Hi Lemmy, My HOA sent out a email saying dogs are no longer allowed on any grass in common areas or front yards including grass between sidewalk and curb which is… everywhere except our own tiny backyards. The reasoning is some dog urine effected dead spots. Honestly I didn’t even notice them, it’s 95° here and all the grass looks sad.
It’s a walking town and we are not a gated community, non-residents walk their dogs here all the time, so this rule can only punish those who live here and has no ability to effect others.
Anyway, this seems like a ‘we have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas!’ moment so I wanted to see if anyone here had any suggestions I can pass on to maintain a “good” curb appeal ground cover-wise while allowing dogs to do normal dog stuff.
I can converse with the HOA board in good faith, but this rule is basically banning dogs from the neighborhood - which I super did not sign up for.
Pertainent info: PA, USA - Town Home style homes - small central common grass - owned for 8y.
Edit: it seems like people may have glossed over the question part and skipped straight to HOA bashing (which is warranted at times!) so I will rephrase:
What ground covering or neighborhood solutions to similar (perceived) issues have other communities employed?
Check to make sure that the HOA actually has the power to do this. As a land owner you are bound to follow the covenants that run with the land, but you are only actually bound to follow those covenants. You don’t have to do random stuff just because the HOA board or even a majority of the HOA voters say so, you only actually have to do what’s in the covenants.
Unless the covenants say that you agree to follow a bunch of dog-related rules to be defined later, you almost certainly are allowed to park your dog in your own front yard or in that of any consenting neighbor.
A complicating factor: I would say ~50% of the houses are rented and only the homeowners have a say in HOA matters. So, assuming any owners without dogs (including the whole board) and any landlord would logically vote to ban all use of the grass, while all dog-owning homeowners would vote to allow dogs near the grass.
Obviously that’s generalizing what the votes would be - even though the majority of the houses have dogs, I would say the minority are homeowners with dogs.
The reason I bring this up is a petition-style response may be dismissed as “well those dog owners have no say as they are not homeowners”
If any of the home owners are happy with their dog-owning current renters, it would be in their interest to support the dog owners.