Posted on 12/05/2009 5:32:50 AM PST by Silly
Now you're being silly.
OK, suppose you and two friends decide to buy some land together in the mountains, to use as a hunting cabin. Since there are three of you, you draw up a contract stating how you will divvy up the rights to use the house, and how it will be furnished and supplied, and governing things like smoking and pets (which you decide to prohibit since one of your friends is allergic).
Then you show up for your week, and find out that the guy who was there the previous week painted the walls pink, re-arranged the furniture, and you can smell smoke and animals.
WHen you show up for your next week, the guy is there with 10 of his buddies, and tells you he’ll try to stay out of your way.
The next time you show up for your week, he’s got an RV parked in the driveway, a dozen other cars around, there’s a party going on, and he again tells you he’s not leaving.
And through all this, I suppose you are saying “well, that’s freedom for you”.?
Or are you thinking about how you can enforce your contract, which does restrict his right to use his property since it is also your property.
Oh, again it’s not “apples to apples”, because you both own the SAME property.
So you buy a home on your own, and you are sititng in the back yard enjoying your evening, when a terrible stench washes over you. Turns out your neighbor, a legal immigrant from El Salvador, has decided to allow renters to move in to his house with him, and also to set up a poutry farm in his back yard.
Do you say “well, it’s his property, he has the right to do what he wants?” Or do you start researching whether he has the right under zoning laws to have chickens in his back yard, and whether he has the right to make his house into an apartment complex?
HOAs are just rules a group of people decide to live by, so they can get along — just like local, state, and federal laws. If a group of families want to own a common pool, they need some rules to govern how the pool is used. HOAs are the legal way to control common property, for private property owners to enter into mutually beneficial agreements which make their property more valuable, more enjoyable, and less stressful.
And the nice thing is, nobody is forced to buy a house with an HOA. They are clearly spelled out in the deed, and Virginia law requires disclosure of the HOA and it’s bylaws before purchase.
I defend people’s rights to live outside of an HOA. I don’t know why “freedom-loving” people object to other people freely entering into contracts governing their private property.
So are you a communist? You just said you were on the board, and also said the board was made up of communists.
had bad neighbors and I don’t have a massive plot either.
Not sure how your post refers to what I said before.
The gated communities are too uptight, too snotty nosed, and have no individuality really.
Why would anyone want to live in a place where the next door is right up to your house, where you can shake your neighbors hand form your window nearly?
Why would anyone want to live in a place where you are told that you cannot have a certain type fence, certain trucks, vans, boats, motor homes in your driveway?
Then you have to pay money too for that, EEK
SEC. 4. LIMITATIONS.There's a lot of legalese in there. The last section has been interpreted as granting the HOA the right to regulate the how the flag can be displayed, consistant with the rules and regulation of the HOA. Courts have ruled that this allows HOAs to prohibit flag poles for example.Nothing in this Act shall be considered to permit any display or use that is inconsistent with--
(1) any provision of chapter 1 of title 4, United States Code, or any rule or custom pertaining to the proper display or use of the flag of the United States (as established pursuant to such chapter or any otherwise applicable provision of law); or
(2) any reasonable restriction pertaining to the time, place, or manner of displaying the flag of the United States necessary to protect a substantial interest of the condominium association, cooperative association, or residential real estate management association.
Flying the flag does not equate with painting the walls pink. Get help.
Well, we know what the newspapers have told us. According to news articles, he submitted a request, it was rejected, he built the pole anyway, and the board is telling him to take it down because they rejected it.
Now, it could well be that someone also complained about the pole, but obviously nobody complained about the pole before it was built, and since they rejected his REQUEST, it doesn’t seem they did so because someone saw the pole and complained, because it wasn’t built when he requested it.
Nor could the term “busy-body” really apply as it is meant in this case, as the board was asked to rule on the request by the homeowner, and therefore had a legal responsibility to rule, and therefore were NOT sticking their noses into something that wasn’t their business.
You implied that you didn’t understand why someone would ever want to live in a place where what you did was restricted.
I was inartfully suggesting that if you had bad neighbors, you’d a least understand, even if you didn’t agree with, why people would willingly and freely give up some of their rights to “do what they want” on their property, in exchange for not having to worry about what their neighbor did with their property.
For example, a person with small children might like that hte neighbor can’t own pit bulls and keep them chained in their back yards on a stake in the ground that could be pulled out at any moment. The kids afraid to play in the yard, the dog barking all the time.
So they find a community where dogs have to be in fenced-in areas if left unattended outside, and they move in. And having gone through that trouble, they would probably be upset if the neighbor staked a pit bull in the back yard, and then claimed it was communist to enforce the rules against him.
This isn’t about the flag. A flag pole isn’t a flag.
But your previous complaints didn’t sound like you were restricting your argument to the right to fly a flag. You seemed to suggest that any manner of restriction on what you did with property was bad.
