History Zoning -Any suggestions

Build a bigger garage and put the car inside. when I moved back to Florida 4 years ago I leased a house in a neighborhood with an HOA. My wife caught one of those old bastards looking in the windows, she snatched the door open told him if he wanted to come in and see if the house was clean come on in. If not she would give me his name and address and I would be down to visit after I got home from work.
Chicken shit would not give her his name.
you could not even work on your car in the garage with the door closed. I put up black curtains and worked on my stuff in the middle of the night.
Moved as soon as the lease ran out. Either comply or move. Did you know about the HOA before you bought your house ,if not shame on you.

 

A guy in Albion NY, got so pissed at the Town, he framed up a scale size, Box, plywood/studs an painted the car on the wood box! LMFAO...

 

He made one post and hasn't posted again yet.

He did not say one single word about his employment situation.

The best advice given so far has been to move and to never again put yourself into a HOA associations control.

 

In my experience, the only folks that actually want an HOA are the exact kind of people that delight in having control over the actions of other people, and subsequently the exact people that I would never want to share a neighborhood with.

Out where I work on my junk, the only new neighbor called the police one me, for working on my car. They came right out, said hi, and then promptly went over to him, and told him to stop bothering me.

 

In order to help protect our investment we have an HOA where we live and I'm glad we do. It helps to keep the absentee landlords honest and the scofflaws' feet to the fire. We don't have motorhomes stored in front yards and dismantled beaters stitting on jackstands in driveways for months at a time or trashcans that have taken up permanent residence on the curb.
I keep my " junk" in the garage and out of sight and have never had a problem.

 

If you bought a house with HOA regs without knowing the rules and how they were or are made or amended .You have set the stage for a life long hassle .Cut your losses move to a town and subdivision that is not so restrictive .

 

You mention a letter from the town but then you ask about experience with HOAs. These are two completely separate entities with different (although sometimes redundant rules). Who is actually the one complaining, town or HOA?

Most towns have their Zoning Ordinance available online so you should be able to research chapter and verse. More sophisticated (and PIA) HOAs also have their rules online. Read up.

Zoning ordinances are usually intended to regulate buildings and lot coverage. Municipal ordinances regulate junk, grass height, building maintenance, etc., this may be where they are coming at you from. Nobody wants to look at their neighbors "...stuff...". Like someone else stated, license the car and tell em to ... well you know.

If it is an HOA thing, you are probably stuck having to clean things up. Sorry but as someone else said, you bought into the community so you gotta abide by their rules. I'm glad my neighbors aren't complete slobs and I would probably complain too if I lived in a community with an HOA. You pay extra for that.

 

I had that happen a few years back.
Someone complained about some cars that were an eye sore. (one would of had to trespass to see them)
When to the county meeting and they showed me a photo of my stuff and I asked if trespassing was illegal in the county because that was the only way they could have gotten this photo. They wouldn't answer that but they did give me time to put up a privacy fence to hide my stuff that they couldn't see from the road anyway.

 

When I hit the lottery, I'll buy 500 acres somewhere and you can't move in unless you have 2 project cars and some neat shop equipment.

 

I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter

 

Zoning ordinances also regulate "land use" Storing, repairing and collecting a car or cars could be a use not allowed on your property.

Kind of like housing dogs on your property. Four dogs are pets.... that fifth dog..... Now you have a kennel.

 

When I lived in south Georgia . Your wealth was determined on how many cars and trucks you had jacked up in the front yard. You got more points if the wheels were off. I was admired by my neighbors because I had a late model dirt track car and a lift on a concrete slab in front of my garage.
Our HOA was you mind your business and I'll mind mine. One night I was breaking in a cam on a new motor on my late model about 8 pm and my neighbor called the cops. The deputy showed up and he happened to be one of my fellow dirt track racers. I had just shut the car off about 10 minutes before he got there. After he found out what I had been doing he said I need to hear the motor for evidence so
I cranked it back up and took it to about 6 grand 3 or 4 times. We laughed and he told me don't do that again. I never cranked it up after 6 pm after that.

 

here's what you do. buy the crappiest looking old cars you can find, get them all running and legal, then park them in front of the house of the people messing with you

 

I think the situation here has been misinterpreted .
The OP said "HOA like", as in similar to, not that he lived in a HOA, but city zoning laws.
You can't win in a zoning situation, cities and counties can pretty much make up as many bullshit laws as they want.Usually it's benefiting someone financially. All you can do is comply or move. Yes it's unfair, but nobody else will care! nobody.
Part of the stuff that sucks in America today.Oddly it's frequently the people that claim government is too intrusive that support laws like this. Go figure.

