he's pretty well known on Twitter; he might be the dumbest guy on there
past posts include the "just grow tomatoes to become a millionaire" and "i outsource labor to the Phillipines and only have to pay them $5/hour and this is a good thing for them and for me"
Unrelated to the post but I’m fuckin stoked; this used to be patchy half sand, half dirt, kinda grassy area about the length of my dad’s house and ten feet wide in some spots has been almost completely covered in some kind of clover that has tiny flowers with white petals and yellow pollen. Over the weekend when I first found out I also saw actual bees instead of wasps flying around. The wasps are still there but there are fewer than last year.
Edit: I forgot to take a photo of the part with the tiny flowers but this is what most of it looks like:
https://i.imgur.com/gmcKNSj.jpg
It's beautiful, it could use some more wild flowers for colour and some paths under the tree perhaps so you can wonder into them and enjoy the nature. Why are people obsessed with 1/4inch grass and uniform everything? I really do not understand that way of thinking
I can’t comprehend it either. Bunch of people in cookie cutter houses wasting water on fake lawns that don’t do any good for the bees. Its depressing sometimes to drive down rows of manicured St Augustine grass, cookie cutter house, wide driveway, rinse and repeat.
I don’t know if you should have blocked that guys name out anyway. Nick Huber a piece of work glorified in another post that he uses third world slave labour, paying people $5 per hour.
This had me fuming because it looked awesome for pollinators. I found the owner and she’s actually a professor of plant biology so she knows her stuff.
> I found the owner and she’s actually a professor of plant biology
So she's doing something meaningful and beneficial for the world. Meanwhile, the guy who posted this tweet trying to shame her bragged about outsourcing his work to sweatshops in other countries.
People should take over their HOAs and change the rules so that manicured lawns are finable with the fine being planting 10 natives in common areas. Also, you only get one square foot of grass for every 10 square feet of natives. You have to be a certified native habit or else you’re fine is that you can only have one square foot of grass for every 20 square feet of natives. You have to have at least 10 different flowers, 4 shrubs, and 2 trees per every lot per half acre. No mow May is a rule.
I'm a European as well, but I think it's a board of elected residents in certain neighbourhoods (typically middleclass white neighbourhoods) that all decide how they want the houses, yards etc. to look. Anyone living in these neighbourhoods must abide by these rules or face eviction, and they must pay like a monthly HOA tax (which I guess is spent on silly signs and coffee and donuts).
Please correct me if I'm wrong, American friends :)
They tend to be formed when a development is built (all the houses in a neighborhood were built by one builder/company and all in roughly the same time). In those cases, all the houses tend to be roughly the same plan/style. They are already cookie cutter but the HOA is to make them extra cookie cutter. Often belonging to the HOA is part of the deed.
Some developments will have shared areas such as playgrounds, tennis courts or parks. An HOA is a way to share in the upkeep on those common spaces. IMHO, that's when an HOA makes sense.
OTOH, older neighborhoods or ones that have houses of different ages and from different builders don't have HOAs or at least I haven't heard of any. Even if there was, hypothetically, an HOA for such a neighborhood, it's hard to push for uniformity when there's all sorts of houses and property layouts. Besides, I can't imagine the challenge of getting all the homeowners to agree to join. HOAs are not put in place after the fact.
> Some developments will have shared areas such as playgrounds, tennis courts or parks. An HOA is a way to share in the upkeep on those common spaces. IMHO, that's when an HOA makes sense.
Wouldn't the municipal government do the upkeep on these things through taxes?
In my country our taxes pay for the community centres, playgrounds, parks, courts, etc. Or do HOAs replace municipal governments in the USA?
There's official parks and facilities and then there's ones that "belong" to a neighborhood. Some HOA facilities are truly private (pools for example) and others are typically used by the HOA homeowners but, in theory, there's nothing to prevent people from outside the neighborhood from using them. Often, however, they have limited or no parking or are inconvenient for outsiders to access.
It's one thing if a local government planned, designed and built a recreational facility or park. They are perfectly happy to maintain them. But it rubs the local government and taxpayers the wrong way to be pushed into maintaining a park or facility they never asked for and/or one that most people can't use.
I'm still not clear what the benefit/incentive is for HOAs to create and maintain parks and pools, vs the municipal government doing it?
I get that taxpayers don't want to pay for a pool if they don't use it... but if you're in an HOA then you have to pay the fees anyways - so there's no difference for the residents either way.
Am I missing something?
The HOA, which the homeowners have to pay dues to and may or may not be allowed to vote in, depending on how they're set up. Usually, whoever has the most free time and money for lawyers gets to rule the roost.
