Hi Lemmy, My HOA sent out a email saying dogs are no longer allowed on any grass in common areas or front yards including grass between sidewalk and curb which is… everywhere except our own tiny backyards. The reasoning is some dog urine effected dead spots. Honestly I didn’t even notice them, it’s 95° here and all the grass looks sad.

It’s a walking town and we are not a gated community, non-residents walk their dogs here all the time, so this rule can only punish those who live here and has no ability to effect others.

Anyway, this seems like a ‘we have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas!’ moment so I wanted to see if anyone here had any suggestions I can pass on to maintain a “good” curb appeal ground cover-wise while allowing dogs to do normal dog stuff.

I can converse with the HOA board in good faith, but this rule is basically banning dogs from the neighborhood - which I super did not sign up for.

Pertainent info: PA, USA - Town Home style homes - small central common grass - owned for 8y.

Edit: it seems like people may have glossed over the question part and skipped straight to HOA bashing (which is warranted at times!) so I will rephrase:

What ground covering or neighborhood solutions to similar (perceived) issues have other communities employed?

  • @mallocEnglish
    14•1 year ago

    You have been living there for 8 yrs. Is this the first time the board has been unreasonable? If not, you might not have much recourse. Except for becoming president of the HOA and changing by-laws yourself. Unfortunately, HOAs in America are fucking weird she mostly unregulated which leads to these power tripping people.

    If so, I would converse with them and present the same arguments you posted here.

    In both cases, it would help if you can get your neighbors on the same page and agree. If more than half of the neighbors come to the consensus that it’s unreasonable, could easily force the board’s hand and revert. If they don’t bend, I would then ask your neighbors to re-elect the board. If at this point, you would need to check your HOA by-laws since it wildly differs across the USA.