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Homeowner Associations · Why We Do What We Do

0:03
You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we Do
0:16
what we Do? I Am your worthless pile of garbage Host Abraham, and
0:21
I'm your Fines upon Fines upon Fines Host Shane. We're Terrible Today, where
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a psychology podcast. We talk about what people do and why they do the
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things that they do, and try and break it down and understand the psychological
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principles that are underlying these strange, sometimes horrible decisions that we make. And
0:41
one of those horrible decisions is going to be the central discussion of today's topic.
0:46
But first, we always like to acknowledge the day on which an episode
0:50
is published, and the day on which this episode is published is June twenty
0:54
first, twenty twenty three. And so let's talk about some things we have
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to celebrate today. In continuing with our ration of our friends from the LGBTQ
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community, we are celebrating Pride Month. Yeah, so happy Pride Month,
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y'all yep. In relation to that, it is World Humanist Day, so
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of that. Yes, me too, as both of us as musicians,
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we have to celebrate that we're alligated to at this point in time. It's
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also National Day of Indigenous People indeed, and related to that National Aboriginal Day.
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Yes, big fans of that. Just a shout out. Because it
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is June twenty first, in case you didn't know, this is also the
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Summer solstice, which means it's all downhill from here. I mean it Isn't
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that just kind of a good general rule that it's all downhill from here?
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Yeah, Like, right now in this moment when you're listening to it,
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you're older now than you've ever been and as young as you'll ever be,
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and it's gonna be the same effecting at the end of this episode. Two
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YEA, A couple others I almost forgot about. It is Ghost Skateboarding Day,
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Make Music Day, and National Daylight Appreciation Day, not Daylight Saving because that
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can go to hell Daylight Appreciation Day. Yeah, there's a lot of good
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things happening today. Act as a matter of fact, it sounds like everything
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that we're celebrating is pretty great. It is awesome. Oh and it's National
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smooth Day. Almost forgot that too. Oh yeah, you like that too?
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All right, if you appreciate what we're up to today, not necessarily
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listing holidays, that's not really what we do. We talk about psychology things.
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And if at the end of this discussion you were like that was really
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Why we do what we do And I'll talk more about how you can
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support us at the end of this discussion. So, as I said,
3:14
we are talking about worthless pile of garbage, coalitions of horrible people, which
3:19
is to say, we're talking about homeowners associations. Yes. So these are
3:23
also called community associations or property owners associations, and these are private associations created
3:29
by real estate developers. The development firms purchase large plots of land to build
3:34
housing and simultaneously establish a homeowners association shortened to HOA. The HOA is integrated
3:40
directly into the purchasing agreement four homes built on that land. So when you
3:44
go by this land, you are purchasing as part of like, in order
3:46
to purchase this, you have to be part of an HOA. Yes,
3:51
yeah, is automatic membership, yes, Now, the homeowners association is a
3:54
communal membership that automatically and involuntarily registers its members upon purchasing the house. When
4:00
you are buying house at an h in most places, you cannot opt out.
4:04
Either you get the house with the HA or you don't get the house,
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and they usually kind of like there's a pretty clear line with that.
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And the implication of this, of course is that there are very few options
4:15
for people looking to own a home. Yes, and we should specify for
4:18
those of you who are already got your typing fingers ready. There are some
4:23
voluntary h a ways. We know that that's a thing. They do not
4:25
make up a lot of them, but they do exist, right, And
4:28
membership and an h and voluntary as it is, is also not free.
4:32
Members pay fees ranging from ten dollars a month to thousand dollars a month or
4:35
even more, with the average being around two to three hundred dollars. And
4:40
this is according to Investopedia where I found the information, although I found it
4:44
corroborated elsewhere. Yeah, now an exchange for this coerced tything that is is
4:48
collected from you. The h WA also provide services to the homeowners, and
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we'll talk about sort of not only the downside of HYS, but what people
4:57
call the benefits of HYS and the services that an HWA can provide ranges from
5:01
maintaining a nearby green space to building and maintaining private roads and sewer systems.
5:08
If you're in a place with snow, it might do snow removal for you
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in a very timely fashion because they're only there to plow that particular place.
5:15
Will you actually get to that because sometimes that doesn't always work out so well.
5:19
And of course the service that an HA will provide is issuing regulations about
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people's private homes that they own, what they can and can't do with that
5:27
property. Yes, we're going to talk about all of those things and really
5:30
the astonishing power of these entities and what the power that they wield, But
5:34
we have to talk about a history of ha's as you will not be surprised.
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There's some pretty dark beginnings with this. Yeah, and we could start
5:42
with Jim Crow, and we probably should, but we'll actually start with Franklin
5:46
Delano Roosevelt, more commonly referred to as FDR. Now setting the scene here,
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the soldiers are coming back when the sort of the nineteen twenties ish kind
5:56
of around that era, soldiers are coming back from the First World War and
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in the United States is coming out of the depression. We did an episode
6:02
about when the Democrats and Republican switched policies. This is the time of flocks
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that they're sort of crossing over, and FDR was one of the catalysts of
6:12
that. Anyway, it was already understood at this point in history. Really
6:16
everyone kind of was getting the fact that one of the most stable paths to
6:20
wealth and security was owning land and property. Just having land and property was
6:26
a thing that would be like, this is the pathway to wealth, possibly
6:30
beyond almost any other pathway to wealth. And that's how scientologists are worth so
6:35
much today. Right, It's like it's all tied up in property. They're
6:40
land wealthy. They owned a lot of land. They own a lot of
6:43
land to the tune of like some billion dollars now. So as part of
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FDR's new deal coming out of the depression, he issues government ensured mortgages to
6:50
avoid foreclosures. So it made sense to appraised values of certain properties to code
6:57
for the relative risk of mortgages in the areas. Basically, he was saying,
7:00
the government's going to own this mortgage. If it defaults or you default
7:03
on it, then it's okay. The government still owns it essentially and you
7:06
can just leave. Now. There are a lot of people in the United
7:10
States citation needed, but they're not going to go through an appraise every single
7:15
home. Instead, they're going to group them by area and try and figure
7:18
out in this sort of district, if you will, or area, how
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can we qualify the homes that are just in this geographical region more or less,
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and they ranked these A to D and use these color coded maps largely
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from red to green, indicating this risk. So red districts were believed to
7:34
be at the highest risk of property decreasing over time, and green is on
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the not only is there not risk, but they might actually gain in value
7:43
over time. And so because of the risk of those red areas, they
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then did not have to be included in these lending programs, meaning that essentially,
7:53
they said, in these places, the risk is so high that the
7:56
value is going to decrease that we are not going to ensure moregages there,
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which means that the interest rates are going to be a lot higher, and
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they are going to be unlikely to sell the people who cannot put down like
8:07
a sizeable deposit or have some other collateral on hand. Right, and not
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coincidentally, and I mean that this is not a coincidence, most of the
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people in those red areas are black and brown people, Indigenous people, and
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Jewish people. Weird. Yeah, they had specifically some pseudoscientific hypotheses at this
8:24
period in time that posited that the mere presence of brown or dark skinned people
8:30
in an area predicted the decrease and the property values for the area. That
8:33
was it. It was just if they're there, property values go down inherently.
