HOAs: What good are they?

Homeowner Associations have run amok! Once a good idea, HOAs have now, it seems, evolved into something twisted and perverse. Most HOA enforcers are untrained volunteers from the very community the HOA represents.

Have you ever encountered a neighbor who, for whatever reason, can’t seem to mind their own business? These are the people I’m talking about. Now imagine they have the power to fine you; force you to do things they want. HOAs don’t background check individuals who offer help and often give power to lunatics.

Susan Tregobov of Maryland was told to stop using a clothesline. Ted Faraz of Texas was ordered to remove the solar panels from his roof and was fined $50 a day until they were gone. Another Texas man was told he could not run an Internet business from his home. AJ Vizzi of Florida spent $200,000 on legal fees because his HOA didn’t like his truck and ordered him to not park it in his own driveway. A homeowner in Colorado was fined $25 a day because she hung a Christmas wreath on her door. A Florida man was fined $200 because he had a small brown spot in one area of his lawn during one of Florida’s worst droughts in years.

The sad thing is, people keep signing these HOA contracts without knowing what they’re getting into. Maybe it’s time to require HOA’s to be regulated or even abolished altogether; they’re just not working out.

JOHN WILLARD

Post Falls