Assuming you can, you should live around the type of community you want. You sound like you want to live in the HOA controlled landscaping suburb, which is great! OP clearly chose to live somewhere where they wouldn't have neighbors saying these sorts of things. They have put thought into a cool experiment that has apparently paid off for them.

Personally, I've never experienced a neighborhood with a strict HOA that I could stand to stick around in. There always seems to be a minority with too much time on their hands playing neighborhood CIA operative and acting like they've just received power for the first time in their lives. I know that might be a little harsh but there always seems to be some variant of this around.

I live in a condo now where those people still exist, but it is so much better. They have much less power and visibility.

Ah so you're that neighbor that's concerned about what everybody else is doing rather than minding your own business.

There's nothing wrong with a yard full of native plants. You should stop trying to keep up with the neighbors and start letting people live their lives without your input.

I don't disagree with the sentiment of your post, but I don't think that is the point the previous poster was making. It's naive to think other people won't make judgments about your choices. Even more so if you think that those judgments can't affect you. I assume you maintain decent personal hygiene/comb your hair/wear appropriate clothing? Why?

The reality is that the community around you can and _does_ produce effects material to your life, even if you aren't aware of them. Maybe you weren't invited to that BBQ? Maybe you then missed the opportunity to connect with someone in your field of work? Who knows...

Yeah, at the root of this all is a cultural issue more than anything else. Funny enough my mom has let her garden grow wild for years and neighbors have been telling her they love how lush it is from the start, yet somehow don't quite dare to let their own garden free (and before anyone asks, I'm pretty sure it's not a backhanded compliment).

People are way too uptight about lawns

That horrible neighbour growing native plants and attracting pollinators? The horror of it.

As it happens, my neighbors are of varying opinions on the matter. The ones I hear from, love it. I'm sure there are those who hate it, but I don't hear from them. But this is how you make change. You need the pathfinders to show how it can be done and start the discussion.

those people who want a community of only people who think the same way as they do should move out far enough that they don't have neighbors.

Do you think it is unreasonable to want to surround oneself with like-minded individuals? I am not trying to imply the opposite isn't _also_ reasonable.

Yes. It is particularly unreasonable to want to surround yourself with individuals who think grass lawns, kept cut to a uniform length between 4" and 8", are a good idea, and a worthy goal for landscaping.

That's a 1946 ideal. In the same way that it was a 1946 ideal to build a residential-only neighborhood away from the big city, with racist covenants and redlines to keep the black people out. It was designed to evoke the manicured lawns of English and French castles, especially the "green carpet" at Versailles. Mount Vernon and Monticello and the White House featured grass lawns. And the mechanical lawnmower opened that aristocratic status symbol up to those without herds of grazing animals or scything slaves to keep it close-cropped. That, and lawn bowling and golf courses, made everyone crazy for grass lawns.

Abraham Levitt (of Levittown) and Frederick Law Olmstead then installed a whole complex of unreasonability into generations of Americans.

It is reasonable to surround yourself with people, each of whom arranges their affairs such that they need not have similar opinions on the disposition and upkeep of each other's properties. It is reasonable to mind your own business when someone else rips out their useless bermudagrass and replaces it with edible flowering herbs. It is very unreasonable to march up to their door to wave HOA covenants and city landscaping ordinances in their face in an effort to make them replant the grass. Yet that is what neighborhood busybodies do on a regular basis. We can't get rid of them, because they have the 1946 racists on their side, and they got there first, and they built entrenchments--legally, of course, as actual entrenchments would ruin the neighborhood aesthetic.

If you want a lawn, buy yourself a nice, square mile of property in the country, build a castle on it, and cut down everything that could hide approaching infantry. Rotate your herds around so that the grazing fodder is kept short. Then you can also have the formal gardens in the back, and maybe also a hedge maze. If you want a lawn in the suburbs, fine, but keep it on your own property and don't try to grow it over your neighbors' properties with some sick legal scheme.

Nobody is being forced to purchase property governed by an HOA. If you want the freedom to choose how you maintain your property, just... live somewhere else. To be clear, I'm not advocating for these schemes (and would personally never live in such a place), but the idea that it's _unreasonable_ to have a preference is silly. People are allowed to have opinions.

