I must be the only decent HOA president around, the way everyone else is bad-talking them. A couple months ago, I got all five buildings full of townhomes re-roofed, and came in under-budget by ten percent. I also got to pick the roof shingle color, and I went with deep black.
I’m in this role cause I was the only person who showed up to the annual board meeting who wasn’t the board. Honestly I felt a bit like Michael from the Good Place—rest of the board vacated and then I had twenty-seven people’s homes in my hand? Very odd.
But I’ve done my best to be a good steward to the neighborhood. I bet people don’t even think the weird old lady with a cane taking pictures of pretty stuff is the president. They just see me doing whatever I do and don’t even know.
I think the difference between me and lawn-measuring karens is that I’m not a dick.
There’s also a big difference between a condo/townhouse HOA and a suburban neighborhood one. Condo HOAs are focused on maintaining shared facilities and that would otherwise be too expensive for the owners to care for. Suburban HOAs for single family homes are all about enforcing uniformity and control.
In both cases their are shared maintenance expenses for the allotment. Like roads, drainage, and other things taxes would pay for but they cut themselves off from city by allowing an HOA.
Shitty that they even exist and anyone thinks it’s a good idea to trust unqualified people to manage projects they have no experience in usually. All a scam to let the developers cut costs and pass it onto the residents.
Now most of these HOAs are managed by older residents and most of them have a “I’m gonna die, why should I care” attitude about future planning.
roads, drainage, and other things taxes would pay for but they cut themselves off from city by allowing an HOA.
Wtf?! That’s insane!
Shitty that they even exist and anyone thinks it’s a good idea to trust unqualified people to manage projects they have no experience in usually. All a scam to let the developers cut costs and pass it onto the residents.
I’m a doorman for a high-rise condo building. The board is often the biggest complainers who use their position to get special privileges for themselves. One board member nearly succeeded in getting our Christmas bonus removed. Now we have a lady who is convinced her unit is infested with mold in spite of numerous tests showing otherwise. She’s trying to get the building to pay for the full gut rehab of her unit.
If you shingled my house with deep black, I’d call for your removal.
I live in NM, and you’d turn my house into an oven.
Fortunately, my HOA has no restrictions on shingle colors. I chose the whitest once I could get. My HOA is decent, mostly they just deal with the landscape company, and keep people from trashing their own yards. I haven’t raked leaves or mowed a lawn in nearly 30 years. My front yard always looks good.
It’s good that I’m in Portland where it doesn’t roast. And if you call for my removal, I’d gladly step aside. Means you’d be the president then. I was drafted into this role against my will, and so would you be.
But these are townhomes, not stand-alone houses. The three houses in the confines of the neighborhood pay enough money to maintain the street they’re on, but they’re excluded from roofing and painting costs.
Basically, if I didn’t accept the position, the HOA would enter into a receivership and everyone’s fees would have to go up, to cover the cost of administration.
Good on you, bud, I’ve done the same. I understand the Internet is always in an uproar over HoAs but it’s cooperative self governance. In our community we collectively own the land. A good HoA is essential. I have a background in fiscal analysis and budgeting and I can provide my neighbors these skills for a healthier neighborhood.
I’m sure there’s some dickhead on the Internet claiming we fined him unjustly for his broken window. He probably won’t tell you that it was broken for five years, caused a pipe burst that flooded his widow neighbor’s unit and forced her to discard her deceased husband’s possessions. Then waited until the following year’s frost without acting.
It’s a total pain in the ass of a gig and at least 30% of your residents are unpleasable. But the alternative is a working class neighborhood gets run by that one person who’s happy to fine for out of season decorations. If motherfuckers stepped up and acted like the board members they want to see, maybe they wouldn’t constantly whine about what are, to the majority of them, purely hypothetical tyrants.
By joining a HOA you already proved you’re an asshole though.
Heternormative Overlord Associations are fucking creepy, you telling me some fucking busybody with no life can tell me what colour to paint my fence if I lived in America?
Fuck right off. I thought y’all were the Land of the Free.
Here in Europe, we can do what we want as long as it’s within health and safety rules, without some weird stepford cult being like “it’s not approved by the council of elders!”
I just handle the roofing and painting contracts, and any sort of local landscape concerns.
This HOA looks after five buildings holding twenty-seven townhomes. There’s no lawns to mow here, no real interpersonal conflict. Residents pay into an HOA fund and then their building gets maintained.
