F-ing Homeowner's associations

The place I live now has a fenced in courtyard which is almost always in the shade with a nice breeze blowing through. I was enjoying a book and a little time with the dog this morning after our walk when one of the association people stopped by to let me know that signs would be coming soon prohibiting dogs from being in the space because they were turning it into a tot lot. They mentioned that the area had just been power washed but I made no move to leave, insulted with the implication that my dog and I were considered unclean. There really aren't a lot of kids in this part of the city and even less in our 4 buildings. I can count on one hand the number that I've actually seen. Why they get a dedicated space where there are so few spaces for anything is nakedly unfair. I've only been here 6 months and I'm 90 percent positive I know who is behind the no dogs provision of the new assosication financed playground for the 5 kids in this complex. If you want a yard, move. Don't use the association's money to build one for your kid and then tell me I can't use it.

I hate associations. I hate them because they really aren't associations, they are a handful of your neighbors who use your money to send you newsletters about being and good neighbor and telling you what colors you can paint the exterior of your house. And it's not the cool, laid-back neighbors who run associations. It's the people who have impossible gardens and homes staged like a Better Homes and Gardens or Architectural Digest crews could stop by at any moment. Whatever their issues are, the sublimate them through blocking the sale of a house until their neighbor has requested after the fact permission to put green brick edging around their rock garden (true story). It's fucking nuts and offends me deeply. I paid for my house and the land on it, why the fuck do I have to ask for permission to improve it? And how dare you come on to my porch to measure the circumference of my pots. Get a fucking life.

They consider the common areas extensions of their actual home. When I'm sitting out in the courtyard enjoying the sunshine, they walk by as if I'm in their living room. That is the cancer of associations. People use them to advance and enforce their lifestyles on the rest of the tenants. They are not content to shape only their lives, they build rules based on what personally annoys them about the people they chose to live around. It is a little slice of socialist heaven for the upwardly mobile. There are no cigarette butt holders anywhere but they recently put out a note requesting people not throw them on the ground or in the potted plants. I don't smoke but I don't know where people are supposed to safely dispose of their butts if they don't throw them on the non-flammable ground. I'm annoyed about the anti-dog nature of the tot lot but I'm probably more annoyed that we have many owners in the complex that fuel that sentiment. They let their dogs piss and crap in the common areas within the complex. It's like having your dog take a crap on your deck, it's completely inappropriate. But people who don't like dogs anyway don't think that given the volume of dogs here, if everyone were that disrespectful and irresponsible, you'd have to swim through the crap and piss in the common areas. They just look at me when I walk pass with a palpable disdain like I just took a steaming dump at their feet.

They are the people who come prepared the the association meetings with detailed agendas regarding the willow trees that they want trimmed using community funds so they can see the lake better. They are the people who suggest it would increase our sense of community if community funds were used to put no trespassing signs everywhere. Much better. Now I feel like I'm in prison. Everyone knows that ne'er do wells see no trespassing signs and remark to themselves 'Well, I was going to come in and steal the packages sitting in the mailroom but that was before they put a sign. I guess I better find somewhere else to be thieve-y.' The real issue both here and where I lived before is keeping the unwashed masses at bay and advancing some kind of sad middle class bourgeoisie agenda. Renters are practically the AntiChrist.

It's not that I don't believe in basic community standards to maintain property values and safety, I've just never seen an association actually manage that well. They govern from an assumption that left to their own devices, individuals will sit in their own filth and allow their property to become a blight. Instead of fostering a sense of community, they become arbiters of good taste and judgement and instead of talking to Debbie in 1A about how much it annoys them when she puts her boxes outside her door and leaves them there for days, the association creates a new by-law with punitive fines prohibiting boxes, shoes, umbrellas, and tacky rugs that say 'wipe your paws' from being in the hallway longer than 24 hours and then sends a newsletter to the residents to inform them of the new rule.

Pisses me off.



The picture is of a common area in my old neighborhood where an association member put this sign. She has a dog and walked it in the common area grass in front of my house every single morning but felt the common area by her house should not be used for such unseemly things. I think it is a hilarious sign but it is against the rules to post signs and such in common areas and I have a have a mind to bring it up with the association to force her to take it out. Another reason why I hate associations. Everyone becomes afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome and uses the very rules they hate to oppress their neighbors.

Okay...I'm stepping down now.