Convincing the HOA that they don't have to control all the shrubs
April 14, 2021 9:55 AM   Subscribe

Encouraging the HOA to decentralize and be less controlling: Can you point me to an article or other writing that will show our HOA board that things will be fine if they relax about letting people plant things? With guidelines?

There are areas where the management here has just left the stumps of removed shrubs -- spray-painted orange for some reason -- and I'm thinking it might be to prevent people from planting their own things before the HOA has a chance to put in whatever cookie-cutter thing they have in mind.

I might also recommend that, in the large new planting areas the HOA is installing, they allocate some area for residents to put in their own plantings (subject to guidelines: non-invasive, not trees, not too tall, remove spent plants when they are all brown, etc.).

Yes, people won't be perfect about taking care of things, but I think that's fine. We can have community garden clean-up day, maybe let individuals be in charge of specific areas, decentralize (with minimal effort).

My feeling is that this will be a lot more inviting than a bunch of uniform landscaping, and will probably make our community more attractive to families, too. This will probably be a lot more attractive to people who would want to actually OWN one of the condos here, rather than landlords.

Alternatively: convince me that the HOA board really does need to control what people plant.

Better: show me some really good, readable, example guidelines for this sort of thing.
posted by amtho to Grab Bag (14 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Here are the rules for the public community gardens in Portland, OR (available in 19 languages).
posted by aniola at 10:16 AM on April 14, 2021


I can't speak to your specific situation. But I served on the board of my HOA for several years. This suggestion, problem, etc. came up almost yearly. Usually from newer residents who weren't used to living with rules such as these.

We honestly discussed these ideas, and more, many times over. The reason we decided to keep those prohibitions in place were legal and practical.

Legal as in our HOA attorney stated very strongly that allowing owners to plant whatever they wanted, usually in front of their units, could, over time, be deemed to have given ownership of the ground to the individuals. And it says very specifically in our by-laws that the common area cannot be individually owned. Also, we all pay fees to have the common area maintained. Yet, if individual plantings were allowed, we would still all be paying for the common area maintenance, but those specific areas might no longer be considered common area.

Practically as in our landscape company would have no idea what plants belong to the association or the individual, making it difficult to maintain them. And landscaping crews typically have large personnel turnover.

Hope this helps.
posted by jtexman1 at 10:18 AM on April 14, 2021 [9 favorites]


It's possible that the HOA is operating under the specific rules of the covenants and restrictions for the community and can't go too far outside of the specific guardrails in them. If that's the case, the pathway would be to work to get those rules changed if possible. If they are changeable, the process should be outlined in the HOAs by-laws. This'd likely be something very Roberts-Rules-ish: getting 'new business' on the agenda for the next meeting, voting, and so forth.

Both the by-laws and CCR (Covenants, Codes & Restrictions) should be relatively straightforward to read so I'd start there to see what's possible. A lot depends on what's written in the docs (since everyone is basically operating within the confines of a contract) and the focus and vigor of the board. If you're in luck, there'll be room to move within the rules and maybe get buy-in from all the homeowners to make some changes. If not, you'll be banging your head against a solid brick wall, since HOAs and CCRs are specifically designed to enforce conformity.

Source: grudgingly served on an subdivision HOA board for 4 years in Atlanta.
posted by jquinby at 10:19 AM on April 14, 2021


The point of a HOA is to maintain/maximize the value of the households in a neighborhood, right?

Well, subjectively, a neighborhood with many similar-looking houses/greenery feels much more "tended" and "organized" and "predictable" than one that has a large variety in greenery.

When buying a house, one thing that might kind of worry me is if my neighbor played loud music, painted their house black and purple, and decided to park junker cars in the front yard. Not because I care, but I could see future homebuyers preferring quiet, cookie cutter neighbors. Maybe for their own preference, but maybe for the self-propagating reasons I just described.

On the other hand, I think some neighborhoods are charming for how each house is different. Maybe the houses are eccentric colors, or each have their own take on a natural lawn. I can see how that would be appealing to a certain person, and I wouldn't hesitate to move into a neighborhood like that and participate.

