Originally Posted by john_ny

I can say that I would never live in a place where they had a HOA. I live in Staten Island, NY. We are part of New York City, but we're nothing like the rest of the city. We have fields and woods, but no sky scrapers. We do have one thing, though, that is worse than HOA's. We have the city Buildings Department. Some time ago, I decided I wanted a greenhouse. My brother, at the time, lived across the street from a senior inspector in the department, so I asked him what I had to do to put up a greenhouse. His reply was that they usually didn't do anything unless they had a complaint. So, I put the house up and, sure enough, some time later, we had a complaint. An inspector came around, and told me I had to take it down. (He could hardly speak English.) When I did what I was told, they still fined me $900.00.