Homeowners Assholciations
I understand the purpose of a homeowner's association (shaking my head in disagreement). As I understand it, it is to make sure that every house in our subdivision look exactly like every other house in our subdivision. It also provides a community based feel to bring you close to your neighbors. It also provides me my community swimming pool and trash and snow removal services.
I pay $53 per month for this over and above my principal, interest, taxes, and insurance of which has gone up nearly $700 per month over the past 3 years. This is due to the taxes part.
Where do I start with the homeowner's association? The community swimming pool? Sure. The pool opened a fews months after we moved into our house. I don't swim in it for multiple reason. First, it is packed full of arrogant, inconsiderate, belligerent teenagers. Any time I have stepped foot near the pool it is dirty. The tennis courts / basketball courts are no better. They are combined. You can shoot a net or hit a tennis ball into the basket. It is much like full contact tennis.
I would place a pool in my backyard, but I can't because it is against the rules. Much like having one of those blow-up pools for my 4 year old to play in. It lowers the value of the property. Because the 1900 houses for sale, that aren't selling, in Plainfield isn't enough to lower the value.
Next is the trash and snow removal. I have to admit, that the snow removal in Northern Illinois can be daunting, but it happens all the time here and snow is not a shocking event as it is in Southern California. For some reason, snow plows the association provides take great ease in removing part of my lawn every single year because they can't determine where the road is located. Add to that the shredded curbs due to snow plows themselves reduce property value on my lot.
Trash removal seems pretty simple, unless you live near the windy city. We have wind here. The association does NOT provide the matching trash bins for our matching houses. So people place their light plastic trash barrels out to the curb, the trash man empties it, and watches it tumble over the next 4 miles of his route. He laughs. On windy trash days, the trash bins populate the roads like the tribbles infested the Enterprise.
So, we received a letter today from the homeowner's association again saying that our lawn needed to be mowed. I realize the letter was probably sent right before Andi mowed the lawn, which was not easy because our grass hasn't grown, but there were a few stalks of grass that were about 4 inches high that she ran the mower over and taught a lesson to never grow again. But to spend the postage (yes, mailed) to tell us that we needed to mow is neither neighborly, nor smart when you send it verbally vindictive people such as me and my Queen.
This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one, today two). We need to nix the association. If you want to use and maintain a pool, buy a membership. Pay for your own trash removal...or better yet, recycle. If I am being taxed for city services, that must mean I am on a city street, use city snow plows. I want to build a fence all the way to the sidewalk, not to the edge of my house. The edge of the house loses a LOT of good yard that I am paying out the nose in taxes for.
The second point is this, before an association starts throwing stones, they better live in a cave. I will be drafting up a rather curt reminder to the association that they planted DEAD trees when the came through. The snow plows removed 50 square feet of my lawn and damaged the curbs. The pool is dirty. The trash cans are all over the neighborhood, and the fence around the pool is too high and extends beyond the edge of the clubhouse.
I will of course provide a seperate letter for each item. I doubt they will ever fix the infractions, so I will probably have to do this repeatedly. I may even hand deliver it to be more neighborly.
Clublands of Joliet homeowner's association is a farce. By the way, want to buy a house?
I pay $53 per month for this over and above my principal, interest, taxes, and insurance of which has gone up nearly $700 per month over the past 3 years. This is due to the taxes part.
Where do I start with the homeowner's association? The community swimming pool? Sure. The pool opened a fews months after we moved into our house. I don't swim in it for multiple reason. First, it is packed full of arrogant, inconsiderate, belligerent teenagers. Any time I have stepped foot near the pool it is dirty. The tennis courts / basketball courts are no better. They are combined. You can shoot a net or hit a tennis ball into the basket. It is much like full contact tennis.
I would place a pool in my backyard, but I can't because it is against the rules. Much like having one of those blow-up pools for my 4 year old to play in. It lowers the value of the property. Because the 1900 houses for sale, that aren't selling, in Plainfield isn't enough to lower the value.
Next is the trash and snow removal. I have to admit, that the snow removal in Northern Illinois can be daunting, but it happens all the time here and snow is not a shocking event as it is in Southern California. For some reason, snow plows the association provides take great ease in removing part of my lawn every single year because they can't determine where the road is located. Add to that the shredded curbs due to snow plows themselves reduce property value on my lot.
Trash removal seems pretty simple, unless you live near the windy city. We have wind here. The association does NOT provide the matching trash bins for our matching houses. So people place their light plastic trash barrels out to the curb, the trash man empties it, and watches it tumble over the next 4 miles of his route. He laughs. On windy trash days, the trash bins populate the roads like the tribbles infested the Enterprise.
So, we received a letter today from the homeowner's association again saying that our lawn needed to be mowed. I realize the letter was probably sent right before Andi mowed the lawn, which was not easy because our grass hasn't grown, but there were a few stalks of grass that were about 4 inches high that she ran the mower over and taught a lesson to never grow again. But to spend the postage (yes, mailed) to tell us that we needed to mow is neither neighborly, nor smart when you send it verbally vindictive people such as me and my Queen.
This brings me to my point (as I almost always have one, today two). We need to nix the association. If you want to use and maintain a pool, buy a membership. Pay for your own trash removal...or better yet, recycle. If I am being taxed for city services, that must mean I am on a city street, use city snow plows. I want to build a fence all the way to the sidewalk, not to the edge of my house. The edge of the house loses a LOT of good yard that I am paying out the nose in taxes for.
The second point is this, before an association starts throwing stones, they better live in a cave. I will be drafting up a rather curt reminder to the association that they planted DEAD trees when the came through. The snow plows removed 50 square feet of my lawn and damaged the curbs. The pool is dirty. The trash cans are all over the neighborhood, and the fence around the pool is too high and extends beyond the edge of the clubhouse.
I will of course provide a seperate letter for each item. I doubt they will ever fix the infractions, so I will probably have to do this repeatedly. I may even hand deliver it to be more neighborly.
Clublands of Joliet homeowner's association is a farce. By the way, want to buy a house?
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