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Like that was sort of a hypothesis, right, put a pin in
8:41
that kind of justification. We are going to come back to it, and
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we shouldn't really have to point out at this part of the conversation the idea
8:48
that the presence of black people reducing property value is just completely not true,
8:52
except in so far as people choose to manifest this as a reality by creating
8:58
policies, for example, make it impossible to get resources to a particular area,
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or by of course only you know, sort of making it impossible for
9:05
people to exist in areas where that wouldn't be the case, and therefore forcing
9:09
them into areas that are less developed or are degrading over time on a need
9:13
of maintenance and that sort of thing. So it is not an inherent value
9:18
of being a dark skinned, indigenous or Jewish person that will decrease the value
9:22
of an area. But that was what they believed, but it sometimes they
9:24
manifested that through policies and ideas about those people. Right, So what Abraham
9:31
is talking about here is this practice called redlining, and what that meant was
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it was extremely expensive, if not impossible, for marginalized groups to own a
9:39
home. So all those groups you're just talking about, it's nearly impossible to
9:43
actually own anything. So this also means it was a way of both segregating
9:46
people by race as well as preventing them from obtaining wealth and force their children
9:52
to attend poorly funded schools as well. That's a different topic. And also
9:56
digital redlining with ISPs and networks is a thing in Abraham has a specific story
10:01
about that thing. Yeah, so this is obviously a more modern version of
10:05
this, but it does exist, which is that high speed internet tends to
10:07
not be available in areas that are sort of in the poverty or like low
10:11
income areas, and that it does not mean on the outskirts of town.
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I'm actually right in the heart of the city that I live in. I
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mean not like downtown, but we're like in a we're very urban where we're
10:22
currently at and in our area, just in our little neighborhood and kind of
10:28
just on the streets that we're on, in a couple streets around. It
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is almost entirely minority groups for this country, and we cannot get like fiber
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Internet or other high speed internet. We have one service provider that comes here
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with like terrible rates and service, and so we sort of feel the effects
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of being digitally redlined in terms of not being able to get access to high
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speed internet. They simply say it's just not available, like that's there.
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Like, yeah, you're address, we cannot get you this. I'm like,
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but like two blocks north or three blocks south, you can just not
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in my neighborhood. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Moving on from Internet though,
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going back to our timeline, so we were moving through sort of the New
11:09
Deal era and the redlining that happened as an outcome of the Green New Deal,
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where the government was essentially backing these mortgages. In nineteen sixty eight,
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the Fair Housing Act was meant to curb these extremely discriminatory housing practices that were
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going on, but at that point the damage was so systematic and thorough that
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it's nearly it may be impossible that will ever completely reverse the damage that was
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done by those policies, and with the civil rights movement in full swing in
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the nineteen sixties, the legality of redlining was really on the chopping block and
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so these acts and these policies were meant to make it so you could not
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actually redline districts, and so that sort of meant like, what are we
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going to do to keep segregating these people? Right? And so many landowners
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in cities all across the US had a quote gentleman's agreement that they would not
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rent to black, ben brown, Indigenous Jewish, or people of Asian descent.
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You might think yourself, that's terrible, and yeah, that's terrible.
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I mean there's really no way around it. But some legal covenants blatantly read
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quote no user agents may use or occupy properties at this address or development end
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quote. Yeah, this is a very recent history, so, like I
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want to be clear about that. This isn't like this isn't like seventeen eighteen
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hundreds, This is like my parents were alive during this time. Yeah.
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Yeah, this was within a generation ago that this was going on, and
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they had that directly. Now, as we said, some of them were
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just understood this is like handshake agreements, we won't do this, but some
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of them were directly written down. Yeah, But the more subtle discriminatory practices
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are very difficult to prosecute or rectify even as laws began to change in favor
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of trying to build towards some semblance of equality. And also, let's be
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let's be honest, like these practices are still going on today. Oh yeah,
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we're getting to that. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna get to that.
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So why are we talking about all this specifically redlining in relation to hwas
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Well, because the purpose of red lining and the purpose of hs and there
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is a linear path from one to that. There's a direct line A to
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B, like there's no circumventing and kind of like detours or anything like that
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is a direct line from redlining right to h oas and how hias operate.
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So as and this point in time, we're starting to reach the suburban sprawl
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that's just exploding across the country in the nineteen sixties and seventies and after that,
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of course it's obviously still going on. And you know, people are
13:26
moving out of the cities. There's a lot of reasons for that. It's
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actually not different from migration, and that they're sort of push factors and pull
13:31
factors for why people move out into these suburb areas, right, right,
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But these old explicitly racist house covenants were essentially impossible to write or enforce if
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they were written into those agreements as they were developing these new areas, so
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they had to find a way to sort of work around it. And as
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a quick side note, so the house that we're in right now, that
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we're living in, was built in nineteen fifty eight. We have the original
13:54
agreement for building on this house, and it explicitly says and I meant to
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find it before we recorded this, but I forgot. It explicitly says in
14:03
the development agreement of the property agreement for this house something along the lines of
14:07
black or brown people will not be permitted to own or occupy this house and
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less serving as a in the role of like a servant. Wow, that's
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like a written down on a government document that we have that came with the
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house and we purchased it. And so it was like, holy cow,
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I can't believe that it's the thing. That's wild like that nineteen fifty eight,
14:28
Like that was just the year before my mom was born. That's bonkers.
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I mean, I wonder now I'm wondering if my house has that.
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I mean, we have an h A, so I mean, I'm sure
14:35
it's somewhere, but I'll have the look at I'll have the look and see.
