Homeowners associations can be of great benefit. You get to know your neighbors and you can all look out for each other in cases of emergencies or when you are traveling and need someone to water the plants. There is also some security in having an association as often there is a Neighborhood Watch program in effect that helps deter the criminal element.
On the downside, however, a homeowners association can get carried away with power and people can get cited for the most ridiculous infractions. A couple in Hoston wre fined for having gray tape on exterieor water lines. The association said the tape had to be black. The couple went to court and lost, so they ended up paying $20,000 for that lack of good taste.
Anyone knows black goes with everything.
One neighborhood association tried to dictate how many of a specific plant could be planted in a flowerbed. Sorry people, only five pansies to a plot.
Another association fined a couple in Texas for planting too many blue bonnets in their yard. Apparently this couple let the bluebonnets propagate at will, and neighbors found them unsightly.
Come on, folks. The Texas state flower is unsightly?
We almost moved into a gated community with a homeowners association when we came back to Texas 8 years ago, and I am so glad now that we didn't. I couldn't keep up with the fines we would receive because I mow around the early spring flowers that pop up in my front pasture area. I don't mow around all of them, mind you -- just a few here and there because they are so lovely and I can't bear to cut them down. The end result is that my pasture looks like some alien did crop circles there.
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Do you think homeowners associations have gone too far? Do you belong to one? What has been your experience.
