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HOA Orders TARDIS Removed From In Front of Parrish Home
An anonymous reader writes A Florida couple learned that they are much bigger fans of Doctor Who than their homeowner association, after receiving a notice to remove the TARDIS from their driveway. Leann Moder and her husband David were given 15 days to get rid of the big blue box. From the article: "It was built by Moder's father as a wedding set piece, and she and her husband, David, were married in front of it. 'My husband mentioned, "Do you want to do a Doctor Who themed wedding?"' Moder said. 'That could be fun.' Since then, their TARDIS has been used at sci-fi conventions and parties, and was even the focus of a Halloween haunt the Moders set up on their driveway in October." The HOA had no comment on their stance on sonic screwdrivers, or the Eye of Harmony.
The homeowners association demands that unless every single house has a TARDIS in their front yard, yours must go.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Leaving a TV prop replica sitting in your driveway is douchey. Store it in the garage, or your storage shed, or the back yard, or a storage facility. Nobody in your neighborhood likes Doctor Who so much that they want to come home to your driveway TARDIS every day. Stop being a douche.
Die by the sword. If you dislike the rules, don't go live in an HOA. Zero sympathy.
Looking at the photos it kinda looks like it is just left on the driveway. But that said I don't like the idea of being told that I have to remove it.
Would they have more luck if they placed it on a plinth and maybe had it decorated in with a cyberman?
Of course, a true Whovian will install some nice statues of weeping angels in the front yard!
Does not look bigger on the inside, therefore not a TARDIS....
Home ownership baffles me. Besides the fact that you own nothing, it's far more expensive than renting and much riskier.
bada boom
HOA rules: You can't have $(object X) sitting in your driveway.
$(object X) being a TARDIS neither makes me outraged, nor makes this news for nerds.
As a corporation, an H.O.A. is a defective product.
The purpose of a corporation is to protect an investor's personal assets from the debts and liabilities of the corporation.
For example, if you owned 1,000 shares of Enron, the only thing you had at risk were those shares. The creditors of Enron could not go after your house, your car, your bank account, etc.
But an H.O.A. corporation works exactly the opposite. The assets of an H.O.A. corporation are the obligations of the home owners to pay the uninsured debts and liablities of the H.O.A. corporation, secured by lien and foreclosure rights against an owner's property. If you own property under the jurisdiction of an H.O.A. corporation, everything you own is forever collateral to whatever debts and liabilities the H.O.A. corporation creates, even if your mortgage is paid and you own the house free-and-clear. Thus, any creditors of an H.O.A. corporation can go after your house, your car, your bank account, etc., to collect what your H.O.A. corporation owes.
See Why There’s No Protection for Members When Community Associations “Go Broke” (January 27 2010), and Bankruptcy Won't Work (July 17 2011).
FYI: The industry refers to H.O.A. corporations as "community associations", which is why the the 501(c)(6) trade and lobbying organization for the industry’s attorneys, property managers, and other vendors is called the Community Associations Institute ( C.A.I. ).
Her father was a Moder?
HOA to homeowners: ELIMINATE!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I'll take "Reasons why I'll never live in a house governed by an HOA", for $1000, Alex?
If I can pay for a house I would summarily refuse to be a member of a homeowners association. At the time of buying, I'd check and make sure there's no Home owner's association or if there was make sure the contract said I was somehow exempt or just not a member of the association and not subjects to its bylaws. Possibly having police or attorney presence.
I love Doctor Who, but I would be pissed if some douche had this in his front yard, just like I'd be pissed if you had trash in your yard or broken down cars in front of your house. My home is an investment and I don't want you dragging that investment down, because you're a piece of shit. If you want that, put it in your back yard.
If you don't want to deal with an HOA, don't buy a home in an area that has an HOA. I specifically chose not to live in an HOA area, because I didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars a year to a bunch of uptight twats.
EPCOT has a British phone booth but no Police Box. They could really use it. Looks like Parrish is ~111 miles from Orlando.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yes, yes we did. Thanks for noticing and acknowledging our achievements. What, pray tell, has your country done to become great like us?
tl;dr an HOA, unlike a regular corporation, socialises the profits rather than the losses - making it the least psychopathic form of corporation ever deployed!
Seriously, you can't tell me what I do with my propriety!
As a corporation, an H.O.A. is a defective product.
HOAs are pure slime. I knew someone who lived in one. In the summertime when he was working 7 days a week, the HOA kept trying to evict him because his lawn was 1/8" higher than "community standards".
Not a long time ago, I was just a normal internet user that surfed various news sites like Sladshdot, reddit, or wsj.com. I read a story, perhaps clicked onto some links it contained, and I was mostly happy with my life.
Then, one day, I surfed Slashdot. It was one of those days you will remember for the rest of your life. So, as I surfed Sladshdot, the title of a story got my attention. I read the summary. The topic seemed interesting, so I decided to read further. I read:
Read on below for the rest what Bennett has to say.