14:39
Yeah, Well, while you process that, because again that's a whole
14:43
thing, that's a legal document. While you process that, it's probably worth
14:46
listening to some ads because that's probably better palate cleanser than anything we're gonna say
14:50
right now in the rare instance that ads were maybe the more preferred thing to
15:01
listen to. We're bringing you back to our discussion. So again we're talking
15:07
about this timeline through the history and these explosion of suburbs, and it's now
15:09
impossible to write explicitly racist language into the purchasing agreements for houses that were being
15:16
built. So new racist developers needed a way to keep out to the quote
15:20
unquote undesirables, to keep them out of their neighborhoods without being sued by explicitly
15:26
putting that language in. And so a private entity that's not under the scrutiny
15:30
of the government, but with the power to force membership into programs in which
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they can target anyone at any time with any financial penalty they please, would
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allow them to maintain the veneer of equal quality while also being able to exercise
15:45
unchecked tyrannical bigotry and racism enters. Ah, yes, so check this out.
15:52
The first proto versions of HYS could be considered as far like, we
15:56
could look back as far as nineteen oh five in Pasadena, California, and
16:00
these are planned communities meant for wealthy single families. They included deed restrictions that
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explicitly outlined that non white and later non Christian families could not purchase properties in
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these areas. Super interesting, I'd I'd love for them to be like,
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Eh, do you go to church? I'm like no, and then they
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keep you out of the neighborhood. They'd be interesting. Yeah, I wonder
16:17
how they checked for atheists, But the same groups have already been outlined.
16:19
We've already kind of talked about that. And this is going back as far
16:22
as nineteen oh five in California. Obviously that was before the Fair Housing Act
16:26
of nineteen sixty eight, so we're going up to nineteen forty eight. The
16:30
Supreme Court ruled that the covenants that these planned communities had written could not be
16:34
enforced, but private contracts meant that lords could continue to enforce segregation and discrimination
16:41
until that Fair Housing Act took place. And in nineteen sixty three, the
16:45
Federal Housing Association enacted a mortgage insurance policy that explicitly diverted money away from multi
16:51
family homes and strongly motivated expansion into suburbs and single family homes. And so
16:56
what that meant is in urban areas where they're been a lot of multi family
17:00
homes, which often was the way that people who had immigrated to this country,
17:04
or people that had come up from, for example, a past of
17:08
having maybe a slave as an ancestor, who had very very little wealth to
17:11
their name, were then trying to work their way up the economic ladder.
17:15
They would often be in these financial homes because it was a way for them
17:18
to save money while continuing to sort of grow and expand. And they basically
17:22
said, well, we're just not going to fund those anymore. We're going
17:25
to fund these things into the suburbs. And although it didn't say that we're
17:29
targeting black and brown people and immigrants, it functionally did that. Right.
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The people who were primarily benefiting from the thing that they diverted money away from
17:37
was people who are black and brown, in Indigenous and Jewish and people of
17:41
Asian descent. It's a roundabout way of just being super racist is essentially what
17:45
happens. And you're going to find that a lot in systems where it's like,
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here's what we'll do, but it's like this, specifically, this policy
17:52
that you've created directly impact this group of people and you know it, but
17:56
you're not doing about it. But the lack of land available for suburban development,
18:00
and the Clean Water Act of nineteen seventy seven, which required stormwater to
18:03
be detained in new residential developed areas, where justification to start including hways into
18:07
more new developments because they could privately regulate the size and uniformity of houses and
18:12
development areas and manage the stormwater detainment. So basically, these two things together,
18:18
the expansion Clean Water Act together kind of like laid the groundwork for an
18:22
HWA to exist. And that's actually a really important feature of part of how
18:26
they became so popular. These local governments tend to really like hways specifically because
18:30
the HIA will cover the cost of things that a government's normally responsible for.
18:37
For example, the HWA might cover local road construction and maintenance, or other
18:41
public space upkeeps such as parks. I've even seen that they might have pools,
18:45
playgrounds, something that kind of almost looks like a theme park, although
18:48
not quite that extravagant. Yeah, and all kinds of these spaces of that
18:52
nature, And those municipalities that have very little money may even mandate that hiways
18:59
be written into new developments in order to pass the cost of those services that
19:03
the government would normally be responsible for to the people who are then purchasing homes
19:08
in the development through the HIWA fees and fines. Right, So it's essentially
19:12
the government is using hias to sort of subsidize housing in those areas, even
19:18
though that's normally government's responsibility. These companies and can sort of come in and
19:23
say we're just going to take that over for you, and the government's like,
19:26
great, that's one less cost we have to justify, sure, and
19:29
then the HWA gets to come in and do whatever they want. The thought
19:32
just hit me, like how many people who live in has who like,
19:34
hate and can't stand socialism, like the irony of that, Like you are
19:41
taking part of your money to pay for things in your neighborhood that benefits everybody
19:44
in your neighborhood. If that's not the definition of socialism, you know what
19:48
I mean like it's like like or at least part of it, like it's
19:51
there, like you're doing it so like it just it makes you laugh when
19:53
people are like they just don't even know. The spirit is definitely there for
19:56
sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So since then, the prevalence of
20:00
hwas and new developments has continue to grow and spread like an aggressive, malevolent
20:04
cancer made feces. So fifty three percent of the owner occupied households in the
20:11
United States are currently underway. Yeah, and so that's that's just the ones
20:15
that currently exist, but they're proliferating at an enormous rate because eighty two percent
20:21
of new homes built in twenty twenty one are in an HIA, which is
20:26
up from only forty percent of new houses being built in in nineteen ninety.
20:30
Eighty two percent of new houses are being built in hys, so the remaining
20:34
eighteen percent is all that's left of new houses being developed to meet the you
20:40
know, the growing population that are people who may not want to have the
20:44
new may not want to be forced to live in an h right, that
20:47
reality is disappearing extremely quickly. Yes, So understanding that there's a lot to
20:53
unpack here, but let's talk about what kind of power HAS actually have.
20:57
Let's start to unpack that, because because I think it's important to understand what
21:02
it is that HAS actually do right now. One thing to understand is because
21:07
they take over services for the local government, they often sort of function as
21:11
a little local government in a way, except that they're not regulated by the
21:15
government. They have extremely little or no oversight, and it's essentially a board
21:19
of people consisting of a couple of people who often live in that neighborhood.
21:23
Although we'll actually get to that there might be a board, but they may
21:27
not be the managing people who are managing the HWA. And so in terms
21:30
of talking about their power, the answer to what can they do? The
21:34
shorter answer might be what can't they do? But we'll get a quick list
21:37
of things that they can do anyway. Yeah, So, generally speaking,
21:41
they have the legal right to set rules and enforce them through punishments such as
21:45
fines, which homeowners are then legally obligated to pay. If fines weren't bad
21:49
enough, HAS can put a lean on someone's mortgage where the HA takes ownership
21:55
of your property until they are paid for the fines that they decided to charge
21:57
you. So they basically they give you fine, you don't pay it.
