Home Improvement: Do HOAs Hate The Planet?

Switching gears from our usual talk of the bubble, sales, and economics, I wanted to point out this interesting article from AlterNet on the anti-environmental practices of homeowner associations:

Many homeowners' associations post their covenants on their websites for the convenience of members. Doing some simple searches, I recently found and read a few dozen such documents. They are often highly detailed in describing what is allowed, what is not and what happens if you don't do what you're supposed to do or fail to do what they require...Alice has received no warnings from her HOA -- yet. But you wouldn't expect such guerilla-style energy conservation to be necessary in laid-back Austin. Alice says, "Yeah, usually people think of Austin and they think of relaxed attitudes. But I think since the housing market boomed, it has made people a lot less relaxed." (Emphases added.)

Here we have evidence that the housing bubble wasn't just bad for the economy, but bad for the entire future of the planet. ;) And as far as HOAs go, those friends of mine who live in HOA-overseen communities generally regard them with epithets you wouldn't hear this side of a Lloyd Banks CD. ;) They generally regard HOAs as the root of all evil, and after hearing stuff like this, I'm not inclined to disagree.

Posted at May 1, 2007 04:49 PM

digg this story

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://weblog.housing.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/374

Switching gears from our usual talk of the bubble, sales, and economics, I wanted to point out this interesting article from AlterNet on the anti-environmental practices of homeowner associations: Many homeowners' associations post their covenants on their websites for the convenience of members. Doing some simple searches, I recently found and read a few dozen such documents. They are often highly detailed in describing what is allowed, what is not and what happens if you don't do what you're supposed to do or fail to do what they require...Alice has received no warnings from her HOA -- yet. But you wouldn't expect such guerilla-style energy conservation to be necessary in laid-back Austin. Alice says, "Yeah, usually people think of Austin and they think of relaxed attitudes. But I think since the housing market boomed, it has made people a lot less relaxed." (Emphases added.) Here we have evidence that the housing bubble wasn't just bad for the economy, but bad for the entire future of the planet. ;) And as far as HOAs go, those friends of mine who live in HOA-overseen communities generally regard them with epithets you wouldn't hear this side of a Lloyd Banks CD. ;) They generally regard HOAs as the root of all evil, and after hearing stuff like this, I'm not inclined to disagree.