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.
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.
Voting details:
According to recent census data, Goodyear has 2.7 people per household. It doesn’t say for the city specifically, but Arizona appears to have a minor population of 21%. I saw in the statement this association represents “over 1,000” households. In my experience, that could mean anywhere from 1,001 - 1,099 homes. The city of Goodyear held a vote earlier this year to approve a water utility contract, which lists an expected voter turnout of 17%.
By this, I’m guessing less than 3,000 people live in this community, with about 2,400 eligible to vote on an association proposal, but likely around 400 people that would go to the effort of voting on such a tedious issue.
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.
I appreciate your comment.
I dislike administrative issues on votes being called out by the board after the vote takes place. When administrative issues are noted after the vote, it looks like the board is trying to subvert the membership.
Thank you. I did think about that also.
‘Volunteers’ did the counting, but surely they should have known or been informed that a quorum of votes equal to x% of the community are required for the vote to be valid. If the count doesn’t meet or exceed that value, discard the ballots.
Or even why was the vote permitted to take place in less than the required notification period? I presume the answer to these questions is either incompetence or bravado on the part of the board members taking their position for granted.
I find it unlikely that if the vote had went the other way, the board would have had the integrity to raise the same objections.
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.
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
Having served on the board of my building, you see what slobs and mindless people you share the planet with. Letting their pets piss in the hallway. It gets cleaned by staff, right? What’s the problem? Compost stinks, leave the bin in the hallway! Doesn’t matter as long as I don’t smell it, right?
That’s the thing, the sheer amount of imbeciles who occupy these units make you question how society got to this point.
Handing out bottles of water!
“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.
It’s not a home, not even usually a statement of wealth. The “statement” properties are invisible behind large gates and long driveways.
In most cases, they’re investments, rather than homes. A way to gain wealth, not brag about it.
They are definitely statements of wealth. Just because it’s investment doesn’t mean it’s also a statement of wealth. Try growing vegetables in your front lawn or hanging cloths to dry. These are things poor people do.
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.
You guys are wrong. The city handles what overflows onto ITS property, they don’t care about your property. That’s what the HOA is for.
You can’t leave your trash on the sidewalk (city property) randomly, the city can’t do jack shit if some slob leaves his trash on his lawn.
Until rats set in. You guys comfortable leaving things degenerate to that level until the city acts?
This is straight up not true in many places. Where I live they have a long list of things you can’t have in your yard, or in your yard for extended periods of time. They have a list of rules for the flora, maintenance, etc.
The only time your assumption is true is the inside of the house. They can’t do much there until it is a fire hazard, bio hazard, etc. , but that level of hoarding stuff is not common, and even then, there are limits to it before the city intervenes
You are the one who is clueless. My city absolutely will fine people for violating the upkeep laws. I know because I’ve been fined for grass before, and I know one of my neighbors had an abandoned, rotting car towed out of their driveway.
They can where I live. While I might “own” the land, I’m in Canada and there’s a very specific and technical legal definition, I never “own” anything. The land is owned by the crown, and we lowly peons get to “buy” (or lease in perpetuity for a one time set cost, plus property taxes every year) the land we live on.
The Crown, and by extension, the government acting on behalf of the crown, can do whatever the fuck they want, including telling you what you can, and cannot do with your land, and whether you can turn it into a trash heap.
Many other places are the same, though, not as technically/legally screwed; I don’t have to look any further than city zoning to know that similar (in effect, not implementation) rules exist for everyone. Zoning means you can’t just turn your plot of land into an industrial manufacturing operation because you feel like it. That’s the government telling you what you can (or cannot) do with your property. There’s plenty more examples and rules that limit people’s freedoms as to what they can do with “their” property, if you do any research at all.
Don’t be such a spoon.
I just picked a random US city out of thin air.
If they’re that concerned about how tall your grass is, I imagine they’ll also get involved if you let trash pile up.
That’s my point. They’ll do something when it’s three feet tall, but maybe I want the neighbor to cut it before it reaches that level?
That’s my point.
No, that wasn’t your point. Now you’re moving the goal post. Your point was, and I quote,
The city handles what overflows onto ITS property, they don’t care about your property.
Plus, the article explicitly states that the ordinance specifies 12 inches, not three feet.
You can keep digging your hole deeper, but it’s not going to support your claim. Your just wrong here, and one sign of a well adjusted adult is knowing when to admit they’re wrong.
They don’t care about your property, right. No one wants 12 inch grass.
It is you who is wrong. The HOAs exist to make people respect human living conditions, not the contractor-grade specs the city enforces for its purposes.
Try to picture a city with just the city rules enforced. All right, it’s 1 foot tall grass, not three feet. OK, it’s three trash bags with rats, not 12.
That enough? Of course it isn’t.
