I’m running for my local HOA board.

[Dodger]

I just randomly applied when I got an email asking for candidates because I’m bored and got nothing better to do and I need to get out of the house more. Except now they want a video where I describe what skills and qualifications I bring and what previous volunteer work I’ve done. Yeah I got nothing. Oh and what my priorities for the community would be and how to fix them. Now If I somehow  make it I’ll take it seriously but I admit I’m trying to George Costanza my way to getting in and need to figure out what to put in the video.

 

[Biggie]

Sounds like a lot of work and hassle.  

[TheShader]

Say you've previously volunteered at the nearest Boys and Girls club, that's always a solid lie. If you have adult kids say you coached their soccer team for a year or two. Find out if most of your neighbors like or dislike your city councilmember, and say you canvassed for them if most like your councilmember or that you canvassed for their opponent if they don't. Also, build up what a hard working spouse and/or parent if applicable. Anything to make you come across as a wholesome 2.5 kids nuclear family man. You could lie and say you were on some planning commission, but usually people enjoy feeling like they're voting for an everyday person and actual knowledge and experience means extremely little.

 

If you're relatively new to the neighborhood then you can make broader lies. Say you worked for a landscaping or construction company for several years when you were younger, but ultimately decided it wasn't for you as you didn't feel like it allowed you to be as connected to your community as you originally felt it should have.

 

When it comes to what your plans are, the broader the better. If you're not super specific then the people voting will more likely assume you mean whatever they want. People don't want to hear you're going to force them to keep up an American flag on the 4th of July and they only get to wash their cars on Tuesdays. People don't want to feel like you're coming after anything they need to change, they want you to go after what everyone else needs to change. So say things like 'I think it's been a long time since we could understand each other as a community, and I plan on bringing us all together for a more beautiful and connected neighborhood.'

[Brian]

Call George Santos for tips 

[thedarkstark]

HoA is a scam. Unless you plan to infiltrate and dismantle it from the inside you are now a part of the problem.

[DarkStar189]

I tried searching quick for any benefits you might get out of the deal and...I didn't find anything real exciting.

Googles top 5 benefits:

-Share your opinion with the HOA

-Make more friends- connected to more people

-You can "be in the know"

-You can use your HOA title and skills in other areas like as a job reference.

-You can direct the future of your community.

 

Cons? I imagine some people don't like their HOA and if any problems or drama arises you get to be involved. Like enforcing rules, sending letters, etc. 

 

 

[TheShader]

11 minutes ago, DarkStar189 said:

Cons? I imagine some people don't like their HOA and if any problems or drama arises you get to be involved. Like enforcing rules, sending letters, etc. 

 

 

I promise you, some jackass with money connected to real estate is going to have their proxy candidate in there, and it'll be worth it just to piss that person off.

[Dodger]

I just need something to do and I figure it might look good on my resume or something. Probably would spend most of my time sending out letters about people’s weeds and cars parked everywhere. Which doesn’t really sound all that fulfilling.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

9 minutes ago, Dodger said:

I just need something to do and I figure it might look good on my resume or something. Probably would spend most of my time sending out letters about people’s weeds and cars parked everywhere. Which doesn’t really sound all that fulfilling.

Also making sure the hoa is solvent is important for your own purposes. 
 

like if your dues are low the expenses should be, and making sure there’s not some crooked deal on who renovates the neighborhood pool that screws you out of a decent chunk of money

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

10 minutes ago, Dodger said:

I just need something to do and I figure it might look good on my resume or something. Probably would spend most of my time sending out letters about people’s weeds and cars parked everywhere. Which doesn’t really sound all that fulfilling.

 

5 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Also making sure the hoa is solvent is important for your own purposes. 

 

Yeah - the first thing you should do is get hold of the books and understand the sources of revenue and expenses.

[Biggie]

1 hour ago, Dodger said:

I just need something to do 

Shit and this is the best idea you could come up with? 

[CayceG]

"I'm bored, so I decided to become a house cop."

 

 

 

Were I in your position, I would gain access to the board solely to understand the books and then work to dismantle the power of the HOA itself, hopefully by culminating in its elimination. 

[Jwheel86]

3 minutes ago, CayceG said:

"I'm bored, so I decided to become a house cop."

 

 

 

Were I in your position, I would gain access to the board solely to understand the books and then work to dismantle the power of the HOA itself, hopefully by culminating in its elimination. 

 

My parents and a small group of neighbors ran their HOA for a decade solely to keep the crazies off the board. 

[Dodger]

We all gotta get our jollies somewhere 

[Keyser_Soze]

My dad did this. Sounded like a lot of drama and then I had to get rid of all the binders of HOA stuff after he passed.

[Guest]

The HOA is pretty much a tool of segregationists to keep Blacks out, so nuke them all IMO

[stepee]

4 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

The HOA is pretty much a tool of segregationists to keep Blacks out, so nuke them all IMO

 

Whenever I start house shopping, not being part of a HOA is top of the list of requirements.

[stepee]

Also as far as looking for something to do to stay active/support the community, I would look for something that contributes to improving society for that. Look up local non profits that support the homeless and see what kind of help they could use, things like that.

[AbsolutSurgen]

I was only a member of a HOA once while I lived in Michigan.  The only thing they seemed to actually do was prevent people from putting up fences.  Very hands off.