I have never enforced any sort of rule otherwise.
But I can be an asshole if you need me to be.
Also, how are you assuming that I’m heteronormative? I’m a disabled trans woman. :/ I sign contracts for neighborhood maintenance.
Yeah I laughed when I read that one, always fun seeing someone you know from a smaller community “out in the wild” 😝
Crazy that commenter couldn’t be bothered to scroll through your post history even a little.
But yeah generally HOAs are pretty bad (although for townhomes/condos they’re kinda necessary). I believe Last Week Tonight had a great segment on them. A lot of them have pretty shady part-corporate part-governmental authority in ways that just does not go well for the residents. (Often) They’re basically for-profit government bodies.
Yup, I would rather drag Finnmark out here one time and do five buildings of roofs every twenty-five years (I’ve been in this two years), rather than have every single homeowner call their own roofer out here to patch the twenty horizontal feet that is directly over their house, necessitating a new service fee each time, with the quality varying from segment to segment of each block of townhomes.
For people who’re shitting on me for having this role, for some reason, the alternative to an HOA is a capitalist nightmare where everyone is on their own.
I still don’t think HOAs should exist, but it’s obvious now they need to in places that are a capitalist hellscape
But only if they’re run by people who aren’t petty bourgeoisies, which sadly there’s too many that are.
In places that have some amount of social democracy, the job of the HOA is done by the government.
If Jeff down the road ain’t fixed his leak in 3 years, then people report it to the gov, and the gov gives Jeff two options; fix it, or we charge you money and fix it ourselves
Well, I’m a disabled trans woman who does fine art photography, and I was mustered into this role. I don’t like the responsibility, but I’m the only one who accepted it, so I’m going to do it right. I’m not being paid, I just sign contracts and oversee work crews and look at a budget report every month, and make sure all my dudes in their houses they own, don’t start dying cause their house is falling apart.
I promise you, I’m really not an asshole. I pay more HOA fees than anyone else out here cause I fucked up the math, and rather than call a meeting to try to get a quorum together to fix it, I just eat the $90 extra a month.
I just want my tiny neighborhood to keep being a neighborhood.
Yeah like, you’ve shown to me that I’ve only ever heard of the bad cases, but there are cases where it actually works.
My new opinion is it’s a necessary evil like how charities are, in a perfect world they should not need to exist as social policies will meet the needs of the people. But in the imperfect world we actually live in, those needs are not met, and so charities have to pick up the slack.
Same for HOA, USA and some of the less socialist parts of EU need them, cause the gov aren’t doing their fucking job, so somebody needs to do it.
I’m not really stalkable. My username here is my legal name, and I’m very prominent in some communities on here, and I get recognized a lot online and in public.
I’m okay with saying hi to people, nothing wrong with that. :)
HOAs do exist in Europe too. Because it’s impossible to coordinate maintaining shared property without them.
The central heating system is showing its age. With what technology will it be replaced? Gas? Oil? Heat pump? A connection to district heating?
If it’s a heat pump, should you put solar panels on the roof? If so, who pays for them? Everyone? What if some don’t want to? How will revenue be shared if only some are willing to pay the cost? How will you calculate how much it costs to heat one apartment whose owner shares ownership of the solar panels versus how much it costs to heat one apartment whose owner doesn’t?
Well, the thing I’m referring to translates exactly to homeowner association in English. And not only does it do that, the Wikipedia articles link each other.
A tenant’s association feels much different. Tenants don’t have any decision rights as to what will be done to the apartment block considering they don’t own the place. At best they can demand infrastructure improvements from their shared landlords if e.g. the elevator breaks every week.
And a residential association seems to just be a neighborhood association? So just a group of neighbors coming together to organize both political advocacy and barbecues.
I guess you’re right. There are no decent HOA presidents. But how would people who share a building collaborate on things like roofing and painting otherwise? They’d have to come up with the money eventually or things would fall into disrepair.
If I’m a dick for doing this, then so be it. Folks need durable and maintained buildings. I’m not even being paid.
I must be the only decent HOA president around, the way everyone else is bad-talking them. A couple months ago, I got all five buildings full of townhomes re-roofed, and came in under-budget by ten percent. I also got to pick the roof shingle color, and I went with deep black.
I’m in this role cause I was the only person who showed up to the annual board meeting who wasn’t the board. Honestly I felt a bit like Michael from the Good Place—rest of the board vacated and then I had twenty-seven people’s homes in my hand? Very odd.