The irony here is that your response violates the very same principals for which you seem to be advocating. "If you want _____, follow my instructions exactly". Hmmm....

- I am fully aware that the kinds of rules, in particular, that spurned this conversation have been (and likely continue to be) abused as a facade to hide bigoted motivations. I absolutely DO NOT condone the tactic of using "personal freedom" as a means to promote these kinds of views. That IS NOT the point I was trying to make, rather, that people often _do want_ to surround themselves with like-minded people. The social science on this is crystal clear.

I am strongly against land covenants, and support the Jeffersonian maxim that the Earth should belong in usufruct to the living. If you want to control how a property is used in perpetuity, the proper way (in my opinion) to do so is to never sell it, not to carve away slices of ownership rights at every sale.

The fact that land covenants were overwhelmingly used for racist purposes is just the largest strike against them, not the only one.

Nobody is forced to purchase HOA property, but everybody has to live somewhere, and pay for that out of their income. If you pin a map wherever some member of the household has to be at some time every weekday, and draw 30-minute isochronic lines for the commute time from each pin, and then sum all the household incomes and multiply by 25%, you can find the intersection of the isochronics, filter out housing that exceeds the rent/mortgage budget, and possibly find that everything that remains is HOA controlled, or that there is nothing left. You can draw new isochronics for longer commute times, or you can choose a property that is not perfect, by virtue of being encumbered by covenants. That "live somewhere else" mantra favors the rich over the poor, simply by virtue of having options available that are more expensive than some people can afford.

I don't believe that community standards should be codified and given the force of law. The standards should be voluntarily upheld by the community. And that requires actually building a community first. Of real people. And that is not a profitable activity for suburban cookie-cutter subdivision home-builders. So the HOA is set up beforehand by the developer, to resemble the sort of community that they imagine people with plenty of house-buying cash might like. Oh la, this vision somehow always includes grass monoculture lawns. And a few of those people can move in during phase I and set themselves up as the HOA overlords. The developer continues to advertise and sell, and then automatically bails when the lots sold cross the percentage threshold, leaving everyone to the mercy of the busybodies, whom they have invested with contractual authority.

Some of us just want to live at a location, and generally be left to our own devices, without being subjected to intrusive assholes all the time.

It's easy to say "just live somewhere else". It's not so easy to live anywhere that isn't spoiled in some way by a negative externality in one form or another. Don't like coal plant exhaust? Live somewhere else! Don't like noise pollution? Live somewhere else! Don't like the smell of rancid livestock manure? Live somewhere else! Don't like a jerk threatening you with foreclosure because you didn't pay the HOA tax and your grass is 10" high? Live somewhere else! Don't like it when people erect TV or radio antennas and paint their front doors purple against the standards of the architectural committee? Live somewhere else!

It is better (in my opinion) to prevent those negative externalities from spoiling people's enjoyment of their own property. Barring some legislated community standard that does so, the only truly effective way to keep your neighbors from screwing up your lifestyle is by effectively not having any. Move to the center of your own square mile.

What a diatribe! Unfortunately (and I mentioned this irony in my previous comment), your last paragraph undermines all of the previous.

> Barring some legislated community standard that does so, the only truly effective way to keep your neighbors from screwing up your lifestyle is by effectively not having any. Move to the center of your own square mile.

Can you not see that the above is essentially saying, "Either create community standards where you live, or (wait for it...) live somewhere else!"? Your argument boils down to "YOU live somewhere else!"

I thought it was more of a screed....

Living on the square mile is the hyperbole non-option. Most people can't live on their own square mile with effectively no neighbors, so they have to find some way to get along with the neighbors they will always have. They either can't afford it in money, or they can't afford it in travel time.

Should I have said "go live on the Moon", or "go live on a libertarian seastead", instead? It's supposed to be an unreasonable alternative to being reasonable to all your diverse neighbors.

Conversely, if you don’t want to adhere to agreed community standards then don’t move into an area with a home owner’s association who meet, agree and try to enforce those standards.

Go grow your wildflowers on your nice, square mile of property in the country instead.

There’s nothing admirable about petty rebels who’ll cry “racism” at the first sign of something they disagree with.