 

Yep, me too. Out in the country, I pee where I want! And park as much junk on my property as I want to.

 

Yeah, I hear you. Farmer who owns the property next to me built a house (ugly as sin) up on a hill with a view of my car shop. My wife told me I'd have to come inside now to pee and I said, "naw, that's his problem".

 

Quote{There are some properties which are just eyesores with junk, car bodies and parts strewn all over the place.} Sounds like a accurate description of our corner. Just get on google earth and view the 90 &93 jct. 11 miles west of Pocahontas Ar. And I could care less what others think and do. A long as my wife is OK with it . She has a rule no car,s or parts inside of the fenced yard or in the house. When We where dating Debbie stated your wearing the same cologne my dad wears. I stated Im not wearing any. She said you certainly are you smell like gas oil and diesel just lik him> He dad had gas stations and wreckers and salvage . It don't look like junk to her. It looks like money. At any time I can sell scrap and obtain emergency cash. No HOA or building codes here. One thing I want to know if its such a eyesore why do they drive so slow and rubberneck gawking as they pass by?

 

I live in the country and have a lot of cars but when you drive into my yard you can't see any of it, once you get down to my shop everything is parked in a neat and orderly fashion, I love my stuff but don't like living in a junk yard either!


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My friend lives in a inner ring suburb adjacent to Detroit. One of his neighbors is running a repair shop out of his house in a residential zoned area. Tow trucks dropping cars at all hours of the day, parking his deadhead cars up and down the street and in the driveway of one house owned by another and used as a storage building (all indoors) for his rental houses spare parts. City Code Enforcement officer has been out, sent letters and that's about all they will do.

The guy and his homies won't drive unless they are WOT, this is street posted at 25 mph. Cops never catch them, when the neighbors call by the time they get there all have scattered.

My friend is no prude, we have hot rodded, motorcycle, karts and snowmobile raced for years. Before retirement he was a engineering tech for one of the Big Three, been a gearhead since we have been friends since 1967.

He wants to sell out and move, who is going to buy a house with that going on?

 

We don't live in a "HOA" tract; it's a cul-d-sac of 15 houses. Most of the other homes are not taken care of as well as ours. We have very big lots too, espescially in this day and age of postage stamp sized lots. When we bought, we were in the county (less rules), but after 4 years, we were annexed into the city (more rules, but only enforced on a complaint basis). I have a garage/shop in the back, and the city has a 20 foot "drainage easement" (fancy name for a ditch) on the back property line that they do absolutely nothing to help maintain. I try not to give the city or neighbors any ammo, but I have broken a few rules; a man's gotta' do what a man's gotta do.. There are other homeowners who are far worse than anything I've got going on. I wanted to have a carport built in front of the garage/shop, but the city wanted a permit to do it; however, you could have a temporary type garage (tent), and that was fine (????). So, I bought the biggest "garage" Shelter Logic made from one of the big box/member store. It was big, brown, ugly, and even taller than the garage/shop. It made absolutely NO sense to me they would allow my "Garage-Ma-Hall", but not a carport, unless I paid for a permit to do so ($364.00). It was't the permit money, I just did't want any of their "inspectors" on the property nosing around. I have nothing that's unsightly, but have put up various signs on my neighbors unsightly fences that face us, and I have an eclectic taste when it comes to yard art. Most of the neighbors could't care less what anyone does, but we do have one "Gladys Cravis" who's a major PITA to everyone. We just ignore her as much as possible, and even the city has caught on to her "issues". Bottom line, you've got to play by "their rules", even when you don't agree with them. Conform or move. It may be time to thin the herd, clean the place up, and make everything presentable. You can fight them, but chances are you won't win. That's just the way it is.
I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

Get a copy of the covenants for your HOA and see what the guidelines are for your neighborhood. Check to be sure they are current and not expired. Any fines will probably show up in your property taxes so they will have you by the gonads. Read the covenants and base any actions on them. Good luck. Bob

 

Had some old biddies in the town I lived in in Texas who would ride around town in one of the groups new Cadillac about on evening a week and take notes on what they saw in town that the didn't like including what they considered junk cars sitting in yards, yards grown over with weeds or not mowed an what not. City manager came by because they had reported the 34 Olds Sedan I had in the driveway with no glass and no engine. He asked if I had current plates and I did. I put the rear plate on while he was there and that was that.
I figured out a long time ago never let a car sit so that the grass or weeds grew up around it. Move the thing every time you mow even if you have to drag it around with a chain. Turn it around every week or so so the other end is facing out. Switch it to a different spot in the driveway on a regular basis so it looks like it may have been driven. And buy current tabs for it. If you can't afford a few bucks for the tabs you can't afford the car anyhow.