But I’ve done my best to be a good steward to the neighborhood. I bet people don’t even think the weird old lady with a cane taking pictures of pretty stuff is the president. They just see me doing whatever I do and don’t even know.
I think the difference between me and lawn-measuring karens is that I’m not a dick.
In my experience you are definitely the exception. Good on ya
There’s also a big difference between a condo/townhouse HOA and a suburban neighborhood one. Condo HOAs are focused on maintaining shared facilities and that would otherwise be too expensive for the owners to care for. Suburban HOAs for single family homes are all about enforcing uniformity and control.
In both cases their are shared maintenance expenses for the allotment. Like roads, drainage, and other things taxes would pay for but they cut themselves off from city by allowing an HOA.
Shitty that they even exist and anyone thinks it’s a good idea to trust unqualified people to manage projects they have no experience in usually. All a scam to let the developers cut costs and pass it onto the residents.
Now most of these HOAs are managed by older residents and most of them have a “I’m gonna die, why should I care” attitude about future planning.
Wtf?! That’s insane!
rAmen!
I’m a doorman for a high-rise condo building. The board is often the biggest complainers who use their position to get special privileges for themselves. One board member nearly succeeded in getting our Christmas bonus removed. Now we have a lady who is convinced her unit is infested with mold in spite of numerous tests showing otherwise. She’s trying to get the building to pay for the full gut rehab of her unit.
If you shingled my house with deep black, I’d call for your removal.
I live in NM, and you’d turn my house into an oven.
Fortunately, my HOA has no restrictions on shingle colors. I chose the whitest once I could get. My HOA is decent, mostly they just deal with the landscape company, and keep people from trashing their own yards. I haven’t raked leaves or mowed a lawn in nearly 30 years. My front yard always looks good.
It’s good that I’m in Portland where it doesn’t roast. And if you call for my removal, I’d gladly step aside. Means you’d be the president then. I was drafted into this role against my will, and so would you be.
But these are townhomes, not stand-alone houses. The three houses in the confines of the neighborhood pay enough money to maintain the street they’re on, but they’re excluded from roofing and painting costs.
nods
The Santa Clause rules
JFC
Basically, if I didn’t accept the position, the HOA would enter into a receivership and everyone’s fees would have to go up, to cover the cost of administration.
So I stepped up.
<<HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!>>
I think the difference is you got handed power/responsibilities nobody wanted and other hoa presidents sought it out for the power
I never had an HOA that wasn’t abysmal, so I’d say you are a very good exception.
I think it’s one of those roles where you if do it well, no one will notice.
Good on you, bud, I’ve done the same. I understand the Internet is always in an uproar over HoAs but it’s cooperative self governance. In our community we collectively own the land. A good HoA is essential. I have a background in fiscal analysis and budgeting and I can provide my neighbors these skills for a healthier neighborhood.
I’m sure there’s some dickhead on the Internet claiming we fined him unjustly for his broken window. He probably won’t tell you that it was broken for five years, caused a pipe burst that flooded his widow neighbor’s unit and forced her to discard her deceased husband’s possessions. Then waited until the following year’s frost without acting.
It’s a total pain in the ass of a gig and at least 30% of your residents are unpleasable. But the alternative is a working class neighborhood gets run by that one person who’s happy to fine for out of season decorations. If motherfuckers stepped up and acted like the board members they want to see, maybe they wouldn’t constantly whine about what are, to the majority of them, purely hypothetical tyrants.
Yeah, I’m sure there’s HOAs run by tyrants, but done right, it’s a social thing where we pool our resources and keep our houses up.
Give it time, HOA becoming evil always happens eventually…
Can you elaborate? How will I become evil?
By joining a HOA you already proved you’re an asshole though.
Heternormative Overlord Associations are fucking creepy, you telling me some fucking busybody with no life can tell me what colour to paint my fence if I lived in America?
Fuck right off. I thought y’all were the Land of the Free.
Here in Europe, we can do what we want as long as it’s within health and safety rules, without some weird stepford cult being like “it’s not approved by the council of elders!”
I don’t have a fence. Or a yard.
I just handle the roofing and painting contracts, and any sort of local landscape concerns.
This HOA looks after five buildings holding twenty-seven townhomes. There’s no lawns to mow here, no real interpersonal conflict. Residents pay into an HOA fund and then their building gets maintained.
I have never enforced any sort of rule otherwise.
