Bill was introduced in Sep/25, but I only got a whiff of it in the last couple of weeks
See House Bill HB1878: https://fastdemocracy.com/bill-search/pa/2025-2026/bills/PAB00038963/
Are there any other states/countries taking similar initiatives?
Summary:
Pennsylvania homeowners deserve the right to choose native plant species they desire for landscaping around their homes. However, work is needed to remove bottlenecks for homeowners to select native vegetation for their desired landscaping.
This legislation will prevent homeowners associations (HOAs) from unreasonably prohibiting the use of native plants for landscaping on private property. This ensures homeowners residing within an HOA the same ability to choose native landscaping as other homeowners.
Native plants provide many beneficial functions that many homeowners desire. These include being aesthetically pleasing and providing habitat for pollinators while being adapted to the site and typically requiring lower maintenance than non-native plants. […]
A spider in every room.
Why are HOAs dictating what home owners can and can’t grow?
Grass, when constantly mowed, is completely useless. I’m all for clovers and native plants growing on my lawn.
Native plants is such a misnomer. It really just means “plants that aren’t grass” - as often the “native” plant will end up being some tall grass from another continent or region. Something people should be careful with when going into this if they truly want to pick plants that are “native” to the region.
It really just means “plants that aren’t grass” - as often the “native” plant will end up being some tall grass from another continent or region.
No? It means “Plants that are native to this continent/region”.
If the plant was from another continent or region, it would be definition not be native.
this is just simply not true in the context of this discussion. these people want to grow native plants in a vulnerable ecosystem that has been limited down in scope through mining operations, human exploitation, and encroachment from non-native invasive species. in particular in central pennsylvania where this is occuring gypsome weed is choking out the native flowers that pollinators depend on.
in particular they are looking to grow sunflowers and goldenrod which are native to their area and offer a high value to local pollinators. however, these plants violate most HOA regulations because they grow taller than 6 feet
What? Maybe in Germany, but that is not the case in the US where the biome has only been exposed to humans for 1/10th the amount of time as in Europe. “Native” is pretty strictly defined here ecologically, legally, and culturally.
I wonder whether HOA are prevelent in blue or red states? They seem kinda socialist and it would be pretty cool if they are more common in red states.
They’re fairly ubiquitous in the States, regardless of blue or red.
A lot of HOAs are managed by the community to establish community rules and create a common fund for things like landscaping and snow removal. An example of some common rules are prohibitions on keeping broken vehicles anywhere except your garage, and keeping lawns from becoming overgrown to the point where it creates a problem for neighbors. For the most part, those kinds of HOAs are not too intrusive and can be a net positive for the community.
However, a growing number of them are created and managed by the development companies that built the homes, and their primary objective is to maintain “property values” in community. I.E. they create and rules that promote uniformity, and will put a lien on non-conforming homeowners property. This results in the HOA literally taking ownership of the house away from the non-confirming homeowner and evicting them from the community. Then the development company will resell the house at full value.
I’ve heard stories of people being fined hundreds of dollars for simple things like planting a garden, painting a door, and hanging new curtains.
Cities also like HOA’s cause they can push the burden of managing and maintaining infrastructure onto the HOA. One of the main reasons for their rise in popularity in the US recently
For a supposedly Capitalist country, it’s amazing that the US allows neighbours to decide themselves what others can or not do in their own land and force them to do it or not.
I’m thinking it’s the bastard child of extreme aversion to having oversight institutions working for the common good, so instead of like in Europe regional/country-wide rules which apply to everybody and are enforced by some oversight autority on what cannot be done in residential areas to avoid things like for example people operating poluting industries in residential areas, you get local groups with quite arbitrary power to decide what their neighbours can or cannot do, each local and with rules not at all consistent across the country (or at last a State).
It’s a system incredibly open to abuse, especially by the kind of people we in my country call “small dictators” (the kind of people who, when they have some power over then, force others to do things purelly because they derive psychological enjoyment from doing so)
HOAs are a patently un-American idea and are generally speaking viewed as such within the United States. I’m sure there are those who view them as a necessary evil, but by and large if you mention the acronym HOA in the U.S. you are more likely than not going to receive a look of unhappiness in return.
