COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT WENT WRONG IN RICE MILITARY AND THE WEST END “you get what you get. if the buyers of those units and the developers don’t have the initiative to deed restrict unit-divided rentals, it’s at their own fault. The city already dropped the ball by not having a minimum lot divisible in there originally. all of those 5000 sf cottages were not a realistic use of the land, but neither is 4 attached units on a common unregulated drive with gate, set to 20′ wide asphalt roads and no curbs/gutters. your comment that they will become slums is short-sided. i have a friend who lives in this type of housing in Boston, i assure you charlestown is both desirable and nice — his rent is $3.25 psf. forget that little white ghetto pocket you saw in ‘the town’ . . . this is the west end. always has been, always should be. shame on the city for not investing in infrastructure here, and shame on the buyer for not understanding the realities of paying $300,000 for attached unit housing with nobody taking ownership of a cooperative housing complex. really the developers leave that unchartered because the buyers are cheap, and they shy away from a house with an HOA. the assumption is the HOA has froth in it. so instead, they get a paved courtyard that runs into deferred maintenance issues and neighboring owners who say ‘piss off’ on everybody chipping in to fix it. if i owned one and was renting it to carpetbagging yankees, that would be my opinion and attitude.” [HTX REZ, commenting on Comment of the Day: What To Call the Greater West End]
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you can’t apply a broad stroke and say that people avoid a HOA because they are cheap. There are plenty of reasons a person may choose to live somewhere without a HOA. Someone might not like to have someone tell them that they chose the wrong shade of plum to paint the trim on their house, or regulate whether they can dry laundry in their backyard. Worse still are regulations about whether someone can add solar power, or how to park their car.
I’m sure some people balk at $150 a year fees for HOA, but they’re likely the minority.
@toasty
I agree with you about communities with an HOA. Alot of the HOA’s go overboard with their requirements for improvements.
If you want to simply add flowers to your front plant beds in my community, my HOA actually requires that you send in an application request along with a $25.00 fee and pictures of the flowers for consideration of approval.
They require this while at the same time allowing some houses in the community to have overgrown weeded lawns and dying plant beds for years without enforcing the rules for those owners that can cause property values to plummet.
I am from Boston and you can’t compare. Boston and many of the surrounding suburbs have zoning. While zoning did not exist when the brownstones and townhouses were built they do now to protect and yes even regulate what can and cannot be done in residential and commercial buildings. It’s called permitting something which many residents despise from city government yet still want to control with HOAs. Personally I see no difference in the two. Houston voted down zoning several times and the result is what we know as our hit or miss deed restricted neighborhoods with or without HOAs. I think buyers realize what they are purchasing. I don’t think they realize that they can’t just change something that annoys them overnight. Also that it takes work to petition their neighbors and band together. This is very unlikely to happen with the people who live in the West End as they are probably not likely to be long term residents.
HTN, check with an attorney, because I believe that selective enforcement of HOA restrictions is considered discriminatory.