22:00
They give you lots of fines you don't pay it. They could say we're
22:03
gonna take a lean on your house. We're gonna own your house until you
22:04
pay us, right, and then they can even foreclose on someone's property,
22:08
which is they can kick them out and take over when someone owes a debt
22:12
on that property. And again, the JO did not buy that house,
22:15
the HWA did not build that house. The HWA has no actual equity in
22:18
the house. Like, you don't you didn't take the loan out, what
22:22
the HWA you took it out with whatever? Your mortgage holder is, right,
22:25
right, But the HWA then gets to they write into their laws that
22:29
they can just foreclose on someone's house if they don't pay the fines that the
22:33
h has charged them, which to me is completely insane. Yeah, that
22:37
would be like if if someone in your neighborhood was like, I'm gonna go
22:41
ahead and just um, I'm gonna take your car because I don't like the
22:45
stickers that you put on it, and then they just take it and that's
22:47
that's somehow legal, Like, yeah, I don't know how that works.
22:51
It's wild, yeah, but that's how the laws are written. That's how
22:53
Yeah, they basically allow them to do that sort of thing. And if
22:56
HOA does choose to exercise one of those manus, then the homeowner is in
23:02
a situation where they it's really difficult to get out of it. If they
23:04
HA is putting a lean on their mortgage or foreclosing on it. The homeowner
23:08
can't just sell their house. They can't even just refinance their house to get
23:11
the money they need. They're completely trapped financially and legally. Yes, so
23:18
it's a lot of power. But hs also have the power to set rules
23:21
about all kinds of things. And we're gonna say this is an incomplete list,
23:23
but check this out. You buy a home in an this is what
23:27
they can tell you that you have to do to live in this neighborhood.
23:32
One, they can dictate how tall your grass is, and we're talking like
23:37
there are times where people are like within inches. Yeah, I've heard of
23:40
stories where people will bring like a ruler out into a yard and be like,
23:42
oh, that's too tall. Yep. Absolutely, they can tell you
23:45
how many and how few trees or shrubs you can have, as well as
23:49
which kinds and colors of trees and shrubs that you can have, So they
23:52
might say you have to have a minimum of like such and such shrub or
23:56
tree at this size. Yes. They also can dictate the inclusion emplacement of
24:02
decorations on and around your house if you ever get a chance to and this
24:06
is just a a mid show recommendation, if you get a chance to look
24:08
up Frank the Gargoyle, it's definitely worth looking at that from the perspective of
24:12
like a homeowner in a battle with somebody in the neighborhood about decoration placements.
24:18
It's a real joy. I think you all appreciate it. Okay, I'll
24:19
just give you everybody spoiler. Frank the Gargoyle wins. Okay. Yeah.
24:23
They can also dictate the size of any flags you might fly, how long
24:27
your car can be in your driveway, how long a guest car can be
24:32
in your driveway, so they can say, hey, this is parked too
24:34
long. Yep. They can tell you how long your garbage can can be
24:38
out at the curb, where it must be stored, and whether or not
24:41
it can be visible even if they can't see it. They can tell you
24:45
where you can and can't store it. They can even dictate whether you can
24:48
place a shed in your backyard. Doesn't matter the color of your house,
24:52
the garage, the shutter, the trims, etc. And whether or not
24:56
you have shutters or can have shutters. They can specifically dictate how long your
25:00
garage door can be open, the color of the lights on your house,
25:04
any and all features of your front, back, and side yards at all.
25:08
Yes, they can also dictate whether you can hang signs in your window.
25:12
My HOA specifically says no political signs, so like, there's no political
25:15
signs in my neighborhood at all, which you know is a blessing in a
25:18
curse, whether or not, and how long a commercial vehicle can be on
25:22
or near your property, and what kind of mailbox you can and can't have,
25:26
But it doesn't even stop there. Hwas don't have to set rules to
25:30
threaten to impose fines. They can charge you fines if they don't like something
25:33
you post on social media. If you refuse then to remove the post.
25:37
They can threaten to simply add a new rule and change it. They don't
25:41
like something that you're doing, and they just do it. And also they
25:45
can legally restrict people from buying houses when those people are using subsidized funds to
25:49
do so. And this has actually been an effective strategy, a strategic way
25:53
to target minority families, specifically for folks that don't have the means that are
25:59
seeking to buy a house, who are able to get subsidized loans and be
26:02
they're able to get all the financing for its can still say no, not
26:07
in this neighborhood. There was a specific case that many listeners may have heard
26:10
about in Texas in which the rules that they wrote that had to do with
26:14
these subsidized homes, ninety three percent of the families that were targeted by that
26:19
specific rule, or black and brown families and people of minority descent. I'm
26:25
like that is like some surgical, precision level segregation that they are enacting.
26:30
Yes, that's almost more effective than jerrymandering. That's like so fine tuned way
26:36
of like extracting people who are not white from a particular neighborhood. Yep,
26:41
it's awful. One other quick thing I'll add before we add go to add
26:45
if you will, is just that, like obviously we mentioned several things that
26:48
they do, so like they can offer to do a lot of things,
26:52
like even including doing the lawn and yard maintenance on your own house, like
26:56
that might be a thing that they offer. They might even do things like
27:00
cleaning gutters. I think I've seen as being part of them. They might
27:03
actually do the waste management for your garbage, as you said, they might
27:06
do sewage, the road maintenance, sidewalks, public lighting, all kinds of
27:10
public spaces, benches, dog parks, like they might maintain a lot of
27:14
those things and establish them, and they might otherwise not exist if the Hway
27:18
hadn't put them there. Obviously, as we said, a lot of these
27:21
places operate on shoestring budgets if it's a local government anyway. Although we've said
27:25
like all the things that they can dictate about people's houses, which to me
27:29
is completely insane. Yeah, completely insane. But we'll get there a little
27:33
bit later. I also think it is worth pointing out, like they do
27:36
also offer services that part of the reason that people do sometimes likes sometimes small
27:41
number of people occasionally, but sometimes it's because they do those other things too.
