Homeowner Associations are setup for neighborhoods and subdivisions to protect property values. It keeps morons without any taste from doing stupid things on their property, like never mowing their grass, or having a cell phone tower in their backyard.
You pay a fee (usually monthly or annually) to pay for the administration of the HOA by a third party. But man, is our current one ever fucking worthless!
A few months ago, we had our first meeting with the HOA rep. Dude was totally unprepared and unfamiliar with our community. He had been handed the community from someone else in their company. People asked some basic questions and he didn’t have answers and didn’t communicate that he’d get answers in any timely fashion (he never really did).
Fast forward a few months and our community has been handed off to another person in the company in another office. None of the questions residents brought up have ever been addressed, except a couple of superficial ones. Other than that, we’ve had no real interaction with the Homeowners association – until recently.
About a year ago, we put up our fence and have had constant problems with it, so after a lot of back and forth (and repairs), Lowe’s has agreed to foot the bill to remove the existing fence, and put up a better one from a better installer. With the demolition of the old fence, we have to have a dumpster in front of our house for a few days for all the old materials to go in. So we went through the process of contacting the homeowner’s association to get approval for that dumpster being there for two days, and then the approval of our standard fence. They’ve got an overly complicated application process and can have up to 45 days to approve (or deny) the standard request.
We’ve gone back and forth with them on the submission and explained the circumstances with the replacement of fence, etc. hoping they would fast track the fence application. They basically retorted they have up to 45 days. I would think they would want to help out in keeping the neighborhood looking presentable, putting in a better quality fence.
I’ve kind of skimmed over the details, but the whole feeling we’ve gotten since day one with this homeowner’s association is that they’re there for the money and could give two shits about the residents they’re managing communities for. There’s little room for community knowledge or civility, but you better pay your dues on time.
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