Comment by jmuguy
7 days ago
Bingo. We did these buckets, were very diligent about it. They appeared to work (at least in terms of attracting Mosquitos, which they're meant to do) but had no real effect generally. House next door is a rental, with a rotating cast of 20-somethings that do not keep up the yard and its filled with nice little habitats for Mosquitos.
One thing that an HOA might actually be good for - I would love to see what happens if our entire neighborhood did this.
I would love to live in a neighborhood full of meadow style gardens, where native plants are allowed to flower and feed bees, with bug habitats instead of neatly cut astroturf looking golf green lawns chock full of pesticides.
I can't understand the people that think the artificial look holds any beauty whatsoever.
The artificial look visibly demands a large amount of ongoing maintenance and thus acts as a convenient display of excess spending power. It's like the peacock's tail for capitalists.
This is true for a highly attractive wild lawn as well. When things grow truly wild, they're all competing and none do fantastically. If you've got a beautiful yard full of happy native plants, you've likely done some serious work, even if you're just out-competing the invasive plants.
That being said, a yard of native plants can still do more good than a yard of grass. Grasses are cool and come in many other forms though, and can be extremely resistant to drought. Native grasses often have much deeper roots, or even taproots sometimes.
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Veblen goods are a plague.
If you step on some of Florida's native plants you'll suddenly realize why St. Augustine grass is so popular down there.
Diddums.
although meadow style gardens would increase bugs, i imagine they would decrease mosquitos?
More natural predators can't hurt. They don't predate other bugs.
You might have some success with talking to them, or even dropping a leaflet or a print out in their mailbox explaining the problem and encouraging them to check their yard for breeding grounds. A lot of folks (especially young ones) just don't think about that kind of thing, but very few people actually like mosquitos, so a polite reminder every couple years or when someone new moves in might do some good.
I had a neighbor with a bunch of trash in his backyard that collected water causing mosquito breeding. It was impossible to be outside for more than a few minutes. Despite being friendly with him, he took offense when I pointed out his problem and even offered to help lug the trash to the curb with him. Some people are just too proud.
Many places have vector control boards for just this type of situation. It’s a legitimate public health hazard.
> One thing that an HOA might actually be good for
I've gotten nothing but benefits from living in neighborhoods with HOAs. Basic stuff like funding for landscapers to keep up the shared grassy areas along the streets, to plowing the access roads in winter time. But the main benefit has always been that it provides a legal mechanism to force everyone to maintain their yards and property. No need to drop passive-aggressive notes in a mailbox about people parking their cars on their lawns.
10/10 highly recommend
edit: apparently you guys don't like HOAs haha. Well I love them. Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump.
> people parking their cars on their lawns.
Indeed, God forbid people would like to park their cars on their property!
Some people like living in communities that look nice. It seems fair that you can opt-in to those rules by buying in an HOA, and if you do want to park on your lawn, buy elsewhere.
(And I am not a fan of HOAs personally, so I do in fact live elsewhere, but my neighbors house is also an eyesore)
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Yes indeed! One of the reasons I'm personally happy to live in an HOA after having lived in an area where lawn junkyards were common.
Over maintained yards are a leading reason for having no biodiversity around your home. First you lose the bugs, then the birds and over time this extends to everything.
A 3" cut once a month during peak growing season is hardly "over maintained". Every HOA community I've lived in has been perfectly reasonable.
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> I've gotten nothing but benefits from living in neighborhoods with HOAs.
I'm happy somebody has. Except for you, I have never heard anything but nightmares from the people I know who suffer under HOAs.
No one is going to rant about how their HOA is pretty OK.
My building has an HOA, and the worst I can say about is that's it's pretty boring.
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I question the motivation of people choosing to live in a place where they are constantly at odds with the agreed-upon standards of the community. They should leave if it is really that stressful and onerous.
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I think the next house I move to, I will look for an HOA that prohibits combustion-powered yard tools, and hires an all-electric crew for common maintenance, cost be damned.
Death to combustion powered yard tools!!!
So frickin noisy!!!!
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From what I can tell, HOA experiences - like politics - are highly dependent on the folks who would make good decision-makers actually being interested in, and attaining, the level of power in the association to make those decisions.
I've seen both - folks who are good stewards of the community's money and add to its energy, and folks who can't manage money and exhaust the community's energy on trivialities.
"Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump."
The single highest priority in life. Completely reasonable to give up everything else to get that.
> Basic stuff
You like paying extra for stuff that is normally included in your property taxes? I'm dumbfounded.
Property taxes basically never pay for privately owned things, be that landscaping in common spaces, maintenance of private neighborhood roads, etc.
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HOAs can be good. Like many things, HOAs are not inherently bad or good. It’s the people who run them.
I lived in a four unit condo buildings before and the HOA was fine, because all residents were on the board.
I now live in a more typical suburban HOA development and the HOA is very unobtrusive and only comes down on the actual problem properties (overgrown, uninhabited houses) and doesn’t do much other than handle common area upkeep. Dues are only $150 per year.
> edit: apparently you guys don't like HOAs haha. Well I love them. Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump.
This is so good, it can be used as a textbook definition of a strawman.
A neighbor had a bus under renovation in their driveway for a few years. That really bothered one guy, the rest of us just rolled our eyes.
HOA is another layer of local government, I think it's great that moving is a chance to choose the government (or anarchy) that you prefer.
I have a friend whose parents built a 48' sailboat in their yard over about a dozen years. "built" as in cast the lead keel, laid the fiberglass hull, etc. etc. This was in a traditional suburban neighborhood, but no HOA. So they had to be pretty good friends with their neighbors.
To each their own. I much prefer to live in the neighbourhood where each neighbour does what they feel like with their property, within reason. It ought not be any business of yours what I do with my yard, front or back, as long as it doesn't adversely affect your enjoyment of your own property - and this last part is key - as a reasonable person would interpret it. In other words, smells and health hazards - sure. Unexplainable hatred for wildflowers, uncut grass and the laughter of children - go ahead and send a passive aggressive note straight to /dev/null for all I care.
The issue is that it's hard to agree on where the line is and (without a HOA) impossible to enforce.
Wildflowers? Generally good.
Tall grass that allows rats to thrive and spread into adjacent yards? Bad.
Most people don't want to have to go to court to battle pedantic neighbors who confuse the two.
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>"within reason".
Key word there. HOA rules exist for the sole purpose of defining a common, enforceable, agreed upon definition of "within reason".
> and the laughter of children
This I will take a nuanced position on. If your kids are playing in the backyard, and it doesn't impact me at all ... perfect please enjoy life.
But I can often hear people outside, especially children screeching and yelling, over my television with all of my doors and windows shut and the air conditioner on full blast.
In those scenarios, the laughter IS adversely affecting the ability of other people to enjoy their own property.
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HOAs are like any government. Some are run well and have good laws, others not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, how I’ve never wanted downvote power more.
Submit interesting unique links and post more substantive comments (maybe add a paragraph or two your previous comment) and you will be able to downvote soon enough. But I don't understand the appeal, when I do it is usually accidental (really easy to do on a tablet)...
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Downvoting is a gated power on this site?
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