Down On The Mile High Street: Take That, Homeowners' Associations!
Published: July 21st, 2011
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It just does my heart good to see a suburban Denver neighborhood in which there’s no meddlesome HOA to tell a man he can’t have a vintage customized Econoline on the street and a Mustang drag racer in the driveway.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I'm sure the HOA will be forced to act once he parks a Pontiac Aztek in that drive...
Who need's HOAs to get hassled? A friend of mine was facing 93 days in jail for growing a vegetable garden, a really nice one too. http://oakparkhatesveggies.wordpress.com/
Bah… that's nothing. Take the house next door to me: no less than EIGHT non-registered, non-operable cars on a 50'X100' lot, and another clapped-out junkbox parked on the street in front. No one has lived in the house for nearly 8 years now, so it's effectively a permanent open air junkyard in a residential area. Add to this the charm of the owner starting up parts his collection every few months (for what reason I've yet to determine) fouling the air in my house with exhaust fumes, and then ignoring me when I complain. I'm about as easy going as they come and I've tried to be patient, but the situation never improves. I finally got fed up and called the city and filed complaints for the numerous ordinance violations at this property, and they were all assigned a "level 3", which translates to no enforcement action whatsoever. The inspection office has had to drop employees due to budget cuts over the last several years, so unless there's a fire or lives are at risk, they refuse to do anything about it. Case closed in every instance. I don't have the resources to take any civil action. What to do? You know, I like to work on my cars as much as the next guy, and I loathe the idea of the city or an HOA sticking its nose up my posterior at every turn, to say the very least. But can we have a happy medium here? A little common sense applied? What the hell good are ordinances if the most chronic, over-the-top violators never see any enforcement action taken?
Are you equally thrilled by the SUV blocking the sidewalk? Everything about that picture screams "resident is an oblivious self-centered asshole. Move in at your own risk."