World Ends Tomorrow… Disabled Veterans Hardest Hit
All over the country there are citizens and construction foremen who end up at odds with residential home owners (or condo owners) associations after running afoul of what is almost always described as “oppressive and hard to understand” rules and covenants.
Interesting thing about those often nasty battles, every single one of them begins when someone willfully puts themselves under said “oppressive and hard to understand” rules and covenants.In other words, “You married her.”
The cries from the uninformed masses that last week’s showdown between the group attempting to build a free home for a disabled veteran and the Knob Hill Home Owners Association was about his race or his working class background, rather than legitimate construction concerns, were laughable.Such accusations in fact, are total bullshizzle. Of course that didn’t stop certain sheeple from believing them.
Knob Hill has plenty of active-duty military families, as well as veterans, and if you drive around the neighborhood you will see firsthand a rich mix of human beings that range in ethnicity from pasty white Irish right over to rich mocha African. So in that wonderfully diverse group, just who is it that has it out for a disabled, black war veteran? Not a damn soul, and certainly not the HOA Board of Directors.
The Estate section of Knob Hill has a particularly harsh set of construction and maintenance guidelines for those who dare to build there. Those who have chosen to do that know what a bear it can be to stay compliant, and God bless the poor soul who tries to get away with breaking the rules.
The rules are harsh, because that is the way the people who originally wrote them (and who built in the Estate section) wanted them to be. If you want to maintain an “elite” or “tight ship” atmosphere in any such neighborhood or organization, such strict rules of performance and maintenance are required.
Let me give you a few examples of groups with tough standards that often seem to be restrictive or harsh, that people willingly (and often desperately) subject themselves to:Davidson Fine Arts Magnet School, The Navy Seals, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, The American Bar Association, The Medical College of Georgia’s M.D. Program.
Those exclaiming that the charitable organization Homes For Our Troops should have been granted all types of construction waivers just so the family of a 100 percent disabled war veteran could get their free house are simply not approaching the issue with anything other than sentimentality and misplaced patriotism.
The very first submission by the charity group to the KB HOA showed they intended to build a 2600 square foot house with vinyl siding and a front facing garage. All three details forbidden in the extensive rules that were handed to the group the day they took title to the $85,000, .3 acre lot.
That was not only three strikes in their first at-bat, but it also proves that either the builder did not bother to even glance at the rules (pretty bad), or he intended to ignore the rules outright and do things his own way (even worse).
He was called on his weak hand, and rather than admit that the budget conscious organization had no business planning a middle class home for such a neighborhood, he attempted to use the media and an angry mob to force the point.
I think George Wallace tried a similar stunt at the doors of the University of Alabama some years ago, and, just as in this case, the rule of law prevailed.
When finally forced to admit that they could not and would not build to the HOA standard, HFOT founder John Gonsalves announced they would look to build elsewhere, with the veteran’s family telling the world that they no longer felt welcome in the Knob Hill neighborhood, even though they had been embraced as part of that community (in their rental home) for some months.
Good. They need to go where their home fits, and certainly where they are happy. Wish my former house fit the bill (it is not handicap friendly); I would sell it to them with a smile.
A disabled vet deserves every consideration and benefit from his neighbors; however, a permanent home that he will own only temporarily (as with us all), deserves no such special consideration.
If the HOA had caved on the original submitted plan, you would have had homes worth a half million dollars sitting next to homes that were worth much less (because, by law, if they accepted this one, they would have to accept all of them that applied), and we all know that doesn’t work.Unless you live in Murphy Village. You Might Also Like:
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