Usually I don't read first line of a story which contains the user who has submitted it. On that day, I didn't neither. As I've only read that bottom line, I asked myself: who is this misterious Bennett? I decided to click onto the "Read the comments" link to read more of the story that was, as it seems, written by some Bennett. During reading, I was already impressed by the clear and detailed but still concise structure of the text. As I finished reading, I was convinced it was the best story I've ever read on Sladshdot, or any comparable news site. I asked myself: perhaps this misterious Bennett has contributed more frequently than just once?
To find that out, I went to Sladshdot's search bar and searched for "Bennett". I clicked the second entry, and it began with:
Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes
I searched for the "Read on" line, and I was happy when I found it. As it seemed, he was a frequent contributor. However the story was on a topic completely unrelated to the topic of my article. Would the other article still be as insightful as the first? And the other stories in the search result? Would they be also by Bennett? Or someone else? I decided first to be happy to have found such an insightful article, and decided to make a photograph of me, before I read the second story.
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As I've finished reading all contributions by Bennett Haselton on Sladshdot, I went back to the first Bennett story, and read them a second time. I sat three days straight, missing all social events during that span, only reading Bennett's stories, and reading them again and again. During that time my eyes opened to the fact that my whole life, I've known nothing. Bennett's stories explained every aspect of very complicated things in such detail, that I formed something in my mind. First, I couldn't describe it what it was, but years later I know that, for the first time of my life, I formed something called "opinion" on a topic. Previously, I've only adopted opinions from others, but Bennett's stories enable people to make their opinions for themselfes, to form them. With his stories, Bennett gives you the material to form your own opinion on your own. I know you will say that you can form your opinion on your own, and that you don't need Bennett for that. I
disagree with you. What you call opinion, is in reality just ideology you imitate from others. You don't form your opinions, you don't have them.
Every time Bennett writes a new story on Sladshdot, I take a free day and spend it reading the story
The HOA in my neighborhood hasn't socialized shit. They haven't even built the park that was supposed to be built 10 years ago. The closest thing we have to a park is the drainage ditch behind the neighborhood, which if you bicycle down, you can access both the garbage dump and a state prison. They definitely made sure to clear out all of the trees from the supposed park site to build more houses on, though.
So this is what it's like to live in the Land of the Free. Fortunately we don't have that kind of problem here in the Third World.
Don't fornicate. Seriously, just don't do it.
You're married. You're grown up. Part of becoming adult is learning to function as a part of a community, which has rules. Conform.
There was one at the top of my street when I was a kid.
Get copies of the minutes from all the meetings, find out who complained about it, and then spray their lawn with bleach one night.
Put some tiny wheels under it and call it a hauler.
Disclosure: I am a realtor, mostly on the sell side 96% of the time, not representing the buyer. 4% representing the buyer. So I will speak from the selling side. And a big Doctor Who fan from the 80's
HOA's, condo's, and Co-op's are a form of corporations (non-profit) that run the land you are on and issue a set of rules you need to abide by.
When you buy into any of the above, you are required to abide by those rules. When I do a transaction I am required to present to you the rules of the association, sometimes in excess of 200 pages. And you have 3 days to execute a confirmation that you read these rules, otherwise I will put it back on the market. It's a take or leave situation, I think most people don't read the rules.
Most of the rules are common sense, for example, allocation of parking, pet policy's, exterior paint colors, lawn height (which in a condo is the association responsibility not the condo owner usually), cannot hang wet towels on the balcony rail to dry and a ton more. Some of the more interesting rules are
A) How bad of criminal are you... ( Violent crime of murder not permitted, but a Bernie Maddof welcome)
B) You cannot buy the property on credit, must be a cash transaction close
C) Limit on how many occupants in the unit
A common rule I tell people when they are presented with my property is, you are buying conformity, a lifestyle and sometimes peace of mind.
One of the huge problems in HOA's is the Flagpole issue, ex-military wants one on the front lawn of their house, most, if not all HOA's did not permit this, but every year we see it as a lawsuit http://blog.chron.com/advocate... ( that's a Texas one)
It got so carried away here in Florida that the state had to chime in http://www.hoaleader.com/publi... ( summary is, you can within reason)
When the 9 /11 happened, people hung American flags on the railing, well after 3 months some condo association and HOA's were tired of this, asked the residences to remove them, Boy did that start a huge problem, it's considered un-American, while the truth is, following rules is a rather American thing, otherwise why would we need so many lawyers to interpret these rules.
