Who doesn’t love omelettes for breakfast and chicken sandwiches at other times of the week? But just keep those chickens out of my backyard!
Backyard chicken coops are one of the privileges of rural living. Two or three laying hens can feed a family forever. But the astonishing growth of Homeowners Associations has led to a pathological contempt for any neighbor who dares keep a pet chicken.
We’re not talking about roosters crowing at the crack of dawn, here. Just chickens.
But for many of the growing number of condo commandos and lawn nazis a backyard chicken is about as attractive as ticks on a picnic blanket.
Oh, the omelette’s OK. Just as long as it has no connection to my neighborhood.
Those Southern Mississippi boys shore know how to screw up a state!
The new community of Diamondhead is holding its first city election. The law allows political signs to be placed anywhere except city property. But the Diamondhead Property Owners Association doesn’t allow any political signs either. Unless you’re a Republican. Mayoral candidate Carl Necaise put his political signs out in the yards of people who weren’t actually in the POA. And he’s ordered his opponent’s signs removed because they happened to be in the front yards of people who actually are POA members.
The CC&Rs in Diamondhead also prohibit solicitation. Any homeowner who puts out a political sign or goes door-to-door faces a $100 fine.
Dang!
It sounds like a hundred different variations of ‘illegal.’
Amanda Rhett must have thought she was living on a different planet last week. She had to face the board of the West Trop Homeowners Association to defend herself against a photograph showing two pieces of dog poop in the private back patio area of her home.
The offending feces were left by Amanda’s little miniature Yorkie. It’s not like this terrier was terrorizing the neighborhood by depositing ‘S’ bombs in all the common areas. It was two dog poops the size of a child’s little finger on this lady’s private patio.
It was either pay the $100 fine or find a new place to live.
Actually, this whole story is a really rather creepy. The photographer, obviously a member of the HOA staff, had to trespass onto this woman’s property, lean way over her private balcony rail to snap his photo of the offending poops.
What’s difficult to understand about the word ‘accountability’? Texas is one of a number of states where legislation is pending which would reign in the massive power of private HOA management companies. Homeowners in Texas, and elsewhere, are tired of being ripped off by arbitrary fines, punitive social controls, predatory towing of vehicles, confiscatory debt collection practices, abusive lawsuits, and massive embezzlement from the budgets of Homeowners Associations. This is not a hard problem to understand. Your home is your castle. Isn’t it?
But on the other side of the accountability aisle are State Representatives and Senators who’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars for supposedly ‘managing’ planned communities. They hover like birds-of-prey over the neighborhoods they supervise, and the moment any weakness is spotted they swoop down and make a kill strike on a beleaguered homeowner, liening his home and selling it at auction before the homeowner can even catch his breath.
As good as this pending bill is, it doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of passage. The powers that be rake in too much money. An accountability bill would murder their profit margins.
I used to live in Texas. I never thought Texans were stupid.
Dear Friends, I’ve spoken occasionally about keeping your sense of humor no matter what nightmare you’ve experienced. Yes, the battle against the national HOA scam can scar a person’s heart forever, but humor has the incredible power of healing the damage. And humor, in some cases, is more powerful than a nuclear weapon. Want proof?
United Airlines baggage handlers busted a guitar which (unhappily for United) was owned by Dave Carroll, a folk singer from Nova Scotia who has a finely honed sense of hilarious indignation. United refused to repair the damage to the guitar. And now there’s a song that’s gone viral. And another. And another. Now there’s even a book. And a speaking tour. A Google search turns up nearly four million hits. It’s all called, “United Breaks Guitars.”
United Airlines has lost millions and millions of dollars in its public image because of this one singer’s poetic irony. United has now offered to pay for a new guitar. It’s offered to buy the song rights. It’s offered the singer vast sums of money to take his songs and his story off of YouTube. But with millions of fans watching the song, Dave Carroll just can’t afford to quit singing. And United Airlines continues to lose millions in its public image. That’s how powerful humor is!
Dave Carroll’s second video is even funnier than the first.
United Airlines, the behemoth that it is, has learned that every single customer is important. In our fight against the racketeering that pervades the American Homeowners Association Movement, every single homeowner is important. And that’s what arrogant organizations like the Community Associations Institute may learn at some lovely point in the future.