However, I think trying to go from a cookie cutter house to a eccentric interesting neighborhood has a high likelihood of just ending up being a little, helter-skelter and mediocre. If I was on the HOA, I'd tend toward uniform, not unique strategies, with as much ability for safe-yet-controlled individual expression as possible.
posted by bbqturtle at 10:20 AM on April 14, 2021 [3 favorites]


Look into intentional communities. Here's one example, Village Homes: "We have 23 acres in greenbelts, orchards, vineyards, vegetable gardens, and edible landscape. Swales run through the Village to catch rainwater and deep water the trees planted near them. Two thirds of the homes are still active solar as well as our Community Center and our Pool. Residents may harvest fruit from common area trees and vines. Harvesting goes by the honor system; residents pick only what their families can consume. We spray only lime sulfur on our fruit trees to be as organic as possible."
posted by aniola at 10:26 AM on April 14, 2021 [1 favorite]


Here, I opened up a bunch of tabs for cohousing just for the Portland region. Most of them do gardening. At least some of them are HOAs.

http://columbiaecovillage.org/who-we-are - "We grow food for optional community meals in two large gardens and also harvest a substantial amount of food from fruit and nut trees as well as rows of grapes, blackberries, raspberries and more. Most members also have an individual or shared garden plot and many also use their green thumbs in the courtyard areas in front of our homes."
https://www.cohoecovillage.org/our-village/site/ - "A permaculture conceptual drawing done in 2013 as part of our Land Use Vision highlights options for potential future projects."
https://www.daybreakcohousing.org/about-2/ - "shared garden and outside areas"
https://penparkcommons.wordpress.com/ - "Transit and bike oriented garden community in N. Portland"
https://trilliumhollow.weebly.com/community-teams-and-their-mandates.html - "Landscape Team is responsible for maintenance, restoration and development of the community's gardens, soft paths and natural areas. We strive to maintain mixed use areas for community enjoyment, while stewarding a natural landscape that provides habitat for wildlife and people."
https://greengrovecoho.org/ - "large organic vegetable & flower beds, 15k gal rainwater catchment for irrigation"
https://www.kailashecovillage.org/ - "Our extensive gardens consist of individual garden plots as well as communally managed spaces. The latter include a perennial fruit orchard and food forest, vineyards, berry patches, and areas for annual crops." (AND they use a fully-permitted humanure system!)
https://cullygrove.org/ - "A solar-powered garden community in NE Portland"
https://www.pdxcommons.com/about-pdx - has photo of people gardening
posted by aniola at 10:42 AM on April 14, 2021


our HOA attorney stated very strongly that allowing owners to plant whatever they wanted, usually in front of their units, could, over time, be deemed to have given ownership of the ground to the individuals

Just so you know, your HOA attorney is full of it. In a situation where rights and responsibilities are spelled out in written agreements, there is essentially no likelihood of either adverse possession or an easement by custom.
posted by praemunire at 11:15 AM on April 14, 2021 [6 favorites]


Speaking as someone who has been involved with my HOA for ten years:

I might also recommend that, in the large new planting areas the HOA is installing, they allocate some area for residents to put in their own plantings (subject to guidelines: non-invasive, not trees, not too tall, remove spent plants when they are all brown, etc.).

What you ask for and frame as "relaxing of the rules" will be seen by other members of the HOA as "creating more rules" and will be rejected immediately. Enforcement is a problem for HOAs, even for rules everybody agrees on. I know from experience that if your proposal was in effect in my HOA, I as a board member would spend countless hours adjudicating arguments over whether certain plants are acceptable or not. I do not want to do that, so I'd vote against your proposal on that basis alone.

Yes, people won't be perfect about taking care of things, but I think that's fine. We can have community garden clean-up day, maybe let individuals be in charge of specific areas, decentralize (with minimal effort).

This statement cracked me up and also made my blood run cold. What "community action days" and "individuals in charge" means to me as an HOA board member is new rules and regulations that the nebulous "individuals" will quickly get tired of administering and stop doing (because it is hard!). But once it's in the CC&Rs, guess what? It HAS to be done. And who ends up having to do it? The board. Me.

One of the hardest things about an HOA is the fundamentally incompatible goals of the various homeowners involved. My HOA is about 60% investor-owners. They don't live here, they don't even live in my state. And they don't give a shit about anything except a zero-maintenance maximized income stream. Which is diametrically opposed to an owner like me who actually lives here. There is a constant, unending battle between me, who wants nice things to make my life better, and them, who want the cheapest possible solution to every problem and will not consider anything else. Many HOAs arrive at this point... nobody can agree on anything so things are congruent with what is legally required and nothing else.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 11:31 AM on April 14, 2021 [21 favorites]


My HOA recently decided not to let members plant things in the common areas. The reason is that it then becomes an issue of enforcing maintenance. You may be a perfectly lovely person who will care for everything you plant, but many people won't be, and then someone has to go banging on the door saying, hey you need to trim the dead branches off these shrubs. Plus you could then sell your unit, and the next person may not want to care for whatever you put in.

