![]() ![]() Your community’s HOA treasurer can’t suddenly decide she hates pink mailboxes. Watch: 3 Ways to Back Out of Buying a Home–Without Being a Jerk (There’s one caveat: If your backyard is shared with another homeowner, the HOA might have the right to restrict your strung-up lines.) Feel free to let your denim wave in the wind. Too bad, buckaroos: Since almost half of states protect your right to dry, any anti-clothesline additions to the covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) are downright unenforceable. This time-honored tradition saves money and protects your clothes, but to your eagle-eyed HOA board, all those fabrics blowing in the breeze may not look “uniform.” Nineteen states have laws on the books to prohibit a funny HOA restriction: your right to “solar drying.” (That’s a fancy term for using a clothesline.) For example, California law protects sexual orientation and gender identity. States often have additional protections safeguarding the homeowner. It also can’t kick you out because members of the board hate your religion, or don’t like Germans, because you have children, or because you wear a Make America Great Again hat on a regular basis. That means that your homeowners association can’t fine you or keep you from purchasing a home in the neighborhood because of your ethnicity or race. Smith, a lawyer in Hilton Head Island, SC. ![]() “An association must be careful enacting and enforcing rules that would single out or disadvantage any group identified in the Fair Housing Act,” says Craig T. Your homeowners association board might like to play at being tyrants, but here’s a line it can’t cross: the Fair Housing Act. State and federal law restrict the homeowners association’s abilities to restrict you.īelow, find eight unenforceable HOA rules, plus a few HOA loopholes: 1. (Come on!)Įven when you feel as though some unenforceable HOA rules have turned into an implacable steel trap determined to ruin your life at every turn, find comfort in this: Homeowners associations are bound by the rule of law, no matter what the president of the board says. Like “You must carry your cocker spaniel through the lobby” ridiculous. Like “You must keep your garage door open during the day” ridiculous. ![]()
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