27:45
Now we have a whole bunch of stories to share with you, and
27:49
before we do that, take a breath. Listen to some ads and then
27:55
we'll get into it. And now we're back from all of those wonderful,
28:04
wonderful ads, let's take a second to hear some horror stories about HS and
28:11
how they have been well within your legal rights to operate like this. So
28:15
I think that's something that we got to be clear about, is that these
28:17
stories that we're about to share are HS that are operating within their legal limits
28:22
and engaging in these behaviors towards residents of their community. So first and in
28:27
ha in Virginia, the HWAS did not have adequate equipment to manage a snowstorm,
28:32
and people within the h OA we're snowed in for three days while the
28:34
streets only a block away were plowed by the county yep so county owned properties
28:40
were good. They were stuck. Yeah, So, as I said,
28:42
maybe not the best for managing snow. In one place, a person was
28:47
fine for having her shutters be the wrong color, so then she took her
28:49
shutters down and then was fined for not having shutters. The fines were daily
28:52
and ended up being thousands of dollars. You're gonna hear that story is several
28:56
times. Yeah, and some hwas they can impose additional fees at any time
29:00
to cover the cost of some project they wish to accomplish. So they can
29:03
decide that they are going to take on some project in the neighborhood and then
29:07
require all homeowners to pay more than they're already monthly, quarterly or yearly HWA
29:11
membership fee. They could say, Hey, we gotta go fix the pool.
29:15
Everybody's going to chip in, and so they pull money from everybody and
29:18
kind of just dictate that out of nowhere. Yeah, they just sort of
29:21
pull it. And one HWA they sent around an auditor to regularly inspect homes
29:25
for wear and tear other damage. The HWA sent what the homeowners described as
29:29
a rude note demanding repairs and threatening fines if those repairs weren't met to the
29:33
owners whose trim had started to show some of that wear and tear. One
29:37
person also in this HA got a notice of non compliance and a fee because
29:42
of dryer lint build up on their dryer vent so wild now immediately after moving
29:48
in, one HA came to the family's house at six am to tell the
29:51
homeowners they had chosen the wrong garbage collection company and they needed to cancel and
29:56
get the right. One homeowners and one HWA had a thirty minute window to
30:00
return their garbage can after the garbage truck came by or else that they would
30:03
be fined. And the garbage truck pickup started at ten am and most people
30:07
are already at work at that time and were then unable to comply with that
30:11
rule. Yeah. Now one, kids are not allowed to draw on the
30:15
sidewalk with sidewatch chalk or else the families are fined. In one, the
30:18
HA had not cashed one of the homeowner's checks, so they charged him late
30:22
fees even though he'd been paying on time. And then they also tried to
30:26
rehome his dog for some reason. I would be so mad. Yeah,
30:30
there's no way now. In one in Washington, DC, homeowners were punished
30:33
not for using the wrong color of paint on their house, but for using
30:37
the wrong brand of paint to paint their house. The HA threatened to take
30:41
away their parking spaces. Yeah, if they didn't change it. A person
30:45
in a wheelchair had requested a handicap parking space somewhere along the property, and
30:49
the HIA called them selfish and then refused to comply with the request, which
30:52
seems to I think violated explicit act that has been passed in the government.
30:57
Yeah, yeah, that seems like a reral problem. Now. One h
31:00
had rules about how many plants you could have in your window and other window
31:03
decorations. They even got a warning notice the residents. They got a warning
31:07
notice for leaving their towel out to drive for more than an hour after swimming
31:11
in the pool. Yes, they have these people who are sort of watching
31:14
like hawks for this sort of thing. One person was fined four hundred dollars
31:18
for quote unquote weeds in their yard. They were back and forth at the
31:21
HIWA and it turned out that they were talking about the persons shrubs like their
31:25
bushes, and then they refused the same. HWA refused to correspond with the
31:29
residents via any means other than mailed letters. They would not accept phone calls,
31:33
emails, or in person meetings. That's so frustrating. Now in one
31:37
h a person received letters of violation for quote inappropriate fencing when they used a
31:42
baby gate only when they were outside to keep their kids and dogs from leaving
31:45
their yard. One person was in a hospital dying of cancer when the HIA
31:51
sent a notice requiring them to change their patio curtains to the correct color because
31:55
they're patios all the wrong color. Yeah. Wow, unbelievable. Person got
32:00
repeated warnings to remove the well from their property, but they didn't have a
32:04
well. Turns out a house with the same number but on a different street
32:07
had a foot tall ornamental flower pot shaped like a well. THEA was responding
32:10
to that but sending it to the wrong address. Yea happened sometimes, I
32:15
guess, yeah for not an actual well. One HA limited owners to one
32:20
dog per household and threatened fines and a mortgage lean if people got a second
32:23
dog. Wow, a mortgage lean just for having a dog. So well.
32:28
Yeah. Some people moving out of their house got a warning to remove
32:30
their moving storage pod after less than one day of having it at their house
32:35
to help with the move. So they haven't parked, they're packing stuff up,
32:37
and they're telling the jo selling them to move right away. Yeah and
32:40
one hia. The approved color for the house was difficult to get for the
32:45
garage doors, and what happened was the owners needed to replace their door.
32:49
They couldn't get it to match their house, so they decided to get it
32:52
to paint the same color as their houses trim. They were threatened with a
32:54
mortgage lean if they didn't change their garage door color. But in this since
33:00
the HA didn't even have rules about garage doors, they just said about,
33:02
you know, threatening this lean because it didn't match the house, instead of
33:06
match the house as trim. Yeah. Now. One family had to leave
33:08
their wrecked car parked in their driveway while it was being assessed by an insurance
33:13
company. They notified the h of what they were doing and why they were
33:15
doing it, but still received a fine for illegally parking a car in their
33:19
driveway. One family was fined because they were accused of leaving the gate open
33:22
at the public pool, although they hadn't actually done that, somebody else had
33:27
and the HWA also bizarrely included a note that the husband of the house had
33:30
been seen at the pool with two women. That was true, the two
33:34
women he was with one was his wife and the other one at the same
33:37
time that they were there was their neighbor. They were just there hanging out,
33:40
So weird. Yeah. Now, One person who was recovering from a
33:44
broken ankle and was unable to mow the lawn was fined for their grass getting
33:46
too high. Yeah, it literally couldn't do it. Homeowners in one HA
33:51
had family over for Thanksgiving dinner. All their family parked on their property and
33:54
in front of their house, so they weren't taking up any of anyone else's
33:57
space. But the HIA called the police about illegal parking for the cars and
34:01
the families of the house. Everybody got parking violation tickets. Wow. An
34:07
that had no rules about house color demanded one homeowner changed their color because the
34:10
color had they had chosen was quote too bright. Yeah. One person received
34:15
notices of violation every time they left items by their front door. One time
34:19
their shoes were wet and they let them buy their front door to dry because
34:22
they didn't want to bring them into the house groceries as they would set groceries
34:25
down to them bring them into the house. They got a warning about that
34:29
they left their swimsuits out to dry. They got a warning about that the
34:31
items had been cleaned up by the owners so quickly that they didn't even get
34:36
pictures of the violations, which they normally did in this place, but they
34:38
sent the warnings anyway. One person got fined when someone else parked in front
34:44
of their house. They didn't know who, and the HA told them,
34:45
if it's in front of your house, you get the fine. Yeah,
34:50
wasn't even their car, was anyone they knew the car that they just left
34:52
it there. Yeah, this one was wild. One h had rules against
34:54
having pickup trucks in the neighborhood after six pm. Not semi trucks, not
35:00
delivery chucks, just pickup trucks couldn't be in the neighborhood after six pm.
