Florida Home Owners Demand Removal of TARDIS

[TallanKhan]

What they need to do is get Peter Capali round in his Dr Who get up and hide in the thing. When the HOA come round, he bursts out and goes full Malcolm tucker/12th doctor on them.

I would pay money to see that I truly would.

OK that does it we need to get a kickstarter going. Someone contact Peter Capaldi's agent and find out what it will set us back.

OT: I have a couple of friends stateside who had trouble with a HOA in the past so this doesn't surprise me at all. I love the "It's a mode of transport" response and I really hope they win this one.

On a side note I do find it slightly amusing that this outrage about a life size TV prop is happening in the state where the single biggest employer is Disney World.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

.... REALLY?! Frikkin' A!
http://www.gifbin.com/bin/florida.gif[/img]

But yeah, I have kin folks that live in a place with "rules" and "regulations." This would happen, which is why you couldn't pay me to live in a place like that short of me not having to lift a finger to keep things up to code.

I can see both sides of this argument. Imagine if your neighbors put up something they thought was cool, but it wasn't to you, like,I dunno, a statue made of manure?
I guess it'd be tiresome after a while.

But still, this song came to mind. NSFW, btw.
<youtube=wW3XSqBkz20>

captcha: for the gipper
I guess, yeah?

 

[Metadigital]

I only see one side being petty. The other I see doing something they enjoy on their own property.

You absolutely can and should enjoy your own property - but you should also be considerate of what your neighbors have to stare at out of their windows. Your property is someone else's environment as well. Ignoring that isn't really much different than playing your music too loud or letting something stink up the neighborhood.

 

[Lilani]

Is having neighbours being uptight about what's in your driveway a common thing in America, or is it just Florida that has a bug up its arse?

Well, it depends. Higher-end neighborhoods tend to have these things called "Homeowner's Associations," which are (usually) informal organizations within subdivisions which set standards for how houses within that subdivision should look. You have to keep your grass so green and so short, your house must be within a certain range of color, you can't have certain kinds of clutter in your yard or driveway, etc. They exist in order to ensure somebody doesn't move in and do something which could lower the property value of the surrounding houses, like park a rusty old car in their yard, paint their house black with skulls and crossbones all over it, allow their grass to die and turn brown in the summer, etc.

And by "usually informal" I mean that usually there are no ACTUAL legal ramifications beyond potentially becoming a pariah in your neighborhood when you defy the HOA. The only exception is when it's a gated community, timeshare, condo, lease, or any other situation where you aren't the sole owner of the property and ARE under legal constraints which you signed in order to buy or rent the property.

There is an unhealthy amount of elitism when it comes to this sort of thing in suburban areas of America; they are a huge contributor to the fact that America's most watered crop is grass. Millions, if not billions, of gallons of freshwater are used in America every year just to keep grass green. It was one thing that practically nauseated me on a daily basis when I lived in Florida. Every morning sprinklers would go off everywhere, dousing millions of acres of grass, and some malfunctioning and frittering the water away down storm drains. The biggest watering states like Florida and California have mandated limits on when you can water your grass (not during the hottest hours of the day, not during droughts, etc) and many use water recapture systems to use what would otherwise be undrinkable waste water. But it's still incredibly wasteful and one of the many things I wish we as a country could get over. Luckily, here in Missouri, there isn't much grass watering done even in cities and higher-end neighborhoods. Though fun fact: Kansas City does have a lot of fountains, it has the second highest number of fountains in a single city in the entire WORLD, only surpassed by Rome itself.

OT: I think that HOA needs to be made aware that there's a significant chance a life-sized TARDIS could RAISE their property value. It definitely appeals to the sensibilities of young people, and old people probably don't fucking care enough one way or another.

 

[Baresark]

There is definitely no such stipulation against blue boxes in existence. This falls out of their venue, not that I expect anyone in authority to take it seriously. The couple that loves Doctor Who I hope loves for life.

Actually, no it doesn't. You buy a condo in a certain place and you agree to the HOA's rules for the neighborhood. There need not be a stipulation for it for them have it removed as that is what the buyers agreed to when they bought the house. It's stupid, but it can be enforced by law as a contractual obligation.

OT: That is why you don't buy a house in a place with a HOA. They are awful things. Nothing is worse than buying a house in a place where you get to tell other people what you are allowed to display in your yard or driveway. They also do things like tell you what color your house can be and generally prohibit any house from being too different from the rest.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

But- But- The Stepfordian unicity of the neighbourhood is violated by the presence of the Ominous Blue Call Box! Don't you at all care about homogenous urban design, OP? Retirees are going to face the dreaded pall of CONFUSION if they drive by your front door! PLEASE, THINK OF THE OLD FOLKS! THEY'RE FLORIDA'S LIFE BLOOD!

