HOA fines man over handing out water in heat
HOA fines man over handing out water in heat
A homeowner in Goodyear, Arizona is locked in a dispute with his homeowner's association over his practice of distributing free cold water from his driveway.
How anyone that lives in a country that has HOAs can unironically call it "land of the free" is beyond me
Some HOAs can be quite nice as they're just there to add some basic community rules. However, many are hijacked by a handful of narcissistic individuals who let this insignificant amount of power go to their heads and they turn into a bunch Mussolinis
"ProPTeRy VaLUes!"
No one sees any value in just living in their homes. They have to be statements on your personal wealth, and though that, statements on your character as a human being. Living under the thumb of narcissists is a small price to pay so your neighbor doesn't look poor.
What do you think a city or state is? Gotta have rules, good luck living in a neighborhood without a HOA when the fat shirtless guy next door turns his front lawn into an open air trash heap.
My city has bylaws for that sort of thing. I can't let my grass turn into a jungle either. That's also a bylaw. Shoveling snow into the street? Guess what, bylaw.
Don't need an HOA full of overbearing Karen's to Lord over me about what color I painted my garage on top of the fairly loose bylaws that I also need to abide by.
At least with bylaws they're enforced by public workers, not Karen from next door.
turns his front lawn into an open air trash heap
The town/city is suppose to handle that.
Plenty of places don't have HOAs, like my neighborhood. We just bitch at each other. If things got really bad you could just call the city.
As a European with HOA's I would like to ask how you if you've seen how people handle things outside of "freedom land"
That's my next door neighbour!
If you’re in a state with ballot measures, then you could campaign for rules against single family home HOAs.
He is.
Reading letters and things from hundreds of years ago when they hanged and gibbeted pirates on the streets of towns tells me I'd rather them be hanged far away from town so they don't stink up the place.
Having once been on the board of one, I agree.
Naturally the solution to all of life's problems is murder.
Isn't it though? Was slavery ended by debate? Did Lincoln send a strongly worded letter to the president of the CSA that tore at his heart strings and made him see the humanity in his slaves? How about the Gilded Age? The unions sat the bosses down and laid out the facts and the oligarchs of the day just let us have the 8hr day, 40hr week, weekends, pensions. All out of the goodness of their hearts.
Some people just need killing. That's all there is to it. I'm American. I know how we're propagandized from the age of comprehension into believing that violence is never the answer. But that's all it was. Propaganda. It took murder to make United Healthcare provide the service they exist to provide. And it didn't last 6 months. At that point more murder was necessary but nobody stepped forward.
So if I get married and move into a new house and we now have two incomes, so we decide to rent the old house instead of selling it.. the answer is death by hanging? For both of us? Kids too? My parents helped me buy the first house.. they culpable as well?
He thought HOA meant hand outs available. It’s blazing hot af, who would care for some cold water? Yeah, what a turd this guy is. Goddamn hoa needs to stroke out & get a new board.
The good news is he read the HOA agreement, initiated a special meeting through signatures, and now the neighborhood is holding a special election to remove the dickhead board members.
Thank you, comment that summarises what's in the article, I was afraid I might have to read the article to get the full picture.
And the update is… fuck off, 210 votes is not counted for. Someone updated the comments
I don't know these idiot board members think is going to happen after blocking the vote. It's going to go MORE viral now and they'll get voted out even harder.
Article talked about that some here: https://nypost.com/2025/07/12/us-news/arizona-homeowner-david-martin-fined-100-repeatedly-for-giving-out-free-water-in-heat-amid-clash-with-hoa/
Dammit! Thank you for the update.
Ugh this isn't what HOAs are for!
HOAs are intended to harass and discriminate against black and brown people so that they don't move in, or at least immediately leave.
Not white guys with majestic beards.
He must've been giving water to black or brown people, it's the only justifiable reason.
HOAs are intended to harass and discriminate against black and brown people so that they don’t move in
Lol I was going to make a joke here about "Redline Homes Inc." - but it turns out there really is such a company, in Oklahoma of course.