35:06
Now. One person got in trouble for leaving their RV in their backyard,
35:08
in their backyard, like where it's away from everybody. One family was fine
35:13
and threatened with jail time for painting their swing set to match the colors and
35:16
the trees the swing set in their backyard that they put up. A family
35:21
who was almost destroyed in the fire had to wait nine months to start rebuilding
35:23
while the HA hassled them over a minute design details of the new home they
35:29
were going to build. So I guess they were just like having to live
35:31
out a hotel or something the whole time. Probably. Yeah. One HA
35:35
had rules against how large a dog could be. It was no more so.
35:37
And this isn't like the Grand Pyrenee a great Pyrenees dogs. Their size
35:42
limit was thirty five pounds, and they even prohibited a Vietnam vet from keeping
35:46
his support dog because it was over their size criteria. Unbelievable. One family
35:52
was prohibited from flying an American flag because it was too big. There was
35:54
one instant. This one is like the ha did not win. This was
35:59
kind of fun. There was a political yard sign that someone was allowed to
36:01
put up, but it was four inches larger than the approved size, and
36:07
they were back and forth with the HWA. They ended up going to court
36:10
and in the resulting legal battles, eventually the homeowners won and the legal fees
36:15
bankrupt the HWA, all because of four inches of sign. You know,
36:19
sometimes people just the battles they picker are really bizarre. Yeah, it's really
36:22
interesting. That was the hill they chose to die on, and they died
36:24
that the hill and they died there. Yeah. One chway. It was
36:29
found to be using more than three hundred thousand dollars of collective fees to pay
36:32
for personal expenses. Yeah, they're literally embezzling money from the community. One
36:37
HWA had a rule about walking dogs before seven am, and one of the
36:42
enforcers chased down the dog walker in a golf cart with flashing lights and sirens
36:46
to confront the dog walker who was walking on public sidewalks. These weren't even
36:51
ha sidewalks, they were public sidewalks. And this this is another one where
36:54
actually the HWA kind of got their come up ins or at least this person
36:57
did, because what happened here is the h person called the police. The
37:01
police got there and was like, this person's walking on public property. You,
37:05
on the other hand, are blasting a siren that is above the alloud
37:08
noise level for this ordinance. Also when your tail lights is out on your
37:13
golf cart. Also, you're not allowed to be flashing lights here. And
37:15
so they ended up towing the person's golf cart, which I thought was So
37:20
that was pretty sweet. You know, it's you're hearing all these stories.
37:23
I'm very grateful because like I live in an HLA, but it's fairly chill.
37:28
There are problems, there are concerns, but like I have been sarcastic
37:31
online and like, you know, my wife will be like you already get
37:35
us kicked out of this neighborhood. And luckily I get I get along with
37:37
everybody. So like it's fine, but like there are some of the things
37:39
that you pick up on are really petty, and it's really fascinating to kind
37:43
of watch it all play out because it's just so like there's so many people
37:46
that have so many big complaints about things that are really not problems. It's
37:50
really interesting to watch on the inside. I left out like way like what
37:55
I The list that we gave you was a fraction of what I found in
37:59
horror stories. Yes, and I didn't. I wasn't choosy. I literally
38:01
just went through and grabbed everyone everyone that I saw until I was like,
38:05
this is going to be an episode where all we do is tell horror stories
38:07
about Hwa, So I'm gonna go ahead and stop here. Yeah. I
38:09
wasn't even trying to select the worst ones, like they are brutal and petty
38:15
and terrible to me. It's I've always had this question because I've only ever
38:17
lived in one Hwa and I hated it with every fiber of my being.
38:22
But I've always had this question of what should our rights be, particularly as
38:25
like homeowners although HIA is definitely do exist in like condos and apartment buildings and
38:30
that sort of thing, But what what should our rights be in this space.
38:35
I think it's definitely worth I'm backing now beyond the pettiness and the tyranny,
38:37
the bigger problem here is that hs are so prolific it is nearly impossible
38:43
to purchase a home that isn't in an HWA if you and if you want
38:45
to try to avoid that kind of draconian authoritarianism. Now this means that your
38:51
options for where you send your kid to school, how far you live from
38:53
work, those are things that you may be forced to reconcile. So you
38:57
may have to kind of, like, you know, suck it up,
39:00
live in an h way to get those benefits that you're trying to get,
39:02
and then so you kind of have to deal with the good and the bad
39:06
in that situation. Yeah, I mean, should we have the right to
39:08
choose where we want to live? Obviously we can't just live anywhere, like
39:12
I can't live in a national park. I can't live on top of a
39:15
mountain where like I can't structurally support a house. There are people who maybe
39:19
they want to live in a community where they police each other to death.
39:22
They should be able to have the right to do that sort of thing,
39:24
and live in that little hell swamp of their own creation. But if your
39:29
choice is down to only eighteen percent of the available new houses that are being
39:32
built in this country, then that means that you're restricted from all of those
39:36
things you can't You're restricted where you can send your kid to school, You're
39:39
restricted to how far away you have to live from work. You're restricted like
39:43
what access to like groceries and things that you have now, because you're sort
39:46
of being forced into this shrinking area of development that is the only place that's
39:52
a refuge from getting away from these horrible, terrible people that run these hwas
39:57
And most people don't even want hs any It has spilled way past the point
40:01
of making sense and just proliferating way beyond where people actually want them to exist.