Yeah that’s interesting. I wonder if HOAs are an accepted implementation of “small government” or libertarianism.
They should be called KOA’s Karen’s of America
I’m a way it seems bizarre that HOAs should be so broadly despised yet also broadly adopted. I suppose it has to do with the corners of the culture I sit in.
actually, they are not broadly despised, as evidenced by the fact that so many people choose to live in HOA-governed neighborhoods. you might think that because all you hear are the horror stories, but that is because you never hear from those who are satisfied with their HOA. as always, ymmv.
The fact that so many people choose to live in a HOA is not on its own evidence that they aren’t despised. There’s a housing crisis in the States and people will live where they can. HOAs are often something you move into a neighborhood in spite of, not for.
The adoption is coming from the Epstein class who owns the property.
We are all just trying to find a place to live and pay rent.
I think the reason for the mass adoption is the surface selling point (higher resale property value) plus the usual minor fee lull people into a false understanding of just how dangerous they can become once a person on a power trip gets into the board
Municipalities are only giving licenses to new developments that have HOA included in, because HOAs transfer the necesario tax burden to the HOA. Americans would do anything for avoid paying taxes, including paying more for worst services paying private intermediates
Oh god that’s terrifying. I’ve heard of HOAs technically owning the roads and local infrastructure and then residents still get nailed on paying full property tax anyways
I had a thought the other day:
If your HOA sues you and YOU WIN, they (usually) have to pay your attorney fees in addition to their own.
But…you’re part of the HOA. Your dues will go up to cover the costs of a stupid lawsuit that you beat.
The pic is an island landlocked by fertilizer, pesticides, bug repellents, artificial lighting, etc.
It’s better than nothing.
None of these laws ever get enforced.
You call them out on it a year later and they just say “I didn’t know that. Never heard of that law” and then they just keep doing whatever they were doing.
Oh, shit, right, so I get to share something I learned fairly recently.
For much of human history, wealth could be measured many ways but by far the most powerful currency was land. Land meant resources, and the land’s value was determined by what respirce it produced: fertile floodplains meant crops, lakes for fishing, forests for hunting, and, worst-case scenario, moorland could be used for grazing livestock. But what if that wasn’t enough? What if you had huge tracts of land but your narcissism and insecurity were so overwhelming that you just needed to prove yourself even more?
Enter: lawns. Lawns are fields of grass, which is a useless crop that can only really be used for grazing. But the grass is kept so short that livestock can’t graze on it. But grass like that can only be grown on plains that are ideal for crops, so you need to get rid of the crops. And short grass needs tending, tending with more care than any crop, so you need to have workers dedicated to it. That’s what a lawn is: it’s bragging, it’s saying “not only do I have loads of top-quality land and an army of workers, I can afford to piss away huge swathes of it for absolutely no reason other than to prove that I can.” It’s hard to image a greater and more grotesque display of boujee excess than the lawn.
Of course, this is what makes the modern lawn all the more pathetic: that neatly parcelled-out vast tract of land you can afford to squander as a display of your immeasurable wealth is, like, a few meters across. It’s like the Stamford apes experiment: they know what they must do, but not why they’re doing it and, if they knew what a lawn really was and where it came from, I can’t imagine many would be quite so attached. Then again, maybe they would be. Maybe they really do think their home is a castle and that they live in a kingdom they can walk around in thirty second.
I’m new to this sub and consider myself anti-lawn. Can you recommend non-grass vegetation that is still easy for kids to play on and people to walk through?
Red and white clover, provided you live in an area where they’re native. They introduce nitrogen to the soil and pollinating insects love it, and it nice to lie on. You can grow clover mixed in with grass: because grass is more tolerant to being regularly walked on than clover, it creates nice natural-lookint pathways.
Ironic, I thought America was the land of the free? lol
More like HOE
Can we vote to ban HOAs?