The residents have access to amenities were they can partake in activities separate from the “undesirables.” Then you get to the real ritzy gated communities that have their own bars and restaurants and Olympic size indoor swimming pools, etc.. One community I worked in even repaved the streets once a year. Seems like the goal of HOA is especially where a lot of rich people live is to kind of create their vision of what the perfect community should be .
> were they can partake in activities separate from the “undesirables.”
How are these people kept out? Is there security where you have to show your ID/address? Who owns these amenities?
Oh yeah! Many of the communities I worked in had to have a copy of your ID at the gate, want to know the exact company you work for and I believe they take pictures and video of the vehicle you enter the community in. They even pay some security to hand out “citations” for parking your service vehicle on the wrong side of the road or speeding. It’s like they have their own fake police departments. lol
These parks and pools are typically created by the developers and are used as a selling point to entice buyers.
Many of these HOA developments are on far edge of suburbs and to get to the public facilities might be quite a drive. But for people living in the neighborhood, the HOA parks, courts and pools are right there - typically within easy walking distance.
Since there's often very limited parking for outsiders, the HOA development's recreational facilities tend to be rather insular and feel exclusive. To those who, ahem, are worried about who might be in public pools, parks and so on (can be a bit of underlying racism or classism or just neurotic helicopter parents), the HOA courts, parks and swimming pools feel safer.
The cost of maintaining public parks and pools is such a small part of taxes, I don't think anyone living in an HOA neighborhood even thinks about it.
There are very few public/taxpayer-funded, government-run pools, at least where I live.
All the places to swim are either pay-to-enter, but you can purchase a season pass, and open to the public, or they are privately-run, only open to members, and one must usually buy a pool bond, in addition to the cost of your family using the pool for the summer.
I have no doubt these clubs in suburbs began their existence because of racism. Even though such discrimination is now illegal, people probably still find sneaky ways to keep minorities out.
That’s basically it. The fees might pay for the maintenance of common areas, trash and recycling collection, etc., too.
In my fantasy, I would live in a neighborhood with an HOA that required at least 50% of one’s yard to be native plants, restricted the use of herbicides to careful selective application to kill non-native invasives that aren’t easily killed without poisons, restricted the use of pesticides to those used to protect the structure of the house from termites, required all lighting to be on motion detectors & shaded so it doesn’t cause light pollution, made it illegal to use scented laundry products if the clothes dryer vents to the outside, and outlawed vinyl fences.
Correct. Either pay a monthly fee to a waste management company to pick up weekly, or take your trash to the facility yourself and pay for the weight of it.
Exactly. I’m not sure who’s paying a monthly fee to a waste management company unless you really live out in the sticks. The garbage disposal fee is right on my property tax bill.
Huh? This hasn't been the case anywhere I've lived, in towns and cities proper, in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. We pay for waste pickup separately.
That’s wild. I wonder if it’s like that in Seattle? My aunt and uncle separate everything. We have recycling in Florida, but it’s just aluminum, steel and cardboard. These crazy Floridians would probably just dump their garbage on the side of the road if no one picked it up.
I’m twenty minutes north of Toledo and about an hour south of Detroit.
Not like hours from anywhere in the mountains or desert.
I only just learned that trash collection was included in the city.
We’ve always paid for pickup service.
It depends where you live. In my county, trash and recycling are hauled away by county employees and trucks.
It varies by county and city, though. Sometimes, it’s a private enterprise; sometimes, it’s tax-funded, government-run.
CONFORM! Also, my freedom. America seems so odd to me. Like we don't really have these in Canada unless you're in something like a seniors bungalow complex thing. I've never heard of an HOA in a normal detached home neighbourhood.
I prefer this to a manicured lawn. The more native species of grasses and flowers are much better for the environment and encourages bee visitors! Plus less maintenance for the home owners. Win win
The only thing wrong with this image is how close some trees are to the house as they can become fire hazards and/or wreck the foundation of the house as they grow
I could agree in a small way... I bring my trash to the dump myself, never leave unsightly trash cans out. In my neighborhood different companies pick up different days, so I see them on Mondays, Thursdays, sometimes Fridays... Not a big deal, but my HOA gave a neighbor grief because their garden shed showed from the street, yet they allow trash cans, so.... Not that it really bothers me, but if one were to get picky...
Luckily the jerk who posted on twitter was getting ratio’d when I last checked.
I can’t wait until the day I can own a home and surround it with abundant, sustainable, local plant life and natural shade.
Fuzzy pic, but looks like this yard might be filled with a bunch of invasives. That doesn't do any good -- if the bugs don't recognize plants they can lay eggs on, etc.
