I don't get why anyone would be against solar panels. Environmentally, economically, visually, practically, where is the problem?
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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They detract from a "certain look," which is what many of those nightmare-HOAs only care about. Makes their houses more valuable, so the poors can't ever afford to live there, and it feeds their busybodied lust for power over others.
Indeed, though I think that a house with solar is more valuable too, so that argument kinda falls flat.
It's just uneducated, backwards thinking is all it really is.
But solar panels, especially owned panels, only add to the value of the house. If anything that makes it harder for "the poors" to afford living in the neighborhood. Obviously that's not my rationale for supporting green energy but I say it to illustrate that even their own weird and insular logic should encourage solar adoption.
Adding solar panels increases the value of your home (...sometimes—there's certain insurance companies that might disagree), but having a different home means the other homes are now devalued compared to yours.
Now, you could force everyone to add solar, but the busybodies who head problematic HOAs are often resistant to change.
ETA: I also think it's dumb, but that's HOAs for you.
HOA members are often retired folks who refuse to give up any type of power. They fill their free time by making up problems for others just to entertain themselves.
And they're likely being fed faux news that solar panels are unamerican communism and they should only rely on clean, god-fearing coal.
And they're using their power to crusade and stop it because they think it's "right."
Maybe they heard the Republican Congresscritter who was claiming that solar panels would draw too much energy from the sun and plunge us all into eternal darkness.
You probably don't understand why anyone would be against having black neighbors either, but that's the original purpose of the HOA.
In the very progressive Northern California town where I used to live, there were still restrictive covenants on deeds, forbidding sale of houses to Black people, Jews, Mexican-Americans and Portuguese. Now that the records are digitized, the town government is finally going back and stripping all that language out.
It was only a decade ago that a town-wide ban on line-drying clothes was rescinded, too.
My guess is if the HOA owner doesn't have solar and everyone else does, then that would reduce the HOA owner's property value.
This should be a national law.
They should be abolished by national law for SFHs. They are nothing more than private, unaccountable governments that allow those with more leisure time to exercise petty power over others.
For real. There's an avenue for HOAs to be useful and good, allowing a community to self govern itself a bit and provide its community with services like community gardens, small parks (like really small. Like a playground), and maybe a space or two for people in the community to have something like a farmers market where they sell things they've grown or made. Mostly though HOAs tell you you put your trash bin in the wrong place, your grass is too long, and you can't line dry your cloths, all those things will lower the property value in the neighborhood
There’s an avenue for HOAs to be useful and good, allowing a community to self govern itself a bit
That's what local government is for. HOAs are petty despotisms that get paid to deliver nothing of value and empower small-scale socipaths.
The law should make it easy to get rid of HOAs and hard to form new ones.
I agree and disagree at the same time. Local governments give us bullshit cops who beat up people who don't look the right way, and they give leniency to corporations who take advantage of us. We need something with traits of both without traits from either. We need overall societal restructuring
That's a problem with poorly-functioning, non-representative governments, not governments altogether (not saying that they'd be necessary in an ideal world but we're nowhere close to ideal). Having a private government structure, that is not accountable to the public is not beneficial. The only reason that HOAs don't have worse cops is that they can't afford them with the smaller tax base.
The big problem I see is any organization without adequate accountability
Making it easy to disband HOAs should be national law. So should preventing local zoning ordinances from banning wind power and rooftop solar.
Low-water yards too.
Heck yes! I'm so happy! Fuck the HOAs here. They're garbage and so expensive.
I'm always hearing and reading nightmare stories about HOAs; this is a good step in the right direction.
HOAs should just suffer in public without help. I'm in favor of just about any law forcing them to do something they don't like.
If you make one bored you should get like a $20 tax voucher. $50 if you livestream it.