JFC - of course there is 🤦♀️
My favorite HOA conflict:
https://www.jeepforum.com/threads/epic-hoa-parking-boot-battle.572540/
TL;DR - HOA boots a car parked outside a guys house. He puts the car up on dollies and pushes it into his garage.
They accuse him of stealing the boot.
He tells them they can come get it any time they want.
They tell him it's $140 to remove the boot.
He tells them "Nah, it's cool, I don't need to drive the car." LOL.
Edit Also in Arizona... Something in the water down there?
There's a new-ish genre of Youtubers these days, Arizona home inspectors showing what a gigantic clusterfuck new house construction is there. I can't decide which is my favorite disaster: exterior walls that are just paper and stucco, or the gas leaks at literally every house. In AZ, the HOAs are the least of people's problems.
Fair warning for anyone who wants to boot my car I own a cordless angle grinder...
They can get you for destruction of property then. Luckily most non-law enforcement use cheap ass boots. I had an apartment complex boot an old truck of mine because I let the registration expire on since I was about to trade it in for a new(er) car. I simply deflated the tire enough to wiggle it free and threw it in a bush, then I pumped the tire back up and drove it to a Walmart parking lot for a couple of days.
fucking photobucket killed all the pics
(also the forum software should have allowed uploading pics even in 2004)
the heat does something to your brain, or its just the sort of people who move to arizona are already freaks
Epic story, thanks a lot for sharing the link!, sad there never was an ending
HOA seems to be such a stupid thing. Glad there's nothing even remotely that bad everywhere.
HOAs seem like they should be illegal. Having a contract in perpetuity that is attached to the purchase of property seems like it shouldn't be allowed. So it is not only bound to the person who originally signed, but to whoever purchases the relevant property afterwards, and that gives other people rights over you that can be changed afterwards and are only limited by their conscience.
I basically don't think you should be able to create a government by using a contract.
HOAs are the direct result of racists trying to work around de-jure segregation being abolished, so yeah.
I basically don't think you should be able to create a government by using a contract.
It's basically what Anarco-capitalism wants to do. Incidentally, HOAs form the best real world argument against Anarco-capitalism.
as much as I hate them and would never want to live in one, they can serve purposes like discouraging the use of rusty vehicles as yard art
The part that I hate about it is obliging future homeowners to participate.
I get that the obligation was the main reason why HOA types wanted to build HOAs, but I'll never live under an HOA. As soon as I'm aware there's an HOA involved, I'm out. Burn the paperwork. I'm not buying it.
.... Not that I plan on moving ever again.
I mean, hoas do have uses. Like a building in a city that has many condos in it. Gotta have a common method to ensure building upkeep, etc.
So idk about illegal but I wouldn't choose to buy into one in the burbs.
I'm curious about why condos are a purchase given you share land with others
HOAs are elected and operated by the residents. Yeah they're often shitty, but as residents you can change them.
Also, government creation contracts are called constitutions. Lots of countries have them.
Also, government creation contracts are called constitutions. Lots of countries have them.
I also enjoy pedantic arguments, but I try to remember to avoid them when I think the topic is important. I had to stop myself from arguing against this point, because even if I won the argument, it wouldn't mean anything.
If you squint a lot, HOAs could be a mechanism for bringing neighborhoods together. It allows them to self-govern over the shared resources for the neighborhood. Want to get a company to run fiber to everyone's home, or build a solar/wind farm for fewer dollars per MW than rooftop solar could ever do? An HOA is a legal mechanism to setup the financing and agreements to make that work in an affordable way for the residents.
Most HOAs are not setup for anything like that. They're for requiring what fencing contractor you have to use and banning natural lawns.
My new neighborhood has a corporate HOA and they won’t hand over control to the residents until a certain % of houses are occupied. The problem is the builder has been building houses for the past 4 years and they’re far away from completion, so we have to deal with the shitty HOA until then.
