Most HOAs have a regulation about “No Home Businesses.” With so many people working at home on the web that’s an almost meaningless rule…except when Board Bullies want to throw their weight around.
Sure, nobody wants to live next to a neighbor who operates a sawmill in his back yard. But sometimes the local HOA Nazi gets out of control and too full of himself. You’re an author and you write books and magazine articles? That’s an illegal business. You use your computer to fill out medical forms? Illegal home-based business.
The latest outrage comes from Senoia, Georgia, where a Christian family decided to help other families in need. In their garage they collect things like bed sheets, groceries, household goods. Nothing is stored in sight of any annoyed neighbors. Every so often the family delivers the goods to those who desperately need them.
“HOME BUSINESS!” screams the Summerfield HOA. “ILLEGAL!”
When you think about it seriously, Jesus Christ would be unwelcome in the vast majority of America’s Homeowners Associations. Riff raff. Healing cripples without a license. Restoring sight to the blind without permission from the HOA. Claiming to be God, when everyone in the neighborhood knows that only the HOA president is God.
Those who follow this website know that I’ve been predicting this for years: Drones flying over your property taking video of your covenant violations. Now a mainstream HOA promoter is actually whispering about the possibility.
The link below is disguised as a ‘warning’ for HOAs to be cautious as they approach the subject of drone inspections of private property. But the real message is “Our time has come! Get your drones ready.”
If you think your personal privacy is already violated by abusive HOAs, then all I can say is, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Despite what this mainstream HOA booster says in the link below, you gave up your privacy when you bought into your HOA. I first discovered this when I bought a couple of condos in Vail in the late 1980s. When I changed the locks on the doors the HOA board just had the locks drilled and sent me the bill.
In California some HOAs are doing so-called ‘hoarding inspections.’ These are unannounced inspections of the interiors of private homes! One of the items in their list of things you’re not supposed to hoard are books. Shades of Fahrenheit 451?
But my three-year-old predictions about drones being used by HOAs is actually coming true. Video of you and your lover in the backyard hot tub is NOT a violation of privacy. Not in an HOA.
I’ve debated with myself long and hard over the story I’m about to tell you. It really zeroes in on a personal situation I faced with an HOA bully. I swore I would keep the story to myself until I read today’s article about America’s tragic loss of honey bees. Forty percent of all honey bees in the country died last year. Forty percent!
You cannot imagine how important honey bees are to our agriculture and our very survival as a species. Man just can’t do what bees do for us. Without bees there is no produce in your grocery store. None!
Now, my personal story. I own some acreage in Colorado adjacent to a Homeowners Association. Several years ago, a teenager who raises bees and produces honey for a hobby asked if he could place a half dozen bee hives on my property. There’s no way I would have refused him. For several years the hives were thriving and pollinating vegetation for miles around.
Last year I was away at a publishers’ conference when I got an angry call from a typical HOA bully. He demanded I remove the hives immediately. Mystified at his sudden rage I asked him why? Believe it or not, this guy said “Your bees are drinking from my wife’s pond!”
This is not a joke. Despite the fact that there are several bee keepers within a four mile radius of this property, MY bees were drinking from his pond!
I guess I shouldn’t have ignored him because a few days later every single one of the bee hives was dead. Stone cold dead in just one night. I seriously doubt they died that suddenly from natural causes.
David Evans, guitarist in the rock band U2, owns some view acreage overlooking Malibu. He’s now into his 9th year trying to get approval to build five luxury homes, one of which he plans to live in himself. For all those years, opponents have complained to zoning officials that those five new homes will bring in way too much noise and traffic and spoil their view.
Now, it looks like zoning officials are moving closer to approving the project.
It’s too bad Evans didn’t follow the lead of movie director George Lucas, who’s been refused permission to build a small studio on his property north of San Francisco. When Lucas wasn’t allowed to build on his 1100 acre estate, he announced he’d turn his estate into a big development of affordable housing (read that, ‘low rent’). These days it’s next to impossible for county officials anywhere to reject plans for affordable housing.
Evans should use the same strategy on his Malibu property. Heaven knows Malibu could certainly use a few hundred low-rent homes!