All jokes aside, I'd love to have that couple on my block and I'm not really surprised. Florida seems to be a sort of Mecca for people with exacting perceptions of normality or, on the opposite, adorably clueless sorts who get themselves into a tizzy for nothing of substance. There's ordinary, sane people in that State, for sure, but they don't hog the limelight like the rest do.

 

[FalloutJack]

Poit

But since there is no rule governing a TARDIS, it just isn't covered.

 

[ccggenius12]

OT: I've never understood how HOAs can get away with stuff like this. Isn't this crap against the last two parts in "Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness"?

You can have all the liberty you want, in so far as you accept that there may be consequences for your actions. You're free to pursue happiness all you like, at no point did anyone promise that you'd find it.
OT: The homeowners association agreement is stupid, but it's not a EULA, you need to read the crap that you're signing. Ideally you'd just not live in Florida, it kinda sucks there.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

OT: The homeowners association agreement is stupid, but it's not a EULA, you need to read the crap that you're signing. Ideally you'd just not live in Florida, it kinda sucks there.

Disclaimer: Sorry for singling your comment out, this isn't just directed at you but at all the people badmouthing this quite wonderful state

Y'know what? I hear this kind of crap about Florida so much, I have to wonder as a born and raised Floridian if the people saying it have actually spent time in various parts of Florida beyond a vacation. I've lived in Central, West, South and East parts of Florida and there are varying degrees of the people who live here. I've also lived in California, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee and spent some time in Ohio and North Carolina. I'd have to say that from personal experience, there aren't any less or more "great" people here or anywhere else. Its just about as average as anywhere in the US, and there's no truth to the idea that the entire state is full of insane or stupid people in any way shape or form.

We've got a decent economy, there's plenty of places that I've lived where people are insanely nice and not just because tourists might not come back if they aren't. Sure there's a collection of bigots and assholes but here's a hint, they're everywhere and not just Florida.

The worst state I've ever been? California. One year of living out there and I honestly met more disgusting, selfish pricks in that one year than the entirety of my formative years in Florida and thats including dealing with retail customers and tourists. Whether it was the SF Bay area or down south near LA, the people I met (with a handful of exceptions) were such plastic assholes I decided a year was too much of my life spent there.

We may get a lot of bad press, but in this media age there's no such thing as a story that makes anyone look good anymore. It doesn't sell, so the good things that exist hardly ever come to light.

Yeah like I said there are bad people around, and there are places after 30 some years of life here I'd avoid and recommend nobody ever visit, but I'd bet that just about anywhere you go there's places like that.

We're a huge peninsula that takes for fucking ever to get across to get to another state and in that time you're going to pass through a huge melting pot of cultural demographics. You can't lump Floridians together by news reports and its absurd and insulting as hell to do so. It'd be like trying to paint the population of Great Britain with the same brush (considering we're only about 20k square miles smaller its not that absurd a comparison).

So please folks, stop being so foolish as to try to be "witty" and paint an entire population of 19 million with the same brush, or tell us just how much it sucks to live here. It really doesn't unless you've an aversion to mild winters and humid summers, and people here are just about as good and bad as anywhere else. And if you've had bad experiences here as a tourist? Blame it on the assholes who've come before you and soured our moods toward outsiders "daytripping" in our hometowns. Nothing can piss you off like having to clean up after asshole tourists who don't seem to care that while they might only be here a day or two (maybe a week) those of us who actually live here aren't on vacation and work near 'round the clock to make sure they have a damn good time.

Anyway sorry for the rant.

TL;DR - Please stop being so close-minded and lumping a state of 19 million people together when we're a very diverse group of people both culturally and ethnically. There are no more assholes here than anywhere else in the world.

 

[killerbee256]

Is having neighbours being uptight about what's in your driveway a common thing in America, or is it just Florida that has a bug up its arse?

Well, it depends. Higher-end neighborhoods tend to have these things called "Homeowner's Associations," which are (usually) informal organizations within subdivisions which set standards for how houses within that subdivision should look. You have to keep your grass so green and so short, your house must be within a certain range of color, you can't have certain kinds of clutter in your yard or driveway, etc. They exist in order to ensure somebody doesn't move in and do something which could lower the property value of the surrounding houses, like park a rusty old car in their yard, paint their house black with skulls and crossbones all over it, allow their grass to die and turn brown in the summer, etc.