You "can" change them, but don't some/most HOAs have it so that the more properties you own in a HOA, the more voting power/votes you have? Like you own 5 properties, thus have 5 votes?
No good deed goes unpunished.
What a dystopian hell hole. My condolences to everyone having something like HOA in their lives. May you all experience a civilised and free country at some point.
The HOA I live in doesn't allow motorcycles in the driveway. Garage only.
I have two. They take up more room than you'd expect.
I see many homeless people in my area, I am more withdrawn but I always think of grabbing a case of water for our hot times to hand out, even if it may not be cool. Sort of too shy to follow through previously but it gets like 30-40C this part of Canada in the summer and we sort of need water to live.
Whoever ratted it him out is just jealous of his beard.
I doubt anyone ratted him out. HOA "inspections" are a thing. I was in an HOA once, and i had a shutter fall off my house. They took a picture of it and sent it to me to tell me i had to fix it.
That HOA was good tho. The shutter had been off 6 months and the note said, "most of the time, residents dont even know theyre in violation. So you have a month to prove you come up with a plan to fix it." Which was like, call and get a quote. Then just sent them a pic when it was back up
Considering board members are made up of residents, there's a good chance it was one of them then. Even them, that's some petty nonsense.
My mom's neighborhood is an HOA, and they have a rule of no work/utility truck overnight parking. I have a shell and lumber rack on my truck that has a conduit box and ladders on it, and she's gotten flagged for it a couple of times (there's a specific crotchety old neighbor she suspects), but she's just told them to go pound sand, and that's somehow worked.
Fuck HOAs. I've vowed to never live in one. I know it's not an option for some people due to where they live, but I am not dealing with that crap.
You hired somebody to put a shutter back on? It's just a couple of screws!
Man, I could never live with an HOA. It’s just dumb.
They are suprisingly difficult to avoid. Shared units, condos and apartments all have associations that are just an HOA with a different name. The only difference for these are that they are responsible for replacing the shared roof every 20-ish years or so.
Having shared assets to maintain is legitimate, but the vast majority of HOAs (those governing single-family neighborhoods) don't really have that as an excuse. Even if they do have something to maintain, like a private street or a pool, it's only because the local government was shirking its responsibility to provide what should have been public infrastructure.
(And that's why they're so common: because low-density development is so ruinously unsustainable, governments heavily encourage developers to establish HOAs so that the time bomb of future maintenance is the homeowners' problem instead of bankrupting the city.)
Im curious, what could an HOA do if he just refused to pay?
Depending on the covenants, they could most likely put a lien on his home, and even take his home from him (eventually)
Fuck HOAs
That's the fucked up thing about HOAs. Their rules are legally enforceable, as long as the rules themselves are legal to impose. Just like any other contract. It's a fucked up system.
Would be interesting to know what rule they might have that could be interpreted in such a way to ban giving out water (and which should be referenced in a citation, no?) but the article doesn't mention anything of the sort.
It does:
The Canyon Trails HOA and its management company, F-S Residential, began issuing citations to Martin last year for having a cooler in his driveway.
My guess is the language about what can't be visible is very general to cover all kinds of things that could be considered "unsightly" like bikes, clothes, trash, etc.
I'm sure it could be fixed with some provision about the items being actively used but HOAs are dicks.
My guess is...
So in other words, the article doesn't mention which rule could be interpreted to ban giving out water.
Free country bro
Don't tread on me
It's not the water-handing-out in and of itself. Also, yeah these people often suck and enforcement often makes them look like the tools they are, but make no mistake about it, there are people that like it that their neighborhoods are policed by Karens who keep it looking like a sterile movie set. The moral of the story is, stay the fuck away from HOAs.
Here are two common clauses that are probably being applied here:
Residential Use All Lots within the Properties shall be used, improved, and devoted exclusively to single-family residential use. No trade, business, commercial activity, or profession of any kind, whether for profit or not, shall be conducted, maintained, or permitted on any part of any Lot without the prior written consent of the Board of Directors. This prohibition shall include, but not be limited to, any activity that generates regular visitor or client traffic to the Lot.
