• apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Not HOA but similar. I was living in a different city during covid. The city closed the outdoor parks in the poor and working class neighborhoods, the rich folk parks remained open.

    They started to wrap the swings at the park around the top bar. I’d unwrap them each day and that went on for about two weeks. Then they went to zip tying the swings together so they couldn’t be used. So I would cut the zip ties each day. This went on for another few weeks. Then they brought a sign post and a sign saying the park was closed and using the swings was prohibited. I dug the sign post out and threw it in the woods. Then they chained the swings together with a pad lock so I went to harbor freight and bought very heavy duty bolt cutters and lopped the chain off. That daily chain lopping lasted a week or two then they just took the swings away. I debated about buying swings and attaching them but figured the gambit went on as long as it should have and called it. I had fun.

    Meanwhile the whole time the kids in the rich neighborhoods could swing to their daily content.

    • krashmo@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I love it. Perhaps it would have been more effective to just do whatever they did to the swings at the other parks? Either way it’s good stuff

      • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        My park was close to my house and it was closed by ordinance, the other rich ones were not. There is no difference in the parks at all other than the property values in the neighborhoods in which they sat. I wasn’t going to go to city hall and complain since the mayor and council people were all from the rich neighborhoods. Rule of law is downwards in our class based society.

      • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        Are you saying sabotage the rich kids swings? Thats awful. Like something done shit to your park so you’ll pay it forward to other innocent kids. Terrible behaviour. You should be mad at the people doing it and take it out on them or the rule makers.

        • BrickEater@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I mean if the city is gonna actively punish poor kids then fuck them rich ones, they should suffer just the same. Teach them some humility instead of the upper class bubble they’re in.

          • abigscaryhobo@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            The correct response is to find out who is responsible for the chaining/closing and start chaining/closing their stuff. Randomly messing with another park doesn’t hurt anyone and just means another park is closed.

    • DeadPixel@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      Good effort! Hopefully some of the local kids got to enjoy the swings after your heroics each day, & that the council/city eventually put them back after restrictions loosened again.

  • socsa@piefed.social
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    1 month ago

    Imagine being so fucking basic you care about trash cans being visible from the street.

    • VinegarChunks@lemmus.org
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      1 month ago

      A LLM that does not understand that you can’t avoid being seen by a ring camera by ‘approaching from a blind spot. ‘

      • HereIAm@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        You’re making the assumption the cameras can see the bins. Might just look at a driveway.

  • BigDiction@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    The term Gaslighting gets thrown around a lot, but if this story were actually real it would be the perfect modern day example of it.

    • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Ya no way this is real. My ring doorbell detects the damn trees when the wind blows too hard. Not a chance he avoids the camera.

        • markovs_gun@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          If the neighbor is concerned enough to call a priest after exhausting all natural means of dealing with the problem, he’s surely going to point the camera right at the trash cans.

          • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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            29 days ago

            Ring doorbell camera can’t be “pointed”, it screws to a flat surface, presumably the doorway. That said, they have a pretty wide field of view.

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    1 month ago

    I’m a little confused how OOP is moving the welcome mat without triggering the camera. Though I’m sure this story is $100% real.

  • Deacon@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    This would be me if I ever moved to the suburbs in an HOA, which I would never do on purpose.

    I am enraged by proxy at the very existence of HOAs even though I have never been part of one or indeed interacted with an HOA or even (knowingly) a member of one. I just hate them for existing.

    • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      They’ve creeped into Canada. I always call people who voluntarily join an HOA authoritarian morons.

      • PhoenixDog@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        There’s a reason I bought a 14 acre homestead for $225k four years ago than anything in an HOA.

        I’d rather live in the middle of no where and shovel snow, carry firewood downstairs, feed chickens and pigs and break up frozen waters and dig out doors, deal with 6ft drifts blowing around my house all winter, than ever share space with fucking Gary.

  • Ugandan Airways@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    Anybody have any neighbor revenge tips? As in my neighbor is a fucking psycho who tried to break into my house, but is also rich, so he paid a lawyer and got a hand slap?

    Obligatory, ACAB and fuck America. Can’t wait to take a position overseas again.

  • Ecen@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Can someone explain why there are so many stories of bad HOAs in America? Don’t everyone in the HOA get to vote on who will be on the board and what rules there should be? Why do many of them seem to have strange and petty rules? What makes them able to issue fines for so small infractions? Where does the fine money go? Who sets up the HOA in the first place and what is the motivation to do so?

    We got plenty of similar associations where I live (both for apartments and houses, though not so often for fully detached homes) and they usually work great. Basically you pay a monthly fee to your HOA that the board use to keep the plumbing and outside areas maintained, pay for tv/internet for everyone at a much reduced cost or maintain other common areas like laundry rooms, guest apartment, parking garage, workshop etc. There are of course some restrictions too you need to follow, but those are usually minor and common sense anyways (like you shouldn’t play very loud music too late in an apartment in the middle of the week) and that you don’t get to do whatever you want to the outside of your place.

    (Another common rule is that you need HOA approval to sublet your apartment. This can be occasionally annoying to deal with, but is good because it prevents people from buying up apartments just to rent them out. And most of the time the HOA will approve you if you’re just moving away for a year or similar.)

    • cpaq47@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      That was the original intent, yes. Then they were tainted by greed and now most of them are in place before anyone lives in the neighborhood, so owners have no choice if they want to live there. Many are owned and operated by private companies that profit off petty fines like this. I once got a letter threatening a fine because I parked my car in my driveway and it had expired tabs. This was during early covid when the DMV was slower than usual. I almost lost my shit.

      Check out this episode of Last week tonight if you wanna get more upset.

      Last Week Tonight HOAs

      • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        That’s not the original intent. In the US, HOAs were mostly created after the end of segregation to keep black people out of white neighborhoods, an origin story that puts into context the modern of pettiness and desire to control others we see in stories like this.

        In the early postwar period after World War II, many [HOAs] were defined to exclude African Americans and, in some cases, Jews, with Asians also excluded on the West Coast.

        A racial covenant in a Seattle, Washington, neighborhood stated, “No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any Hebrew or by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic race.”

        When these were found unconstitutional in 1948, they became private contacts until those became illegal in 1968, but because HOAs had to approve new members/buyers, the rules stayed in effect until the majority of a community decided to stop being racist. On top of that, in 1963 the Federal Housing Administration said they would only insure mortgages on homes with an HOA which is really what created suburban sprawl and the ghettoization of the American inner cities.

        If you look at the history of HOAs it’s really a long and protracted fight on all levels by racists and bigots against the Civil Rights movement.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association

        TL;DR: Although conceptually HOAs are a good idea, even trending towards communalism, actually existing HOAs are, with a few exceptions, downright regressive, often criminally so.

      • Ecen@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Thanks! I will give it a watch.

        It does seem to suck. I hope it can get better.

        Edit: Right, so in summary there is no regulation at all on American HOAs and they are also easily taken over by private companies. Makes sense they are bad. Though it’s still astonishing that an organisation can be so unregulated that it can enforce more fines than the local government, without any oversight.