Colorado HOA calls cops on kids’ lemonade stand to get ‘illegal’ operation shut down
Colorado HOA calls cops on kids’ lemonade stand to get ‘illegal’ operation shut down
The Centennial State, bizarrely, has spent years debating the legal rights of kids to sell lemonade
Authorities say that HOA members first summoned police due to reports of “children running an illegal lemonade stand on county right of way.”
When the sheriff’s deputies arrived, they “found that the children were not blocking the roadway but did ask them to move back from the road a few feet for their safety.”
Thinking the matter was resolved, the officers then moved on to other calls about parking issues in the area, only to head back to the scene of the stand when the “original reporting parties came out and began yelling at the children claiming they were on private property.”
As the refreshment row reached fever pitch, the officers discovered that the children running the stand themselves lived within the HOA and that the lemonade pushers “had a right to be there” on the association’s communally held property, leaving the wayward youths to continue their street war against scurvy.
Assholes.
Run for your local HOA to dismantle and disband it if you have one. Make it your platform and every person who's ever gotten a petty ticket from a nosy nobody will vote for you.
This right here is the answer. HOAs usually have fairly complicated rules, but they're absolutely are and are required to be bylaws that dictate the operation of the HOA, how board members are elected, what responsibility is the HOA has to the residents, etc. A big part of why HOAs get out of control is because the only people who bother to serve on their boards are the busybodies you least want in charge of your HOA. So simple solution, run and get yourself and your friends elected. Then then when you have power over the HOA, push through a bylaw amendment that significantly restricts the HOA's authority and makes it very difficult to get it back. IE, The HOA may not create any new rule or regulation or penalty governing what people do on their private property without an in-person vote at a meeting where at least 90% of the residents personally show up and vote yes, however the president or board may remove any such regulations or penalties at will.
Or if you have support, just push through a charter amendment that says the HOA ceases to exist on some specific date and releases all CC&Rs for all governed properties.
I'm on my local strata council and from the earliest meetings discovered my nemesis who is there for exactly the opposite purpose of me. I want a permissive atmosphere that doesn't look for trouble and only responds to actual problems instead of nitpicking to create unnecessary trouble.
My nemesis, on the other hand, is somebody who I believe can only get an erection by covertly causing another human being frustration and torment. By getting myself on council he cannot get rid of me nor can he use his power to abuse me. I have a small but dedicated power base that hates this guy and they all give me their proxy votes at the AGM specifically because I am supposed to sit on him and keep him down as much as possible. If I ever move than someone else will need to take over the job of sitting on him so he doesn't think he has power.
In this area there’s a HOA but most of the people who live here are renters and don’t get a say. This leads to strange regulations that are sometimes impossible to follow.
Yes, but let us take a moment to appreciate the journalist's fine end line:
leaving the wayward youths to continue their street war against scurvy.
Losers whose entire identity is defined by the tiny amount of power they have.
IRL trolls. Human scum with nothing better to do but shit on others.
Like, get a life.
street war against scurvy
I can just hear the guy laughing his ass off while writing this story about the most petty individuals on the face of the fucking planet.
Honestly, if some dick cheese were harassing my kids about their lemonade stand, they would be unwittingly be subscribing to a life time supply of a burning paper bag full of dog shit on their doorstep.
AHOAAB
There's a Moby Dick/white whale joke in there somewhere but I'm not clever enough to make it.
They should have arrested the adults for harassing the children - could be considered assault under the right conditions.
This is the least psycho cop I've ever read about.
Can we ban HOAs? You never see a good story about them posted. At best it seems like they lead to boring cookie cutter neighborhoods.
My aunt lives in an HOA that was formed because the city wanted to cut down a big forested area to make a cookie-cutter neighborhood. The forest protected a watershed and was home to many native animals.
So the few people who lived there formed an HOA to gain all rights to the area; sold a few more properties to developers with strict rules so the houses built didn’t impact the wildlife or water, and set a large chunk aside as a ‘community park’ that really is a forest with a few walking trails and a nice pond.
The HOA fees mostly go towards maintaining the forest; planting natives, paying top-grade arborists to care for the trees, setting up bird boxes, stuff like that.
That being said, I’m well aware that hers is an outlier, and most HOAs are just excuses for bratty busybodies to harass their neighbors.
I have. I've lived in HOAs where utilities, gardening/lawn care, parking lot upkeep, trash/recycling, community center, were taken care of by the HOA.
