this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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No Lawns
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A community devoted to alternatives to monoculture lawns, with an emphasis on native plants and conservation. Rain gardens, xeriscaping, strolling gardens, native plants, and much more! (from official Reddit r/NoLawns)
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There's very little people can do. In order to fix things you usually need to get on the board, but the people who run HOAs are usually retired nimby assholes and they hold meetings while most in the neighborhood are at work so nobody can oppose them. They then reelect themselves to the board and the cycle continues. HOAs are usually a thing set up by the builders to make their lives easier for some paperwork and stuff. They absolutely suck 99% of the time.
Native plant garden bans aren't just an HOA thing. Many counties or cities ban them too. Much of it stems for chemical manufacturers selling the white picket fence image after WWII to veterans receiving funding to buy a home. The chemical manufacturers pushed hard for that image so they could keep making as much profit as they made manufacturing for weapons during the wartime.
This means that trying to fight your HOA on yards is useless, you have to go higher and it's a big big fight
Thats why you dont dight the HOA, you sabotage them with geurilla gardening.
I'm always down for conscious rebellion but that's a great way to get a lien on your house if you're caught for those who don't know.
Growing any food in our front yard is illegal in my city. Guess who's currently growing sage in the front garden.
Builders are encouraged by the local government to set up HOAs because it lets said government shirk its responsibility to maintain infrastructure and services.
If your subdivision is gated, its streets are private and the homeowners are responsible for repaving them, for instance.
(Of course, that's only a motivation cities caught onto relatively recently. The original reason for HOAs -- at least for neighborhoods of single-family houses, as opposed to condos that have legitimate shared maintenance -- was to help keep black people out.)
Good input. I was definitely doing some "draw the rest of the owl" for brevity about their history and impact.
Man none of that is true.
You make a compelling case
I made my case in a different comment because responding to a user that claims board members can reelect themselves completely disqualifies them from having an actual conversation about the topic. Everything they said is made up from someone who has read too much online from other people that have no clue what they’re talking about.
If you like videos, you should definitely watch Climate Townś "America's Dumbest Crop" when you have the time:
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=KLYMjPNppRQ
Your link doesn’t work for me, but in any case, none of what that person says is true. Maybe they have had anecdotal things happen like that, but the majority of it makes no sense. HOAs are built with boards, residents can vote out those boards. If those things actually happened the boards would get voted out and the HOA dissolved. HOA boards can’t reelect themselves (this should have been the first sign that what that user was saying was bullshit).