The grass matters to the city when it overflows onto its property. One hopes that in the vast majority of cases, people will maintain their property a bit better on their own. The HOA just makes it possible to ensure that. The vast majority of HOAs aren’t PITAs, only the extreme stories make it to the news.
If you like your lawn 1 foot tall with trash bags everywhere, move to where there is no HOA. I realize there are fewer and fewer trailer parks these days, but that’s not my fault.
I don’t know how to put it simpler.
" Your just wrong here, and one sign of a well adjusted adult is knowing when to admit they’re wrong."
It’s “you’re”, and I’m not, and take your own advice.
turns his front lawn into an open air trash heap
The town/city is suppose to handle that.
Only at a certain point. Maybe I want it handled before?
Maybe mind your own business?
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!
Sorry, I’ll wear a shirt next time.
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.
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?
I got booted at university once so I just changed my tire and took the boot with me
Now they use 2 boots
I bought a boot removal tool my first year of college and was the savior of my friend group.
Don’t the boots cover the lug nuts?
On some of them you can just let the air out of the tire and slip them off the wheel. I did that at a parking garage one time and left the boot in the parking spot.
They found me later and said I stole it, I told them to check the camera footage and they saw someone else carry the thing off. I don’t know how I got out of that one but I guess they just went after the other guy instead of me lol
Most boots are also trivially easy to pick open for even an armature.
They arnt generally well made
Folks in my area used to cary around crowbars (the half life style long ones for crates and shit) back when the sheriff deputies were boot happy for a bit. This was before cameras so they couldn’t do much when they found the damned things snapped didn’t help that folks would do it to any car they saw with a boot.
guy with a crowbar walking down the street
“After all, why shouldn’t I do it?”
This one didn’t lol
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.
the heat does something to your brain, or its just the sort of people who move to arizona are already freaks
fucking photobucket killed all the pics
(also the forum software should have allowed uploading pics even in 2004)
Epic story, thanks a lot for sharing the link!, sad there never was an ending
Removed by mod
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.
All of these things you mention weren’t solved by people running out on to the streets and getting their rocks off lynching the first offending party they met, no.
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”
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Amen Brother
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?
You choose to be a parasite. Well, you chose to do so.
Well you seem reasonable
You wanna talk about reasonable.
Nowhere in the continental US can a person afford rent on minimum wage working a full time job. Not one state.
And it’s the fault of landlords jacking up prices because they could get away with it. Not just them. But the problem existed before Covid. Before Private Equity got the idea to buy everything.
Nowhere in the continental US can a person afford rent on minimum wage working a full time job
This is wrong. You’re talking about the fact that a single person living alone on average cannot afford average rents in any state, but rents can be found at below average prices, and more importantly, many 2-3 room options are affordable when 2-3 minimum wage workers live together and combine their incomes. Living alone is a luxury and frankly, a quite wasteful one. There are more than twice as many people than houses in the USA source so to have everyone living alone would require considerable ruinous environmental destruction and expansion. Maybe YOU should be hanged for suggesting it! (I’m kidding of course)
And it’s the fault of landlords jacking up prices because they could get away with it.
Proof? Evidence? You’re going to need to be pretty damn convincing if you want me to join your rally to hang everyone involved.
I’m not trying to convince you of shit. Believe what you want.
Cool attitude, bro. I don’t believe what I want, but I do believe facts
If you’re in a state with ballot measures, then you could campaign for rules against single family home HOAs.
He is.
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.
My township finally decided to do something about our homeless problem … by fencing off the area they were congregating in, natch.
That seems like an extremely easy way to waste money on a fence that is about to be cut in 20 places with flush cutters.
Nah, they all just moved somewhere else. Easy portability is the one upside to homelessness.
Sort of too shy to follow through previously
Worst thing to happen realistically is that you get a “no thank you, i’m good”.
No good deed goes unpunished.
HOA seems to be such a stupid thing. Glad there’s nothing even remotely that bad everywhere.
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.
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
It’s not paywalled. You could actually read it. As a spoiler alert, your guess appears to be wrong. They don’t mention that as the issue.
It’s not paywalled.
It is however impossible to reject all the cookies. So I’m going to give it a wide berth
Archive Site search and save is easy.
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.
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.
It’s a nice thing to do?
I suppose I don’t see it as a nice thing to do if it’s completely pointless. Not that I’m against it, I’m just a little confused by it.
It’s not pointless, they could walk back home, sure, but if they are going for a longer walk and are a couple of blocks away from home, that’s a couple of blocks closer they get water. Or if they are active and playing outside, giving them water would likely be much appreciated.
Water in disposable plastic bottles is wasteful, sure, and maybe you’d have a point saying it would be better to offer cups of water. Maybe there are other people, further away, that could use the water more, sure. But providing something to someone in an act of generosity and good will is nice.
Delivery drivers? They’re not “in walking distance”
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?