But I can be an asshole if you need me to be.
Also, how are you assuming that I’m heteronormative? I’m a disabled trans woman. :/ I sign contracts for neighborhood maintenance.
Hi tanis!
Yeah I laughed when I read that one, always fun seeing someone you know from a smaller community “out in the wild” 😝
Crazy that commenter couldn’t be bothered to scroll through your post history even a little.
But yeah generally HOAs are pretty bad (although for townhomes/condos they’re kinda necessary). I believe Last Week Tonight had a great segment on them. A lot of them have pretty shady part-corporate part-governmental authority in ways that just does not go well for the residents. (Often) They’re basically for-profit government bodies.
Yup, I would rather drag Finnmark out here one time and do five buildings of roofs every twenty-five years (I’ve been in this two years), rather than have every single homeowner call their own roofer out here to patch the twenty horizontal feet that is directly over their house, necessitating a new service fee each time, with the quality varying from segment to segment of each block of townhomes.
For people who’re shitting on me for having this role, for some reason, the alternative to an HOA is a capitalist nightmare where everyone is on their own.
Oh yeah, for multiple family housing it’s essential to pool resources somehow.
Honestly you’ve turned me around on this
I still don’t think HOAs should exist, but it’s obvious now they need to in places that are a capitalist hellscape
But only if they’re run by people who aren’t petty bourgeoisies, which sadly there’s too many that are.
In places that have some amount of social democracy, the job of the HOA is done by the government.
If Jeff down the road ain’t fixed his leak in 3 years, then people report it to the gov, and the gov gives Jeff two options; fix it, or we charge you money and fix it ourselves
Well, I’m a disabled trans woman who does fine art photography, and I was mustered into this role. I don’t like the responsibility, but I’m the only one who accepted it, so I’m going to do it right. I’m not being paid, I just sign contracts and oversee work crews and look at a budget report every month, and make sure all my dudes in their houses they own, don’t start dying cause their house is falling apart.
I promise you, I’m really not an asshole. I pay more HOA fees than anyone else out here cause I fucked up the math, and rather than call a meeting to try to get a quorum together to fix it, I just eat the $90 extra a month.
I just want my tiny neighborhood to keep being a neighborhood.
Yeah like, you’ve shown to me that I’ve only ever heard of the bad cases, but there are cases where it actually works.
My new opinion is it’s a necessary evil like how charities are, in a perfect world they should not need to exist as social policies will meet the needs of the people. But in the imperfect world we actually live in, those needs are not met, and so charities have to pick up the slack.
Same for HOA, USA and some of the less socialist parts of EU need them, cause the gov aren’t doing their fucking job, so somebody needs to do it.
Doesn’t make sense to stalk people, to me
I’m not really stalkable. My username here is my legal name, and I’m very prominent in some communities on here, and I get recognized a lot online and in public.
I’m okay with saying hi to people, nothing wrong with that. :)
I just mean that I don’t tend to ever read people’s profiles tbh
But that’s neat 😁
HOAs do exist in Europe too. Because it’s impossible to coordinate maintaining shared property without them.
The central heating system is showing its age. With what technology will it be replaced? Gas? Oil? Heat pump? A connection to district heating?
If it’s a heat pump, should you put solar panels on the roof? If so, who pays for them? Everyone? What if some don’t want to? How will revenue be shared if only some are willing to pay the cost? How will you calculate how much it costs to heat one apartment whose owner shares ownership of the solar panels versus how much it costs to heat one apartment whose owner doesn’t?
That’s not a HOA.
That’s a Tenant’s Association or a Residential Association
Well, the thing I’m referring to translates exactly to homeowner association in English. And not only does it do that, the Wikipedia articles link each other.
A tenant’s association feels much different. Tenants don’t have any decision rights as to what will be done to the apartment block considering they don’t own the place. At best they can demand infrastructure improvements from their shared landlords if e.g. the elevator breaks every week.
And a residential association seems to just be a neighborhood association? So just a group of neighbors coming together to organize both political advocacy and barbecues.
This Wikipedia article also mentions the need for an HOA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condominium
Spoiler: You’re not
I guess you’re right. There are no decent HOA presidents. But how would people who share a building collaborate on things like roofing and painting otherwise? They’d have to come up with the money eventually or things would fall into disrepair.
If I’m a dick for doing this, then so be it. Folks need durable and maintained buildings. I’m not even being paid.
They just think co-operation will magically emerge, or something