I'm in the middle of 70 Acres and 400 ft off the road but need to get rid of a couple of "parts" cars that I haven't scrapped an hauled off and clean up some other junk. No one bothers me but it just looks like hell and the stuff takes up space.

 

My sister used to live in one of those damned Home owner group controlled neighborhoods. Couldn't park the travel trailer or boat in the driveway more than long enough to load it up or unload it. Had to have approval for a paint color change on the house and who knows what else.

 

It sucks all over the world. There is an analysis in which all zoning ultimately comes down to an effort to maintain an artificial scarcity in economically productive real estate, either through banning economic activity outright or by creating conditions which are as unsuitable as possible for economic activity. It's good reasons and real reasons: the "good" reason for deep street setbacks and front lawns is idyllic neighbourhood "residential character"; the real reason is that it kills pedestrian passing trade dead right there. The result is a small in-group of business-property owners who have an interest in keeping ordinary homeowners out of their club.

 

If you buy into an area with an HOA ,you should know the rules ...If you buy anywhere there are usually zoning laws and you need to know those rules to avoid problems... You can do as you want on your own property, but when your noise, smoke, dogs, kids or whatever spills over the property line, you are now fucking with your neighbors property...
I live on 11 acres in a rural agricultural town...My junk is all in garages or sheds. In fact other than farm equipment in use, the neighbors junk in not really visible.

 

Ah, but do you have a Conspiracy Theory?

 

If you can't piss in your front yard you're living too close to your neighbors. If I ever get any complaints about pissing in the yard I'll just tell them to quit looking through the binoculars.

I live in an unzoned county.

I did live up in Des Moines for a time when I was first married since my wife was never going to marry a farmer or live on a farm, never say never. She had moved to the city from a small NW Iowa town and she was there to stay or so she thought. It was convenient if I wanted to run to the store and I kind of liked that cable TV but I never really adjusted to city life in the year I lived there. I could feel the neighbors watching me when I went outside, I think they had to keep an eye on this redneck hick that moved in next to them. One day a city man showed up at the door, I guess someone was complaining about me having six cars in the driveway but since they were all licensed and insured there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. He did tell me that I couldn't park my pickup in my driveway since I used it in a business. That was it for city life for me, I put my foot down and we moved to the farm.

A buddy of mine used to live in a town in the next county. One night the town cop gave him a ticket for having a flat tire on his new car sitting in his own driveway. He did think it was pretty funny since the car next to it was minus the engine at the time. It was licensed and all the tires were up though. He since bought his parents farm in our county and I'd bet he has somewhere around 300 cars sitting on his farm. He just likes to buy them and drag them home, to each his own I guess.

A guy in my wife's home county in NW Iowa had a bunch of old vehicles sitting on his farm. The county got on him making him get rid of a bunch of them. Pissed him off so he started buying old farm machinery and now his place has hundreds of all kinds of old farm equipment sitting all over the place and they can't do a thing about farm stuff. All there is is a path that you can drive into his driveway, I'd bet that when he dies his heirs will have a farm sale totalling in the millions of dollars.

 

You couldn't pay me to live in one of those HOA controlled communities. If someone complains about your stuff...it just means you need to move further out.

 

W/hoa's n city/county/state code enforcement: You'll have to get to know them, & then figure out if it's worth fighting (=spending both time & $$$) or just leaving. Watched a friend do the former, I did the latter. (They had to rewrite statute that was determined to be 'unreasonable & vague'. I said to hell w/the statutes & left for another area.). What gets them is; the "rules/statutes" (notice I didn't say; laws. Different entity.) have to apply to *everybody/each Person equally*. So enforcement that is only applied to you, must be applied to everyone in the whole area(hoa/city/county/state/etc.). Which means that you need to make sure it does, which means you need to find those who are also 'breaking the ordinance', & document each issue, & force those issue(s) to the front, seeing that the statutes are applied to everyone equally. BTW; it is a dbl-edged sword - & can cut both ways rather deep. It can also mean spending the $$$ to use an attourner to dispute things legally - which has no guarantee except that it'll cost you time & $$$. Usually a lot of both, for results that you may not be happy with. For all this, you get to moved to the top of the S..tList, but when(IF) you prevail often enough, eventually they'll leave you alone, searching for easier prey. For awhile anyways.
Ludd n jetnow nailed it.
(While there are other proper things that can be done, this isn't the forum for them.)
FWIW.
Marcus...

 

If theyre able to move under their own power and have current license and registration, you have no issues.

Get them running, or put them inside until they are.

You likely have one neighbor creating all the BS. Not many cities just have someone driving around looking for code violations.