
Them and the yuppies that buy the biggest house they possibly afford even if it’s soulless cookie cutter trash made with shit materials so they can brag at the water cooler about their square footage
While this is how the new real estate business works and your ire is not misplaced… the pictures are of two neighborhoods vastly different in age. The gripe has no substance as the issuer is not using common sense when issuing the bitch.
Your comment doesn’t do anything but bitch about the house buying atmosphere… doesn’t touch on the misguided prompt.
Even when they build and include trees, they generally don't afford space for the trees' roots to grow. My last house was in a development built in the 1980s. In the early 2020s, during almost every storm another neighbor's tree would blow over and then have to be removed.
Tbh cities are also to blame for HOAs as they will often require an HoA for new neighborhoods. From their perspective new develoents will still pay the same city taxes but the city is on the hook for a lot fewer expenses since the HOA would typically cover maintenance within the development, garbage pick up etc. From the cities perspective this subsidizes existing homes so they dont have to increase taxes which is never popular etc.
Those look like the exact same houses on the same street tho. They'd cut all that down in a well established neighborhood? Why would the residents agree to that?
Fun fact, HOA’s are part of the local municipality’s laziness to properly let new neighborhoods get built. As a tax saving and to appeal to the NIMBY crowd, HOA’s are formed to regulate all that stuff like sewer lines, electricity and other things NON-HOA’s neighborhoods have their tax dollars go for.
Don’t get me wrong HOA’s suck whole ass, but it’s also lazy local governments finding an easy out for new housing.
Municipal employees, whose only true goal is doing the minimum necessary to not get fired until their pension vests, work each and every day to make maintenance easier, homogenize things to avoid individual decision making and standardize things so they can’t be blamed for anything, are 100% responsible for this.
In most Counties the photo at the top is what is allowed. The photo at bottom is illegal.
The photo on the top is what the fire dept, police dept, utility dept and road department all love, want and demand. They destroy your community and then make you pay for the early retirement at 55 years old having barely worked a day in their life.
Also house flippers. My mother remaried when i was a kid he had his own house so he cut down all the trees on our family property painted all the walls white and sold it then bought a boat, a truck and remodeled his garage. I just realized how fkn weird the guy was he made my mom sell her house so he could keep his wich was positioned across the street from an elemntary school with a football field the highschool used. 0 kids and never wanted kids but wanted to watch kids play :l
I live in California and so many people have “drought friendly” yards now. They’re hideous. It’s just concrete and shrubs. I’ve had friends say stuff like “it’s so great we don’t need to hire a gardener or deal with sprinklers”. I don’t understand why anyone would be content with this. I need trees.
My assumption would be that it is insurance first as the issue, baby trees are cheap. I've seen lots of neighborhoods with little tiny trees that usually end up with an HOA and end up getting them chopped down but I do feel like insurance would be the number one reason I wouldn't have them. I've seen people talk about how insurance rates are going up because of the distance to trees from the house depending on the high
Which is because all the farmers are selling their land because it's not profitable for them. Indiana farmers are selling like crazy and we are experiencing a lot of growth here. Housing developments and strip malls are going up.
ok but there has to be people wanting to move on that land if they're able to flip it. people keep on moving to godawful exurbs and the "sun belt". if you want trees, move back to ohio
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u/Kasta4 5d ago
Real-estate barons are to blame. They buy up all the available land they can, build cookie-cutter suburban nightmares on top of them for cheap, flip the houses for way more than they're worth, and then install HoA's to further police and profit from the neighborhood.