You only hear about bad HOAs because people in those HOAs only care about property values from aesthetics. In reality, a good HOA is like a properly run union - taking care of its members by providing cheaper, common services via collective bargaining.
I currently live in an HOA townhome neighborhood, and I'll be the first to say that I'd abolish it if I could
That said, mine isn't too bad.
They have some nitpicky bullshit, doors have to be painted a certain color, trash cans have to be out of sight from the front of your house, we can't have hot tubs, fire pits, or tiki torches, etc.
But they do handle the lawn mowing, snow removal, trash service, have a playground in the neighborhood, and do the roofing and siding for the homes every X years (I forget exactly how often off the top of my head.) and they require you to get your fire place inspected every year if you're going to use it, which I appreciate since I'm connected to my neighbors houses.
Now as far as I'm concerned, my lawn is the size of a postage stamp, I could practically mow it with a weed wacker (which I own because the landscapers do a shitty job around my deck) and I'm perfectly happy to shovel out the 2 parking spaces in front of my house and my like 20ft of sidewalks and front walkway. I also think trash pickup should be on the city government paid for by my taxes, but alas, that's not the case in my town and residents have to figure out trash service by themselves. And I don't give a rats ass if there's a playground in my neighborhood, there's a perfectly fine park about a 5 minute walk away. And for what I pay in HOA dues I could just save up for my own roofing and siding instead and probably get better and longer-lasting stuff.
My HOA manages communal property (trails, playgrounds, the pool and tennis/basketball courts) and does grounds keeping. They have some rules I find annoying but most of their rules are sensible (like don’t build a fire pit below your deck and don’t block your neighbors driveway with your cars). Ultimately, my HOA is just not that big of a deal. You don’t hear about HOAs like that because they are not interesting enough to post about online.
They have some rules I find annoying but most of their rules are sensible (like don’t build a fire pit below your deck and don’t block your neighbors driveway with your cars)
Everywhere I’ve ever lived, both of those are actual laws. This is like saying the HOA has rules against burglary.
But maintenance of communal property makes sense, and I’d join an HOA that had in its bylaws that it will never do anything other than that.
Problem is they do serve a purpose. Good for home values (in theory). Bad if you actually want to live in your home.
I've actually seen that HOAs fared the worst after stuff like the 2007 crash and took much longer to rebound versus non-HOA properties.
I'll never understand how banning shit like pickup trucks in driveways has any effect on property values. It's not like they're permanent fixtures that persist from one owner to the next.
Can we ban HOAs?
Sadly, no. You can only summon larger and larger HOAs to consume the smaller ones.
Many people choose to live in neighborhoods with an HOA and I don't see why they should be forbidden to do that. "I know what's good for you better than you do" ought to require a high burden of proof.
I still have compassion for those who live a HOA and then go on to complain because choosing to live there is a complex decision involving many factors. In some parts of the country, there might be no options to practically avoid a HOA.
“I know what’s good for you” is precisely the ethos of the HOA. I’d have less compassion if housing wasn’t such a tight commodity. In that case, it’s a choice. But I think in the current market it doesn’t always feel like one.
I don’t think an outright ban is the right answer either.
I am once again so glad the subdivision I live in has no HOA.
We have plenty of kids with lemonade stands and people feel free to decorate their homes however they like.
The person yelling at the kids would not have windows in their house for a while if I lived there.
Not having windows? HOA violation. Better call the cops on them.
Did you know you can buy seeds for common weeds?
Haha. I do.
I hope one day if I ever end up in an HOA that I end up in one where the HOA members all live in it as well. I would take extra care to heavily salinate everyone's yards. Full scorched Earth for everyone!
Why do some people just wake up in the morning and go "I hate fun. Time to go be a villain in a Disney Channel show today!"
We had an almost literal Disney villain as president in 2016 and he might become one again. A lot of people in this country hate fun.
I’m guessing the cops came and shot the kids’ dog.
Bootlicker.
Just a reminder that it's not necessary a HOA that is bad, but the people who sit on any decision making within the HOA. Just like the PTA, it seems to attract assholes.
Fucking Summit County. Yuppie hive of scum and villainy
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If you have any questions or comments about me, you can make a post to LW Support lemmy community.Are there not regulations about food and beverage businesses in the States? Would have thought the litigious USA would have been all "hurr durr these children may not have washed their hands adequately when squeezing those lemons, so someone could get sick, and they don't have a safe food handling certificate!"
There probably are local regulations that make this technically illegal but these aren't generally enforced on such high profile operations like a neighborhood lemonade stand run by a 10 year old.