Prohibition of Signs No sign, billboard, poster, or advertising device of any character shall be erected, placed, permitted, or maintained on any Lot or on the exterior of any Dwelling, except for one (1) "For Sale" or "For Rent" sign of a type, size, and location approved by the Architectural Control Committee, and small signs identifying the occupant's name or address as permitted by the Committee. All other signs are expressly prohibited without prior written approval from the Board.
So the board could approve Donald Trump boards and deny everything else? This sounds intensely dystopian.
HE WAS HANDING OUT "FREAK OLD WATER!!"
Think of all the children that were saved from his poison!
I would give HOA murderers a get out of jail free pass, honestly.
Without reading the article and having dealt with an HOA in the past I will guess he was causing more traffic in the area
I always knew that dihydrogen monoxide was a threat to the population
What is the point giving free water to neighbor kids or people walking their dogs? They, by definition, have homes within walking distance with their own unlimited water supply.
You’ve never left the house and thought to yourself “man I wish I brought water?”
Honestly, I don't think so. Unless I'm going somewhere where water will be unavailable for several hours, but then I'll just stop and get some.
Have you spent much time in Arizona?
Cities make people crazy.
Lol you sheltered as hell, most of these hoas exist outside of cities in suburbs, where people like you live watching fox news, getting paranoid and angry over imaginary threats
Cities? Money. HOAs are designed to keep the poors out, and by poors they mean other colored people.
HOAs are full of crazies.
Cities are usually fine..... Not all cities though.
Doesn't really have anything to do with location. There are nutters and busy bodies everywhere. Most of the non city people voted for the president and representatives that are destroying the usa.
That is the truth. The bigger, the denser, the crazier. It's some kind of emergent feedback effect. Like a mass of uranium.
Of course the city dwellers will protest that assertion.
In a nation of so many firearms how are these people ballsy enough to pull this nonsense. It seems like a great way to end up trapped in a burning house.
As in pissing off someone that lives in your neighbourhood by being this level of awful seems like a supremely bad idea.
What now?
Unless I've misunderstood, which is entirely possible, HOA people aren't anonymous remote bureaucrats - they live there, don't they?
Antagonising someone with batshit stuff like this seems like a good way to cause significant problems. Such as being forced, through the threat of mortal violence, into a situation involving arson. It feels like a plausible level of rage in response to this kind of unreasonable arseholery.
As in:
Being an absolute piece of human garbage and treating someone the wrong way + recipient of shoddy treatment has easy access to the threat of mortal violence = bad news bears
I found an update about the vote to remove the three board members.
Homeowners voted 190 to 20 in favour of removal, however the board cancelled the vote claiming there wasn't a 24 hour notice given to the community and subsequently that 210 votes might not qualify a quorum of more than a thousand homes.
Oh, that will go well. Piss off people and make their vote not count. The people that know where you live and can see your front door...
To play devil's advocate for a moment, having a sufficient vote notification period is important.
Though if that were the board's true concern, they surely would have announced intention to notify the community alongside their statement cancelling the vote for this reason, which hasn't happened insofar as I can tell.
I think that if half of the community shows up with less than a day's notice to make themselves heard, that's probably representative enough for how the community feels about these board members.
Those kinds of shenanigans get HOAs nullified by court order.
Donald stated you’ll never have to vote again… retards cheered. This is how it will start.
Luckily both of those are easy to remediate. The bylaws state what is a quorum and you can give more notice. This won’t stop things.
Well that sucks. I don't know what their rules are, but having dealt with shitty HOA's, if all the rules of the agreement were followed and you get their attorneys involved, their attorneys in most cases will tell those dickheads knock it off if the agreement was followed. This sounds like a violation on the HOA's part of the agreement but again, I don't know how it's written. I do know if an update was pushed every single resident shall have received the update for it be valid and they shall have a copy of the agreement ready upon request. I hate shitty HOA's. Good luck to them.