40:07
Right and further, many, if not most, of the rules of
40:09
has are specifically in service of quote, preserving the quality of the houses for
40:15
resale end quote. Now, which again has the little or left to do
40:17
with excluding people who can buy houses in a particular area. Remember that certain
40:22
people were considered to lower the value of houses in an area. Remember that
40:25
whole thing. So, if the goal of the HA is to preserve the
40:29
resale value, and that's kind of an embedded systemic thing. Then it makes
40:34
sense that people are getting excluded. But also many people try to avoid purchasing
40:37
houses in HA, so the resale value is already lower. And also some
40:42
rules are pretty absolutely ridiculous and couldn't possibly have an effect on a property's value,
40:46
such as leaving a towel out to dry for more than an hour any
40:50
like that. Those not resale issues. Those are people with too much time
40:52
on their hands complaining about things. Also, also, once you have paid
40:57
upwards of one hundred thousand dollars, it seems ludicrous is that someone else should
41:00
be able to tell you what to do with that property. Yeah, like
41:02
that just seems like a good cut off. Yeah. I think that if
41:06
we look at neighborhoods that don't have hys, they are not seeing plummeting house
41:09
values. So the idea that an hway preserves a house's value, I think
41:14
is just wrong. I don't think that it does that. Right. In
41:16
places where that's not the case, houses continue to maintain their value because location
41:21
is everything, and if you're in a good location, then you can your
41:23
house is going to have good value. And if you upkeep your property,
41:25
you're going to have better resale value as well, So like there's already built
41:30
an incentive to do those sorts of things. And as we said, like
41:32
you've already purchased this property, Like the idea that someone then gets to dictate
41:37
what you do with your own property and the place where you live, to
41:40
me is so far beyond, like incredibly. Assinine and I did kind of
41:46
look around to see like how common is this around the world, and there
41:50
actually are quite a few. Many countries do have hways, although where what
41:54
I was looking, the majority of them seem to be in like condos and
41:59
like apartment complexes and things where it's like sort of grouped housing, if you
42:04
will, and not necessarily individual homes, sure, which is a lot of
42:07
individual homes in the United States are in h Condos are fairly common to have
42:12
hias as well, and they also reported having similarly draconian and petty squabbles and
42:17
they're hiways. One example I saw was that in a building where one side
42:22
of the building gets a lot of sunlight, so the people there were like,
42:25
it's really hot in our condos. We like to be able to like
42:30
put up shade to just help you know. Was this endless debate in the
42:35
HIA about whether they could put up shades, what color they would be,
42:37
how much they could spend on, on what size and style they would be.
42:40
It have to be for the entire buildings, not just one side was
42:44
getting shade, even though only one side was getting hit by the sun.
42:46
Like very impractical, stupid petty things that were they were debating. As just
42:52
to me, the whole thing is just so blood boiling to hear about and
42:57
like all of these things. And I'm one of those people that I just
43:00
I will not live in an h away. I'm like, if that means
43:02
I never leave this house, fine, i will not live in an h
43:06
away. I'm not going to let someone tell me what like how tall my
43:08
grass can be, or what kind of tree I can have, or how
43:10
long I can park on the driveway. That to me is so far beyond
43:15
what should be reasonably acceptable for a person to tell me what I can and
43:19
can't do. Like there's some things I understand. Don't launch launch a rocket
43:22
in your neighborhood or a rocket propelled grenade. I'm understand. I understand that
43:25
that is a bad idea. I'm not going to do that. Yeah,
43:29
like, please don't fire guns at random, Please don't drive in one hundred
43:31
and fifty miles an hour through a residential neighborhood. These are all things that
43:35
I am perfectly on board with because those are things that put a lot of
43:37
other people in danger. But like, please don't like leave your garage door
43:40
open for more than five minutes. That I'm not going to tolerate. Like,
43:45
I that is absolutely crazy. It's unreasonable. Yeah, very unreasonable.
43:51
I needed to take a step back and list of the soothing sounds of screeching
43:54
tires on wet pavement or something. Here's some ads. Okay, So can
44:07
we do something about this horrible nightmare we have found ourselves in. There's very
44:12
little we can actually do, which is kind of a problem. You can
44:15
organize people in your neighborhood to try to dissolve an h It may work.
44:19
There are a lot of reasons it may not. You know, the thing
44:21
is, it's a lot of times HA involves a lot of people and then
44:23
very few people in power, and trying to get all that together to address
44:28
that is a little bit of a challenge. Yeah, you can avoid trying
44:30
to buy a house in an H. That's obviously going to be difficult for
44:34
people because as we said, they are so ubiquitous that it's really difficult to
44:37
make that choice. You can move out of your H. You can join
44:40
the board of your HA and try and change the rules, but this may
44:44
not work due to management companies, which I'll have to talk about in a
44:46
second here, But those are some things you can try. We can also
44:50
elect officials who can change the rules about HS. That will be really nice,
44:52
but you get to pay attention to local politics and stuff like that,
44:55
and a lot of people don't want to go through that effort. Yeah,
44:59
and there's like no government oversight right now, and there probably should be,
45:01
so you know, people who are taking that on as an issue. But
45:05
here's the thing. Let's say that we get out hwas under control. The
45:08
pettiness goes away, and like some of the nonsense fines and like snowball effect
45:15
fines go away. I would argue that even if they could be toned down
45:17
and their petty grievances addressed, they're still a terrible idea that should be just
45:22
completely abolished or largely abolished. For one, there is a practically direct linear
45:28
path from Jim Crow to hwas like this whole idea was founded on a backbone
45:36
of segregation and preventing minority people from gaining wealth and status and success. Like
45:43
that's what they were largely designed to do. They were largely to keep those
45:46
minority people out. Second, they were largely away of One of the ways
45:52
they function is they're a way of a municipality punting their responsibilities to homeowners.
45:57
The thing is, you pay taxes, and then you HA taxes and the
46:00
forms of fees for the job that your taxes should already be doing. So
46:05
essentially it seems like they're just budgeting poorly in these municipalities to try and have
46:09
people come in that then pay taxes but don't get those services and instead pay
46:15
more taxes in the form of HIA fees, right, And that to me
46:17
is just that's wrong, that's stupid. Third, what happens to these has
46:22
you run into for profit companies, and that's where these management companies come in.
