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?
Try to get the rule changed so it reads "no UNLEASHED dogs allowed on… " And try to get them to add some kind of punishment for those who don’t clean up after their dogs (i.e. a $50 fine or something like that). Sure people can bash HOAs (and I totally agree with why they are hated so much), but the rule was probably not enacted because of one incident. It was probably put into place after many issues with owners not cleaning up after their dogs, so they felt they had to do something.
As with all HOA issues, the solution is to be in on it… be part of the HOA. Run for office and get on the board. Being part of the process makes it that much easier to control what rules get put up.
We don’t have issues with unleashed dogs, or even with people not cleaning up dog crap, it’s just too much dog pee causes dead grass.
So it’s not directed at members for the states of their lawns (they are maintained by a common landscape company) it’s directed at people who have dogs who urinate - which is all of them.
It seems like all the retired people in the neighborhood have a excellent reason to be on the board but with a full time job and a kid I just don’t have the time to put towards good faith governance of the neighborhood. Maybe that’s the idea though - to get on the board and reduce their scope to paying the lawn care guys and collecting dues to pay the lawn care guys.