I bristle about a lot of HOA rules, but this is one I understand.
posted by FencingGal at 11:51 AM on April 14, 2021


The only way to accomplish this, and I've seen things like it done, is to take over the board with a group of like-minded people. It's exhausting and not always possible, but if it's a voting-based board it can be very effective.

I will never live anywhere that has a HOA ever again. It's fucking exhausting and can affect your enjoyment of your own property. The one I was once part of had rules for miles. Every time I stuck a shovel in the ground I'd get one of the fucking letters about whatever rule I had broken telling me I needed to undo the work I'd just done. Then of course the person who complained would have like a bunch of out of compliance shit in his yard but it was all grandfathered in or whatever. I feel my blood pressure rising just typing it out. Moving to an old neighborhood where every yard is super weird felt great!
posted by Patapsco Mike at 12:49 PM on April 14, 2021 [12 favorites]


No experience with HOAs or advice how to deal with them, but I'm wondering if the orange-sprayed stumps are to improve visibility and prevent people from tripping over them. Of course, it's much cheaper to spray paint a stump than actually remove it. From the thread above, it sounds like HOAs are risk-averse (and cheap) and this is the kind of thing a lawyer might recommend. Seems like insisting on stump removal would be a reasonable request.
posted by citygirl at 1:05 PM on April 14, 2021 [2 favorites]


lefty lucky cat nailed it. You mentioned in your opening paragraph that things will be "fine" if people plant their own things; I just wanted to say it might be fine for you personally, but most likely any personal plantings will inevitably result in complaints to the HOA board about the size, position, type of plant, schedule of maintenance, etc. So it's a hassle to them, and most residents/owners are shielded from that whole thing, so they don't consider there could be any issues.

Now, if you would really like to see this happen, I suggest joining the board so that your idea goes straight to the right people, and you have a chance to make your case in those discussions. Once you have experience with the inner workings of the HOA, you'll know how to tailor your proposal.

Personally, as council president in ours, I've received a lot of "great ideas" from people who seem happy to tell us just how we're doing things wrong, but somehow they never volunteer to join and actually do the work. Hmmmm...
posted by tinydancer at 1:50 PM on April 14, 2021 [5 favorites]


I am familiar with both community gardens and HOAs, and do not think this will fly.

Community gardeners are frankly awful at keeping things tidy. Some jerk is going to claim that his unkempt disaster is a 'cover crop', people will get ambitious and fail, or plant invasives, or move away. And those are self-selected gardeners, not random neighbors.

My HOA allowed a few garden plots to be constructed, all of which fell into disrepair with a few years and some turnover.

I might vote to give each unit the opportunity to purchase and maintain one (1) pot, selected by the HOA so they all match, that is big enough for a tomato plant and small enough to be easily removed.

Also: if your HOA is well-managed, there is likely already a replacement plan and approved budget and/or contract. It may have required considerable negotiation and compromise. Landscaping is a popular subject for fights. People are very invested in mulch color.

My HOA once went a couple years between tearing up landscaping and replacing it, so stuff happens, you might have a window to make proposals. But before you go in with the idea, you should know what's going on with the board and management.

I also second the recommendation to volunteer. If there's a landscaping committee, join it. Be the person who meets the landscaping company for their site visit. That kind of thing.
posted by mersen at 3:21 PM on April 14, 2021 [3 favorites]


I am currently on the board of an HOA and lead the landscaping committee as well. I agree with all the comments above about what a headache it can be to allow non-traditional plantings and have just a few things to add -

- We get a good rate for our landscaping services, partly due to the fact that the crews know how to water, trim, and maintain the plants currently in the landscape. When something different gets planted, it invariably needs more water, more trimming, impedes the walkway over time, and creates other headaches for the landscaping crew, which will raise our rates in the end, which will get me voted off the board much more quickly than one person who wishes they could put in a particular bush.

- When I have sought resident input about replacing a certain plant, particularly trees, people's preferences are all over the map. I have come to realize that my best option is to take a limited number of choices to the landscaping committee, let them choose, and be done with it. It avoids having people standing at my front door because they don't like the selection they say I made. I just refer them to the committee.

As with many other things related to HOA management, this is an area that can become quite fraught.
posted by eleslie at 7:41 AM on April 15, 2021


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