The Association...

One thing that homeowners might have to deal with while working on home improvement projects is the dreaded homeowner's association. The purpose of that association is to keep your neighbors (and you) in line. They take dues (ours is double--we have a neighborhood association and the Reston Association [RA]) for things like garbage and landscape maintenance, management of parking issues, and basic oversight of each home. When a home gets into disrepair the homeowner's association (in our case, RA) can put a lien on the owner's property, which requires the homeowner to fix the problem or pay a penalty before they can sell the home. RA actually did this to a neighbor of ours because her front porch light wasn't the right shape. Unfortunately the acceptable light design was discontinued years ago and RA hadn't updated their documentation. $120 dollars later, the lien was finally gone. But talk about bad blood...

The purpose is protection, one guesses, from crazy neighbors who might bring down the value of other properties with trashy front yards (think 50 garden gnomes) or tractor trailers parked on the lawn. But what we have experienced with our neighborhood association is a partnership with predatory towing companies, an interest in cheap holiday decorations (which have only come down last Sunday, four months later), support for the local solicitors such as the ice cream truckers, who blare horrible calliope music in the form of the repetitious "Music Man" in the neighborhood every day at least twice a day, and a general interest in unrest.

There are sites on the web that are out to help homeowners learn the real problems with these associations. For example, the American Homeowner's Resource Center attempts to shine a bright light on the real legalese that these associations can use to take power from homeowners. The goal of these associations was once a good one: support your neighbors and community, keep the neighborhood clean, and everybody's property will benefit. Short of starting a revolution, however, I don't see what we can do to remove Reston Association from our lives other than moving. However, with the way the housing crisis is looming large in our neighborhood (at least 6 foreclosures or short sales at last count), that isn't a possibility.

So what are homeowners to do? Maybe all one can do is fix up their property to code and neighborhood standard and wait it out while maniacal neighbors snoop and intrude and just plain make nuisances of themselves. In the meantime, I'll be buried up to my eyeballs in paint.