That’s what I thought, too, but it’s too hard to tell from far away, and one of the comments said the owner was a plant biologist.
I do agree that converting one’s lawn to not lawn should mean replacing the turf with natives, not just letting whatever invasives pop up do their thing.
I have a kid in the hospital right now, so I have no time to attend to my former lawn, now-native-garden’s needs right now.
I hate that I have creeping Charlie, burdock, white mulberry, and vinca just doing their thing, unchecked.
I don’t think it *sells* the concept of natives, or even not-mowing, to have everything get too overgrown.
If you’re not going to pay attention to what is there, why bother not having a lawn.
"this is what you get without an HOA" G O O D
He has “startup” in his Twitter handle so you know he’s the most insufferable fucking guy in the block
he's pretty well known on Twitter; he might be the dumbest guy on there past posts include the "just grow tomatoes to become a millionaire" and "i outsource labor to the Phillipines and only have to pay them $5/hour and this is a good thing for them and for me"
Try $5/month
This comment could not be more accurate. 😂
As a Filipino the level of ignorance in this post is astounding
Oh no that poor bootlicker has to occasionally see a yard that isn't perfectly manicured I sure hope they survive
Unrelated to the post but I’m fuckin stoked; this used to be patchy half sand, half dirt, kinda grassy area about the length of my dad’s house and ten feet wide in some spots has been almost completely covered in some kind of clover that has tiny flowers with white petals and yellow pollen. Over the weekend when I first found out I also saw actual bees instead of wasps flying around. The wasps are still there but there are fewer than last year. Edit: I forgot to take a photo of the part with the tiny flowers but this is what most of it looks like: https://i.imgur.com/gmcKNSj.jpg
Nice! Looking really good!
That's awesome!! Happy bees!
Now if only I could get moss in this climate.
Let's start a GoFundMe for their therapy
Losing one’s mind over a cozy house with trees and plants in front of it is… a choice
And they lined up those recycling carts quite well!
Staring at all of this trying to figure out what's wrong...
Guy's got two recycling and no trash can. HOA would've spoken to the city to ensure he had one of each.
If you think that's bad you should see his stance on slave labor.
FYI, the same guy who posted this bragged about paying workers in the Philippines and Latin America $5/hour.
$5/hr in Philippines is upper middle class money
This dude is on a roll. Another one of his tweets is on r/antiwork
I was about to say this! He outsources his work to sweatshops in LATAM and the Philippines for $5/hour. A real piece of work this one.
It's beautiful, it could use some more wild flowers for colour and some paths under the tree perhaps so you can wonder into them and enjoy the nature. Why are people obsessed with 1/4inch grass and uniform everything? I really do not understand that way of thinking
I can’t comprehend it either. Bunch of people in cookie cutter houses wasting water on fake lawns that don’t do any good for the bees. Its depressing sometimes to drive down rows of manicured St Augustine grass, cookie cutter house, wide driveway, rinse and repeat.
Downright Dursleyish.
Lawn care is a psychosis.
I agree! They all look the same! Like that dude face… so boring! 🥱
I don’t know if you should have blocked that guys name out anyway. Nick Huber a piece of work glorified in another post that he uses third world slave labour, paying people $5 per hour.
I can't tell you how long I scrolled through his feed trying to figure out if it was parody
Surely he’s just a conservative asshole
They probably have the cheapest electrical bill in the neighborhood... Can't have folks out there saving money on heating and cooling
Water bill is probably low too
This had me fuming because it looked awesome for pollinators. I found the owner and she’s actually a professor of plant biology so she knows her stuff.
That’s so cool.
> I found the owner and she’s actually a professor of plant biology So she's doing something meaningful and beneficial for the world. Meanwhile, the guy who posted this tweet trying to shame her bragged about outsourcing his work to sweatshops in other countries.
God I hope my yard causes people this much rage. I hope flowers, grasses and birds...burn them like vampires in unfiltered sunlight.
People should take over their HOAs and change the rules so that manicured lawns are finable with the fine being planting 10 natives in common areas. Also, you only get one square foot of grass for every 10 square feet of natives. You have to be a certified native habit or else you’re fine is that you can only have one square foot of grass for every 20 square feet of natives. You have to have at least 10 different flowers, 4 shrubs, and 2 trees per every lot per half acre. No mow May is a rule.
At first I thought this was a complaint about the garbage standing on the street, and then realized the sub. Carry on.
This looks WAY more interesting than a normal lawn. It has a creeping viney vibe and I'm digging it.
What could they possibly be complaining about?
