This kind of thing has happened before. HOAs are no big fans of war heroes. It’s hard to imagine. But many HOAs across the country don’t like the American flag being flown. They don’t like displays of patriotism. Actually, it does make sense in a perverse sort of way. HOAs are basically fascist organizations, many of them run by control freaks.
But click on the picture below to see and hear the story of Frank Larison who’s being fined $50 a day because he has Marine decals on his car. Just remember the Woodlands II On The Creek Homeowners Association in Dallas. HOA board president Dorenda Hardy signed the letter. She should be ashamed. And any prospective home buyer in Texas should avoid this neighborhood like the plague.
http://americannews.com/retired-marine-forced-to-remove-is-usmc-decals-while-neighbors-keep-obama-stickers/
1. The HOA Board member admits on air to selective enforcement. The rule does not allow “one to two decals” as this Board member notes. I reiterate that these Boards essentially make up rules on the spot or redefine the rule itself to fit their agenda. The homeowner is left with little recourse. Then the Board has the audacity to note the homeowner violated the contract.
2. CNN interviewer to HOA Board member, Art Bradford:
“What do you think about these rules? They seem pretty silly, don’t they?”
Art Bradford:
“Rules are rules. We all live by rules in this world we live in nowadays. It’s like I told the Channel 4 crew that was here the other day. Our world is chaotic enough without rules. If we didn’t have rules, imagine how chaotic it would really be.”
This man is speaking about having rules to rid the world of……(kid-you-not)……..”chaos” causing bumper stickers.
Bumper stickers make no noise, do not pollute the air, do not block driveways nor poop on the grass of another. Perhaps Art Bradford should reconsider the original question, “They (the rules) seem pretty silly, don’t they?”
This conversation; however, is reverberated across the nation in one form or another by HOA Board members whose grandiose version of their roles in controlling chaos and maintaining peace is an issue in all of the fifty states. It’s long past time legislators address these personalities, whose megalomaniac tendencies disrupt the lives of others, many times based on the false guise of protecting property values.
These Board members will run around shouting the “sky is falling” by promulgating the false idea that if you let one homeowner place several bumper stickers on a car, then ALL homeowners will do it and cause property values to fall.
The reality is we all are different and the odds are extremely limited in that allowing bumper stickers on cars would mean each homeowner in the country would then go out and plaster their vehicles with these stickers.
The reality is we are all different. The reality is “chaos” would not erupt if we let some homeowners place several bumper stickers on their cars.
Some homeowners would never place one bumper sticker. Some would place several, and then others would “cause chaos” by covering their car with bumper stickers.
3. But let’s tone the HOA rhetoric down a bit: a car covered in bumper stickers is not “creating chaos”.
In many HOA’s, their version of reality is a bit fanatical, distorted and utterly lacking in common sense. In the end, it is the homeowners who pay dearly for this distorted version of reality.
So now HOAs can tell me what my car looks like? Seriously? I can understand if a non-functioning non-registered car is just sitting in an HOA parking lot taking up a parking space, but I don’t understand how an HOA can tell owners how their cars should look. What’s next? Only late model cars? Or luxury cars? Seriously?
There are HOAs that do not allow vehicles older than a few years (five I think I heard) and they monitor them closely. The bumper stickers on cars issue has been around for years.