More and more American homeowners and even some tenants are living under homeowners' associations - not just in well-to-do areas but in average-income places too. The associations are not government entities but are organized under corporate law.
Because they're actually corporations, they impose regulations that would get any city government sued or voted out of office.
The latest homeowners' association outrage comes to us from Montgomery County, Maryland, where an association is threatening a woman because she (gasp!) dared to dry her clothes outside. Many folks are returning to the days of outdoor laundry drying to save energy, but this doesn't sit well with the homeowners' association, which is threatening legal action against the woman.
On what grounds? The homeowners' association has no case. None. Zero. Zip. Zubba. Butkus. Nil. Naught. Zippo. Cipher. Goose egg.
Homeowners' associations can't micromanage residents' lives and expect any judge in their right mind not to laugh their case clean out of the courthouse.
Advocates for the residents want the state legislature to bar homeowners' associations from prohibiting residents from using clotheslines. Colorado and Hawaii already have such laws. It's not like the association has any case to begin with, but these days, who really knows that it won't get its way if the legislature stays silent?
(Source: http://www.wdel.com/story.php?id=587738275796)
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Homeowners' association should be hung out to dry
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This will not go threw. There is no way. Not in this day and age when people are trying to be more eco-friendly. All the woman has to say is she was trying to save energy!
ReplyDeleteAnd what on earth is so offensive about hanging laundry out to dry? If anything, I would find it comforting. Not only is the woman saving electricity, but it's creating a feel of old America where mothers would hang their clothes out to dry. "The good old days" so to speak.
If that kind of crap ever made it over to where my boyfriend lives, we'd be fighting that from morning to night. We hang our blankets out to dry all the time.