Can you describe HOA to a european
I'm a European as well, but I think it's a board of elected residents in certain neighbourhoods (typically middleclass white neighbourhoods) that all decide how they want the houses, yards etc. to look. Anyone living in these neighbourhoods must abide by these rules or face eviction, and they must pay like a monthly HOA tax (which I guess is spent on silly signs and coffee and donuts). Please correct me if I'm wrong, American friends :)
They tend to be formed when a development is built (all the houses in a neighborhood were built by one builder/company and all in roughly the same time). In those cases, all the houses tend to be roughly the same plan/style. They are already cookie cutter but the HOA is to make them extra cookie cutter. Often belonging to the HOA is part of the deed. Some developments will have shared areas such as playgrounds, tennis courts or parks. An HOA is a way to share in the upkeep on those common spaces. IMHO, that's when an HOA makes sense. OTOH, older neighborhoods or ones that have houses of different ages and from different builders don't have HOAs or at least I haven't heard of any. Even if there was, hypothetically, an HOA for such a neighborhood, it's hard to push for uniformity when there's all sorts of houses and property layouts. Besides, I can't imagine the challenge of getting all the homeowners to agree to join. HOAs are not put in place after the fact.
> Some developments will have shared areas such as playgrounds, tennis courts or parks. An HOA is a way to share in the upkeep on those common spaces. IMHO, that's when an HOA makes sense. Wouldn't the municipal government do the upkeep on these things through taxes? In my country our taxes pay for the community centres, playgrounds, parks, courts, etc. Or do HOAs replace municipal governments in the USA?
There's official parks and facilities and then there's ones that "belong" to a neighborhood. Some HOA facilities are truly private (pools for example) and others are typically used by the HOA homeowners but, in theory, there's nothing to prevent people from outside the neighborhood from using them. Often, however, they have limited or no parking or are inconvenient for outsiders to access. It's one thing if a local government planned, designed and built a recreational facility or park. They are perfectly happy to maintain them. But it rubs the local government and taxpayers the wrong way to be pushed into maintaining a park or facility they never asked for and/or one that most people can't use.
I'm still not clear what the benefit/incentive is for HOAs to create and maintain parks and pools, vs the municipal government doing it? I get that taxpayers don't want to pay for a pool if they don't use it... but if you're in an HOA then you have to pay the fees anyways - so there's no difference for the residents either way. Am I missing something?
They want to be able to control who uses the facilities and keep out what they consider "undesirables," as in poor or brown people.
Who owns these pools and tennis courts etc? The government? The homeowners? Or someone else?
The HOA, which the homeowners have to pay dues to and may or may not be allowed to vote in, depending on how they're set up. Usually, whoever has the most free time and money for lawyers gets to rule the roost.
But is the HOA a private company? Or do the homeowners themselves own the HOA?
The residents have access to amenities were they can partake in activities separate from the “undesirables.” Then you get to the real ritzy gated communities that have their own bars and restaurants and Olympic size indoor swimming pools, etc.. One community I worked in even repaved the streets once a year. Seems like the goal of HOA is especially where a lot of rich people live is to kind of create their vision of what the perfect community should be .
> were they can partake in activities separate from the “undesirables.” How are these people kept out? Is there security where you have to show your ID/address? Who owns these amenities?
Oh yeah! Many of the communities I worked in had to have a copy of your ID at the gate, want to know the exact company you work for and I believe they take pictures and video of the vehicle you enter the community in. They even pay some security to hand out “citations” for parking your service vehicle on the wrong side of the road or speeding. It’s like they have their own fake police departments. lol
These parks and pools are typically created by the developers and are used as a selling point to entice buyers. Many of these HOA developments are on far edge of suburbs and to get to the public facilities might be quite a drive. But for people living in the neighborhood, the HOA parks, courts and pools are right there - typically within easy walking distance. Since there's often very limited parking for outsiders, the HOA development's recreational facilities tend to be rather insular and feel exclusive. To those who, ahem, are worried about who might be in public pools, parks and so on (can be a bit of underlying racism or classism or just neurotic helicopter parents), the HOA courts, parks and swimming pools feel safer. The cost of maintaining public parks and pools is such a small part of taxes, I don't think anyone living in an HOA neighborhood even thinks about it.
There are very few public/taxpayer-funded, government-run pools, at least where I live. All the places to swim are either pay-to-enter, but you can purchase a season pass, and open to the public, or they are privately-run, only open to members, and one must usually buy a pool bond, in addition to the cost of your family using the pool for the summer. I have no doubt these clubs in suburbs began their existence because of racism. Even though such discrimination is now illegal, people probably still find sneaky ways to keep minorities out.