So I don't understand what the big fuss is all about, the guy has a big blue box ( which I would love to own), it's rather different than what is normally seen, people complained, put it in the yard, end of problem. Or if the guy was smart, he should have asked his association about how to hold a wedding at his home, and they would have let him slide properly with all the form executed to do it. ( You need parking permits for gated communities when you hold huge parties, advise the association and they will set up a little shuttle cart for the bride and groom if needed, provide parking assistance ( by sending a note to the neighbors, see whom wants to offer up some driveway space, provides the cleaning service for all the exterior the next morning... )
if you see me, smile and say hello.
If I pay to be in an HOA, I wouldn't want to see that type of junk in front of a house in my neighborhood.
They might love it for all the world, but there's no guarantee that their neighbors would want to be seeing it, or even know what it is.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Well in the US most neighborhoods don't have a HOA anyways. They are a select few, and they setup mostly to keep the values of their homes, and insure a comfortable living environment. . . .
I disagree with the assertion (made by several posters, not just the above post) that HOAs are somehow unusual. It varies by locale, but in general any subdivision* created in the last 30 years has a HOA. The HOA is how the builder ensures that he can sell all the lots over the 10 year period he is building there, because the early owners aren't allowed to do anything that the builder thinks would detract from sales. Unfortunately, the HOA continues to exist after the builder is done and gone.
*Note that by "subdivision" I am referring to the case where a builder buys somebody's farm, and sells lots with homes built by that builder. Not the case where the farm owner subdivides his land and sells lots to private parties who then find their own builder to construct the home.
Yes, I live in a subdivision with an HOA. Although I've not had any problems with the HOA, I dislike it on principal. In particular the fact that every rule ends with "or other rules as may be given by the HOA board." As a result the current idiots on the board can essentially just make up any new rules that they want, without a general vote. And this covers everything from parking to what flowers you plant on your property. They could decide one day that they don't like roses, and demand that all roses be dug-up immediately.
Yes, I read the covenant when I purchased, but since the area which I live was all built up within the last 20 years, almost all property is HOA controlled in one way or another (except for buying a farm). It was a choice of buying a house with an HOA, buying one of the historic farm houses without an HOA -- typically with mold problems, buying farm land and privately building a house, or living in a rental. I didn't realize how much the existence of the HOA would irk me, or I probably would have gone with one of the moldy historic farm houses.
I understand the "you might affect my property value" arguments, but before I had to move for work, I lived for 15 years in a subdivision with no HOA (different state, older development). While I didn't always personally agree with my neighbors choices, none of them were atrocious. One neighbor put up a fence, but he asked me first. I didn't really want a fence there, but gave him my blessing anyway, since it was not an unreasonable request. Contrast to here where my neighbor put up a fence, after asking the HOA, but I had no input even though I am the one affected by it. I still would have said "go ahead," but I would have liked to have been consulted. Its just more "neighborly" somehow.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Home Owner Associations are non-profit corporations with rules and regulation. The impetus for HOAs was that people wanted to live in uniform neighborhoods without the worry of someone parking their cars on the lawn, or painting their house 4 different colors or worse not maintaining the property.
Rules can be changed. The board, which are volunteers from the community have the responsibility to enforce the rules. If you don't like the rules, volunteer your time and get on the board, yes it is that easy as most HOAs have a very difficult time getting to volunteer(work for free) for the community.
Self-centered, lazy and ignorant people should not live in HOAs.
I consider them unAmerican, at least. And btw, when I was looking for my current house, I told my agent that if there was an HOA, I wouldn't even look at it.
Had a friend whose carriage lamp on the front of her house, which was really *cheap* aluminum, died, she had it replaced with a better one... and the HOA demanded she replace that with another cheap one. And then there was the time that someone from the HOA got her given a ticket for dogshit in her back yard (the one with the 5'+ high fence around it, and it was a bit after a snowstorm, and it was all melting. (The judge tore up the complaint).
No, they all are run by tin-plated petty dictators, with delusions of godhood. Unfuck 'em (no fucks for any of 'em).
mark
HOAs suck and are often overbearing, but dr who is in the top 5 list of most overrated TV shows in the history of time.
HOAs are in place to
a) merge expenses for common areas - lighting, lawn maintenance, liability insurance and bonding of the people running the HOA.
b) keep your idiot neighbors from doing things detrimental to the price of YOUR house - things like having a blue box outside for months/years.
For example, my HOA bylaws prevents vehicles from being parked overnight in driveways. We all have garages and vehicles must be garaged. I like this rule. Cars in driveways look junky to me and clearly everyone who purchases homes knew that when they did. It was part of the reason our neighborhood is highly desireable. The occassional guest vehicle isn't an issue.
While I do enjoy Doctor Who, I don't want my neighbors having an eyesore that is visible from the street. The same rules apply to trash cans, which cannot be visisble from the street in our rules.
Owners/renters are free to do whatever they want inside their homes or out of sight in their back yards. I don't care.
Don't be the crazy one in your neighborhood. Please.
...and there's junk cars and chicken coops. So you choose where you live, and live by the rules.