If your objection is simply that flying the flag is so special that no HOA should be allowed to prevent a homeowner from flying the flag, well I agree, and there is a federal law which protects that right.
If your objection is that special homeowners like decorated war heroes should have the right to build any flag pole in their yard they want, regardless of how it looks or whether the rules allow it, I would disagree.
If your objection is that this particular flag pole doesn’t look bad, or that EVERY homeowner should have the right to build a flag pole, I would agree that the pole looks OK to me, note that this is a subjective determination, and still insist that in an HOA, people should abide by whatever the rules are, even if they prohibit something we think is really cool like a flag pole.
Your previous arguments suggested a bias against people who freely entered into contracts restricting their rights to use their own property, and implied that you didn’t think anybody should be able to restrict anybody else’s use of their own property.
It was in that apparently misunderstood interpretation of your remarks that I was trying to find where you would draw the line on allowing free association between property owners.
understand where you’re coming from now thanks.
It is absolutely about a veteran displaying the flag. You can try to make it about refrigerators and pink walls. It is not.
Vietnam veteran's neighborhood dispute prompts flag-flying bill, Virginia
The state Senate recently approved a bill that would bar homeowners' associations from restricting the display of U.S., state or military flags if the associations don't explicitly provide reasonable restrictions in the neighborhood's covenants.
However, a Henrico Country Circuit Court ruled on July 26, 2001 against Oulton, saying that he must pay the Wyndham Foundation $95,000 in restitution for the legal fees incurred by the association for bringing suit against Oulton. According to Judge L.A. Harris Jr., the new law did not grant Oulton permission to fly his flag, both because the suit was filed before the law was passed, and because the issue was not over the right to fly patriotic flags, but the illegal flagpole from which Oulton’s flag hung.
At any rate, it clearly states The state Senate recently approved a bill that would bar homeowners' associations from restricting the display of U.S., state or military flags if the associations don't explicitly provide reasonable restrictions in the neighborhood's covenants.
The federal law bars an HOA from totally restricting flag display.
Without getting into all the details (I can’t find the text of the actual bill right now), the quote you give is from a news article about a bill that had just cleared the Senate.
An update to the story (in the same link) indicates that a final bill was passed and signed in 2001, but in that write-up it suggests the wording of the bill was different, and would not restrict HOAs as much. And it indicated that a lawsuit in a dispute about a flagpole in a neighborhood that didn’t explicitly ban flagpoles was decided in the HOA favor (my quote), which indicates the final law did not keep the HOA from restricting flagpoles even if flagpoles were not mentioned in their covenants.
The Federal law has an explicit exception for HOAs giving them rights to restrict HOW the flag is displayed, subject to reasonableness tests which are subjective and therefore decided more by judicial precedent (i.e. court cases which define by winners and losers what will be considered “reasonable”).
There is a lot of legal opinions about flag laws applied to HOAs. As an HOA board member, I have tried to keep up to date on legal rulings regarding HOAs, although obviously we consult legal counsel when we are making decisions on legal matters.
We have allowed flag poles — our neighborhood is pretty permissive anyway, and our deeds aren’t very restrictive, we are an older, more “country-like” community and our rules reflect that.
In the little that I could read, it sounds like every state is different too. Confusing but that’s the way it should be as I believe in state’s rights.
A few thoughts respectfully submitted in the matter of the Sussex Square Community Association vs. Van T. Barfoot
For anyone who thinks that the rules are the rules and that they should be followed by everyone equally please consider this.
The Medal of Honor is not won it is received and it is received at a cost that is astronomical.
Essentially this individual had to have done something so outrageously heroic as to have had no expectation of living past the event.
Since the Civil War there have been well over 42,000,000 and women who have served the country in the military of that 42,000,000 there have only been a total of 3,449 individuals who have received the Medal of Honor.
Perhaps you have heard the saying that an individual is “1 in 1,000,000”
Currently there are only 92 living Medal of Honor recipients in the United States. We have a total population of over 305,000,000. that means each one of these individuals is “Basically 1 in 3,300,000.“
Frankly the question is does who they are matter when it comes to enforcing the rules and my answer is ABSOLUTELY. The man in question is 90 years old and if he wanted to run his skivvies up the flag pole and fly them for the next ten years then I would wish him the best and tell the Homeowners Association to leave him alone.
The fact is if someone wants to complain about Van T. Barfoot's flag flying then tell that individual to first gain the support of 3,300,000 other Americans.
I strongly recommend they start with the 3,300,000 Americans which are made up of the 1,400,000 Active Duty Service Members and their 1,900,000 dependents.
The reality is that each individual member of this Home Owners Association owe this individual more than they can ever even think of repaying so I respectfully suggest the Home Owners Association should change their rules and then go out and invest in flag poles and make the neighborhood more beautiful.
Sincerely
mdcrandall
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