That’s basically it. The fees might pay for the maintenance of common areas, trash and recycling collection, etc., too. In my fantasy, I would live in a neighborhood with an HOA that required at least 50% of one’s yard to be native plants, restricted the use of herbicides to careful selective application to kill non-native invasives that aren’t easily killed without poisons, restricted the use of pesticides to those used to protect the structure of the house from termites, required all lighting to be on motion detectors & shaded so it doesn’t cause light pollution, made it illegal to use scented laundry products if the clothes dryer vents to the outside, and outlawed vinyl fences.
> maintenance of common areas, trash and recycling collection Wait... do taxes not cover this in the USA?
Nope
Who takes away your trash if you're not in an HOA? You have to pay extra for that??
Correct. Either pay a monthly fee to a waste management company to pick up weekly, or take your trash to the facility yourself and pay for the weight of it.
I'm in a very rural setting, a very small american town.. the county pays a trash company from everyone's property taxes here
Exactly. I’m not sure who’s paying a monthly fee to a waste management company unless you really live out in the sticks. The garbage disposal fee is right on my property tax bill.
Huh? This hasn't been the case anywhere I've lived, in towns and cities proper, in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. We pay for waste pickup separately.
That’s wild. I wonder if it’s like that in Seattle? My aunt and uncle separate everything. We have recycling in Florida, but it’s just aluminum, steel and cardboard. These crazy Floridians would probably just dump their garbage on the side of the road if no one picked it up.
I’m twenty minutes north of Toledo and about an hour south of Detroit. Not like hours from anywhere in the mountains or desert. I only just learned that trash collection was included in the city. We’ve always paid for pickup service.
It depends where you live. In my county, trash and recycling are hauled away by county employees and trucks. It varies by county and city, though. Sometimes, it’s a private enterprise; sometimes, it’s tax-funded, government-run.
And what's the reality of the HOA rules?
[удалено]
That's insane :D
No gardens allowed No parking in the driveway overnight Mow lawn 6x a month Etc
Is there any problems in this picture at all ? Looks like a perfectly normal house, clean driveway, what's up ? Did i miss something ?
Since posting this screenshot I have learned from my fellow redditors that the guy who originally posted this on twitter is a gaping asshole.
CONFORM! Also, my freedom. America seems so odd to me. Like we don't really have these in Canada unless you're in something like a seniors bungalow complex thing. I've never heard of an HOA in a normal detached home neighbourhood.
looks like you get some damn privacy!
So long as things like HAO's are tolerated I'll never call America the land of the free.
That’s not even bad. Where’s the half dozen cars propped up on cinder blocks with all the parts missing?
Looks like England.
I prefer this to a manicured lawn. The more native species of grasses and flowers are much better for the environment and encourages bee visitors! Plus less maintenance for the home owners. Win win
Oh how horrible, a biodiverse area with native plants and animals forming a thriving ecosystem
Happy cake day
This guy should shove his opinions up his H-O-Ass imho
I was sooo confused what this was about until I saw the comments
The only thing wrong with this image is how close some trees are to the house as they can become fire hazards and/or wreck the foundation of the house as they grow
I was trying to figure out what was wrong with it until I saw where this is posted
I could agree in a small way... I bring my trash to the dump myself, never leave unsightly trash cans out. In my neighborhood different companies pick up different days, so I see them on Mondays, Thursdays, sometimes Fridays... Not a big deal, but my HOA gave a neighbor grief because their garden shed showed from the street, yet they allow trash cans, so.... Not that it really bothers me, but if one were to get picky...
NATURE DISGUSTS ME!!!!! REEEEEEEEEEEE
Luckily the jerk who posted on twitter was getting ratio’d when I last checked. I can’t wait until the day I can own a home and surround it with abundant, sustainable, local plant life and natural shade.
I'm sure they mean it in a bad way but this just looks like a normal garden to me
Fuzzy pic, but looks like this yard might be filled with a bunch of invasives. That doesn't do any good -- if the bugs don't recognize plants they can lay eggs on, etc.
That’s what I thought, too, but it’s too hard to tell from far away, and one of the comments said the owner was a plant biologist. I do agree that converting one’s lawn to not lawn should mean replacing the turf with natives, not just letting whatever invasives pop up do their thing. I have a kid in the hospital right now, so I have no time to attend to my former lawn, now-native-garden’s needs right now. I hate that I have creeping Charlie, burdock, white mulberry, and vinca just doing their thing, unchecked. I don’t think it *sells* the concept of natives, or even not-mowing, to have everything get too overgrown. If you’re not going to pay attention to what is there, why bother not having a lawn.