46:25
These are companies whose only job is to go in and help run the
46:30
HA, which means that they'll send in an auditor to drive around looking for
46:35
infractions. And when their bottom line is to make money, then they are
46:38
going to be looking for infractions anything that they can come up with, because
46:44
their bread and butter is charging people find, right, their job is to
46:47
ratchet at fees as quickly as they can because all they want to do is
46:52
make money. That means that they will change the rule, means they're going
46:55
to be filing extremely petty fines about nonsense thing sometimes things that like aren't even
47:02
actually in violation of the rules, but they kind of spin to make it
47:06
sound like they are. Like one person, they were like, your driveway
47:08
isn't clean enough. You have to pay to get at powerwash and if you
47:12
don't, we're going to find you. And your lawn ornaments don't meet our
47:15
decoration code, so you can't have those, and they just find her without
47:20
you know, this happened to someone, and like their fines are daily for
47:22
every separate infraction ended up racketing up to seventeen thousand dollars, right, So,
47:28
like that is a crazy amount of money. And that's what happens when
47:31
you get these privatized systems that are trying to regulate this and fourth forcing people
47:37
to conform to the set of arbitrary, petty, draconian rules about their own
47:42
property. To me, is just completely insane and like the most maddening way
47:49
that they have the power to do this. And again, it would be
47:52
one thing if these are voluntary, but most of them are not. You
47:54
do not get to choose your choices either. You don't get to have a
47:59
house where you have to follow our stupid rules. And to me, that
48:01
is just not fair. That's just not fair. Like if they want to
48:06
be have their own little thing and police each other to death, then that's
48:09
fine. Just leave the rest of us out of it, because we don't
48:13
want to play your stupid game. We don't want to be in your stupid
48:15
club. Go set your own hands on fire somewhere else and stop setting me
48:19
on fire. So I'm very worked up about this. It's it is a
48:22
thing about which I feel very passionately because they are just getting people over for
48:27
no reason other than to be dicks about it and to make money. So
48:31
that's what I have to say about hys, it's not a cool thing.
48:34
This episode should be why we don't do this, you know why we don't
48:39
do this thing? Because yeah, it's bad. It's it's all bad.
48:43
Like it's not, like I said before, I have not had a personally
48:45
bad experience, but it is like an extra tax in an extra bill that
48:47
I've got every month to stay in the house that I'm living in, to
48:51
make sure that my kids go to certain schools and all that, and like
48:52
it's it's like it's an unfair thing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, So
48:57
my main take home point is Hway's que there's no better take on point.
49:04
Yeah. Anyway, do anything else before we wrap up? Nope? Nope,
49:08
anythink you covered it? We do have some recommendations before I do that.
49:12
I would like to thank the crew of people we have. Fact checking
49:15
and writing from Shane Jess and myself, editing and production by Justin Greenhouse.
49:21
Thank you all so much for listening. If you like to support us,
49:23
if you are also an anti HIA person, which honestly, all statistics point
49:27
to the fact that you probably are, and all statistics points of the fact
49:30
that you probably live in one, and I'm sorry for you for that.
49:32
If you like to support us, you can join us on Patreon. You
49:35
get all kinds of access to behind the scenes stuff, extra content, ad
49:38
free stuff, whatever. You can also email us directly to tell us how
49:42
much you hate HIAS at info at WWDWWD podcast dot com, follow us like
49:47
us, do all the things on social media whatever, you can talk with
49:50
us there, you pick up some merch at or merch store, and I
49:52
think that is all the things on that for the people who have already joined
49:57
us on Patreon. The Wonderful, Wonderful list of Awesome Humans includes Mike m
50:00
Megan, Layla, Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua, The Daily
50:05
BA, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, and Brian. You guys are amazing.
50:08
We really appreciate you. You're so much better than an hway. Although
50:12
that is a low bar to clear, so maybe that was more of an
50:14
insult than I meant it to be. But I think that's all I have
50:17
to say for my thing. So I'm missing to anything or I think we
50:21
need to add before we get to our recommendations. No, I think that
50:23
covers it perfect, all, right, recommendations. It is recommendations. So
50:36
the recommendation I'm going to make today is for more reading. So I know
50:40
I know everybody likes reading. You all know that I like reading, and
50:43
I have been reading Night Shift by Stephen King, but I'm not recommending that
50:47
book specifically, I'm recommending Stephen King short stories. Yeah, that's awesome.
50:52
Yeah, because I think a lot of times people think that like Stephen King
50:54
is like this horror writer that just writes nothing but these big, sprawling epics
50:58
like It and Dark Towel and The Stand When the Truth is is a lot
51:01
of his stories and a lot of the movies that you might see that are
51:05
kind of adaptations of his stuff come from a short story somewhere. So like,
51:08
for example, Salem's Lot is a short is a short book, but
51:12
there's a movie and kind of stuff about that. But if you've ever seen
51:15
Maximum Overdrive that's based on a short story he wrote called Trucks, It's only
51:19
like ten pages, but like they it's really interesting and really fascinating what you'll
51:22
find and discover any short story collection. So there's two that I specifically recommend.
51:28
Everything's Eventual Night Shift. Those are really good, easy ones to jump
51:30
into. They're not huge books, but there's some really cool tie ins and
51:32
stuff. Love that. That's great. Yeah, Yeah, I didn't need
51:36
to read read me some more Stephen King cool. I am recommending escape rooms.
51:40
Have you ever done an escape room? I have? There's so much
51:45
fun. Yeah, they're super fun. Most cities have them anymore, at
51:47
least one. Honestly, I've been to some fairly small citizen was able to
51:52
find an escape room there. If you've never heard of them or you've never
51:54
done them, essentially what it is it is an hour long room full of
51:58
puzzles and like puzzles like jigsaw puzzles, but like logic puzzles and that sort
52:02
of thing, where you are usually trying to go through some narrative. A
52:07
really common one is like you are helping the police with some investigation, or
52:13
you are the police doing some investigation, or someone's trying to kill you and
52:15
you need to escape something. That's like a really common theme. Yeah,
52:19
they span all kinds of themes. So I've seen some wild stuff. Then
52:22
as you go through the room, there are clues in the room that help
52:23
you like open locks and open doors and get into secret spaces to find more
52:29
clues to open more locks and more doors and codes to then eventually get out
52:32
of the room. And you try and do that in most cases in less
52:36
than an hour. And so they're just a lot of fun. You can
52:38
find them in a lot of places, and I recommend to go checking them
52:42
out there. They're fun time that can be frustrating if you're someone who does
52:45
not like working with groups of other people, or if you just don't like
52:49
puzzles, sure, or if you don't like dark. A lot of them
52:52
are dark, which is not my favorite thing. Yes, but they're a
52:54
lot of fun. So I tend to recommend escape rooms strong, recommend on
52:58
that they're so fun. Perfect. Well, I think that's all I have.
53:00
Thank you so much for recording with me today, Shane. Anything else,
53:02
I'm listening nothing all my in All right, This is Abraham, this
53:06
is Shane, and we're out. See ya. You've been listening to Why
53:09
We Do what We Do. You can learn more about this and other episodes
53:14
by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope
53:20
you have an awesome day.