The peeps are rebelling!  Finally!  No longer do homeowners believe that uniformity and conformity enhance property values.  Nor do they believe that a homeowners associations creates “community”. They are tired of living in fear and refuse to be silenced any longer.  With every negative story about HOAs that hit the media, hundreds and thousands of people have been commenting.  Oh, I admit, a handful still repeat the inane sound bites like “you agreed”, “if you don’t like it, move”. Agreed to what?  Being abused and losing your home?  What idiot would do something like that?  Move?  Where to?  Their comments make no more sense now than they ever did.  By far most of the comments are pro homeowner and passionately anti HOA.  Are you listening, CAI?

And did you ever think that an HOA could actually do some good?It’s ingenious!  Keep reading and tune in to the show.

Nancy Hentschel joins us On The Commons this week.  Nancy and her husband live in a large Homeowners association of single family homes in Texas. A few weeks ago they finally bought a couple of dinosaurs they fell in love with over a year ago.  Once the dynamic dino duo took up residence in New Territory, something quite remarkable happened. Predictably they heard from the association but they also heard from their neighbors.  As Nancy said, she met more of her neighbors than she had in all the years they have lived there.  They not only came to the house but they wrote all over the internet. Some of the comments were short and to the point,  “keep the dinos.  Please, oh please”.  “I think this is really cool, I wish they were my neighbors” and “Putting the neighbor in the neighborhood, one big claw at a time.”    But there is more.  Thanks to Nancy’s ingenuity and generosity, what started out as an expression of individuality, is doing some real good.  The dinosaurs are moving around the neighborhood and checking out other front yards.  For a $50 donation to any charity of their choice, all her New Territory neighbors can host the dynamic duo for 3 days before they move on to another yard.  With approximately 5000 homes in New Territory, the dino walkabout can do some serious good.  Cheers to the Hentschel’s, their “authentic  community”, a neighborhood that refuses to be silenced and a couple of prehistoric creatures who have come back to show us the error of our ways.  What fun!