HOAs and Their Evil Twin

I'm starting to think that HOA stands for Hall of Asses or perhaps Holes of Asses rather than the nearly ubiquitous Homeowners Association. In fact, given that I just wrote about them yesterday, there must be something to my thinking.

My own HOA has a message forum where, one would think, intelligent dialogue would take place amongst neighbors. Hang on. ROF LMAO LOL, still ROF . . . hang on . . . sorry . . . Did I just say intelligent and HOA in the same sentence? I've clearly had too much to drink already. At any rate, I've discovered that the Board members like to use the so-called forum as their bully pulpit and demonstrate their general lack of knowledge on that which they claim to administer. It's really sadly amusing that there is such collective stupidity and at the same time, they can hold jobs that allow them to afford a mortgage. Is it just me, or have you noticed how there's never been a statue of a committee in a park? It's always a leader - someone who stood above the rest and made a real difference with his (or her) heart in the right place. I suppose that explains why we haven't seen too many such statues of late. But I digress.

I think my earlier conclusions (see previous post) were accurate. Or they were abused children. Or, since this is Florida, perhaps their family tree lacked branches. Did you know that palm trees had pretty shallow root systems? That's why they topple in windstorms. As such, I am hopeful that the windstorm of law and logic that I have lobbied at my HOA will result in a collective toppling of dead and/or shallow-rooted wood.

Two counties away, this very day, in a deed restricted, gated community also governed by a self-proclaimed omnipotent HOA, my firm was asked to deliver some material at the behest of a realtor. Little did we know that the realtor's office was within the Town Centre (yes, they spell it that way to sound all uppity) and thus BEHIND the proverbial gates of Hades. "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." The GED-holder who manned the gate would not let my driver pass without the name of the realtor and obviously the realtor failed to alert the portcullis keeper that we'd be bringing his order. So, she would not let my driver pass. He had to radio the office for the particulars of the realtor to bring the material to his doorstep. If I didn't have a desire to keep my job another day, I would've suggested pouring it over the gate pawn's head and leaving the receipt, but alas, I played by their silly rules. In the words of Shakespeare, much ado about nothing.

But that must be one snazzy place that even their town centre is off limits to the riff raff peasants of the neighboring communities. Being somewhat familiar with customs of the Middle Ages, the only real difference I see is a lack of the plague. Beyond that, all these residents are merely subjects to their respective Feudal Lords and the moneylender who lets them live in their house.

With all that said, apart from a desire to not live next to a trailer with four junk cars in the lawn, what benefit do we find in this forced homogenization of our neighborhoods? While it may not be quite like the segregation my parents knew, it's still segregation of the haves and have-less and have-nots.

Don't misunderstand, I'm all about free markets and capitalism, but segregation for the sake of living under the protection of a Feudal Lord seems less than liberating. We have made our lives so complicated by trying to make them so comfortable. And we've accomplished little comfort.

But there again, if common sense were to prevail, I'd have little to discuss. And so I go on crying out, a voice in the wilderness.