And by "usually informal" I mean that usually there are no ACTUAL legal ramifications beyond potentially becoming a pariah in your neighborhood when you defy the HOA. The only exception is when it's a gated community, timeshare, condo, lease, or any other situation where you aren't the sole owner of the property and ARE under legal constraints which you signed in order to buy or rent the property.

Sounds like communism without any of the benefits.

 

[EssThree]

Man, this has been an enlightening thread, but for all the wrong reasons. Thanks for the info peeps. Scary to think that grass length is the biggest concern in the world for some people...

 

[Roxor]

Man, this has been an enlightening thread, but for all the wrong reasons. Thanks for the info peeps. Scary to think that grass length is the biggest concern in the world for some people...

As far as I'm concerned, the only thing you should ever do to your lawn is mow it once a month (assuming it's not the middle of winter when it doesn't grow). No weeding, no fertiliser, and definitely no watering. Either it makes do with what it gets or it can go and die.

 

[Azure23]

Holy shit. This is right out of a Tim Dorsey novel. Never change Florida.

Everyone reading this go buy and read Florida Roadkill right now, don't think, just do it. And thank me in the PM.

 

[Darxide]

Rule #1: NEVER live anywhere where you have to join a HOA.

HOAs are cancerous shitholes.

 

[ccggenius12]

OT: The homeowners association agreement is stupid, but it's not a EULA, you need to read the crap that you're signing. Ideally you'd just not live in Florida, it kinda sucks there.

*snip*

I was talking more about the fact that it's hot and humid as balls, but I can see how that wouldn't have come across from my post.

 

[Flames66]

I only see one side being petty. The other I see doing something they enjoy on their own property.

You absolutely can and should enjoy your own property - but you should also be considerate of what your neighbors have to stare at out of their windows. Your property is someone else's environment as well. Ignoring that isn't really much different than playing your music too loud or letting something stink up the neighborhood.

Too an extent, I agree with you. There are houses near where I live that have bright spot-lights set up in their gardens. This is an issue because it shines straight in my bedroom window, disturbing me. We have spoken to them about this, but nothing has changed. I suspect they do not have the tools or ability to adjust the angle of the light. I have not taken the issue further and only will if it disturbs my sleep, which so far my blinds have prevented.

A similar instance, the house across from me has bright blue winter seasonal decoration lights. They do not bother me, but do disturb my elderly neighbors, who keep thinking a police car or ambulance is parked outside. They have mentioned this to the owners of the lights, who responded amicably and have deactivated them.

These are both legitimate problems which were easily settled by speaking to those involved or by small adjustments to blinds. I do not see any legitimacy to the complaints discussed above.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

OT: The homeowners association agreement is stupid, but it's not a EULA, you need to read the crap that you're signing. Ideally you'd just not live in Florida, it kinda sucks there.

*snip*

I was talking more about the fact that it's hot and humid as balls, but I can see how that wouldn't have come across from my post.

That is the one argument I can understand, not everyone can take our temperatures and humidity. Just like us native Floridians aren't much for temperatures below 70 degrees Fahrenheit and seeing ice beyond the freezer is a curiosity at best and the work of the Devil at worst.

 

[Scow2]

The sanctification of the contract is something our nation needs to get past quickly.

Sanctification of contract is not the problem. Contract is required for trust (And if you truly believe that contracts shouldn't be compelled to be honored, you deserve whatever shitty credit score living like that gives you, and being cut off from being trusted by anyone to be true to your word)

The problem is the abuse of contracts, such as Homeowner's Associations.

 

[frizzlebyte]

The sanctification of the contract is something our nation needs to get past quickly.

Sanctification of contract is not the problem. Contract is required for trust (And if you truly believe that contracts shouldn't be compelled to be honored, you deserve whatever shitty credit score living like that gives you, and being cut off from being trusted by anyone to be true to your word)

The problem is the abuse of contracts, such as Homeowner's Associations.

Yeah, I don't think "sanctification" is exactly the word I'm looking for, and I certainly don't think that contracts should simply be considered so much toilet paper, if that's really how my post came across.

The issue that I have with contract law (at least in the USA) is that contracts tend to be, as you said, abused. One really good point to would be the "binding arbitration" clause that seems to be popping up everywhere now. In the USA, arbitration tends to be very, very friendly with the business party in an arbitration case, and thus the very inclusion of an arbitration clause is very unfair to the consumer, in my view. Yet the court system (and people in general) tend to go with the "well, it was in the contract" argument when anyone tries to point out how unfair it is.

Perhaps what I have an issue with is the holes in American consumer protection laws, rather than contracts themselves, though I still maintain that our infatuation with using the contract (rather than the legal system) to settle disputes is something that we need to work on.