[unogueen]

Dinosaurs on every lawn NOW.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 hour ago, sblfilms said:

The suburbs are pretty much a tool of segregationists to keep Blacks out, so nuke them all IMO

 

[Nokra]

2 hours ago, unogueen said:

Dinosaurs on every lawn NOW.

 

Funny you say this, I was out on a walk in my neighborhood yesterday and saw this:

 

 

[unogueen]

Power, money, dinosaurs.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I'm glad our property is just outside of the POA here. I never hear anything good about them.

[thedarkstark]

On 2/5/2023 at 7:44 PM, thedarkstark said:

HoA is a scam. Unless you plan to infiltrate and dismantle it from the inside you are now a part of the problem.

 

Last Week Tonight main story this week is about how shit and evil HOA's are. Just another way for corporations to privatize every aspect of your life and steal your money, fuck em all.

 

 

[Fizzzzle]

Suburbs are financially unviable and were objectively a mistake. If you want absolute privacy, great, go live in a rural area where you have to maintain your own gravel roads and dig your own well.

 

Suburbs do not generate enough tax income to maintain things like roads and sewer lines, which leads towns to follow one of 2 paths: essentially privatize infrastructure maintenance to HOA's OR fund the maintenance of suburban infrastructure by selling new developments, kicking the can down the road and fueling suburban sprawl, which induces demand for traffic, which causes local governments to shove their entire head up their ass. That's how we end up with Houston.

 

Wendover Productions actually did a pretty good video recently about why California is so significantly and particularly fucked, and a huge part of it is small, local governments have an absurd amount of power compared to the state. Most cities in California are small. Even the city of Los Angeles, which technically has a population of just under 4 million, is only this:

 

Less than a third of the inhabitants of Los Angeles actually live in Los Angeles. In fact, depending on how far you stretch the LA metro area, the number can reach as high as 18 million people, so the population that actually lives in the city of Los Angeles gets closer to 20%.

 

The Bay Area is very similar. The populations of San Jose and San Francisco are relatively small compared to the population of the greater metro area. What this means is that, even though these are gigantic metro areas with millions and millions of people, the polities are so subdivided that it basically acts as a NIMBY superpower. It's really easy to block new housing when you technically only live in a town of 50,000 people and the county essentially has no power over you.

 

 

... I don't know man, fuck everything and pull the ladder up behind you, that seems to be the winning strategy.

 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

Suburbs do not generate enough tax income to maintain things like roads and sewer lines, which leads towns to follow one of 2 paths: essentially privatize infrastructure maintenance to HOA's OR fund the maintenance of suburban infrastructure by selling new developments, kicking the can down the road and fueling suburban sprawl, which induces demand for traffic, which causes local governments to shove their entire head up their ass.

There are tons of taxing schemes that cover these costs, like municipal utility districts in Texas. The problem is most states have dumb caps on property taxes and special districts that artificially handicap them.

[Fizzzzle]

3 hours ago, sblfilms said:

There are tons of taxing schemes that cover these costs, like municipal utility districts in Texas. The problem is most states have dumb caps on property taxes and special districts that artificially handicap them.

However they do it, the point stands that suburbia as it exists in America is not economically sustainable.

 

 

 

 

 

This creates a serious problem. If you live in, I don't know, Yorba Linda, CA, a small town of only 60k or so within the greater LA metro area, wherein damn near every resident lives in a single family detached home, no one is ever going to vote to raise their own taxes. I don't know why I picked Yorba Linda, but only 51.2% of their funding comes from local sources, the rest comes from either the state or federal government. Where does that money come from? It comes from dense urban cores that essesntially subsidize their existence.

 

Side note: Yorba Linda's population is about 67k, and their police budget for last year was $14.23 million. I have no context at the moment to know if that's a lot, it just seems excessive at face value.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

However they do it, the point stands that suburbia as it exists in America is not economically sustainable.

 

 

 

 

 

This creates a serious problem. If you live in, I don't know, Yorba Linda, CA, a small town of only 60k or so within the greater LA metro area, wherein damn near every resident lives in a single family detached home, no one is ever going to vote to raise their own taxes. I don't know why I picked Yorba Linda, but only 51.2% of their funding comes from local sources, the rest comes from either the state or federal government. Where does that money come from? It comes from dense urban cores that essesntially subsidize their existence.

 

Side note: Yorba Linda's population is about 67k, and their police budget for last year was $14.23 million. I have no context at the moment to know if that's a lot, it just seems excessive at face value.

There is literally nothing in what you just posted that proves your point  One thing being more efficient doesn’t mean the other is “not economically sustainable”. I often get the feeling people aren’t choosing their words very carefully.

[Fizzzzle]

5 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

There is literally nothing in what you just posted that proves your point  One thing being more efficient doesn’t mean the other is “not economically sustainable”. I often get the feeling people aren’t choosing their words very carefully.

I used Yorba Linda as an example because, in 2022, for every dollar they raised in local taxes, they spent 2, mostly on police and roads. That is a pattern you find across America. If every suburban area is draining money from the economy, yet suburbia is the only thing we allow anyone to build anywhere, do you not see the problem?

 

I kind of forgot what my original point was, to be honest, both because I'm on painkillers and because once I get on the urbanist red pill train it all blurs together.