Posted on 06/27/2011 10:20:34 AM PDT by Immerito
A 77-year-old Army veteran is being threatened with legal action for flying the American flag in his front yard.
Fred Quigley, of Macedonia, Ohio, a retired Army chaplain and minister who served active duty during the Vietnam War, has been told his flag violates his homeowners association's rules on flagpoles.
As an alternative, the association offered to place the flag at the entrance of the development, but Mr Quigley refused.
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Mr Quigley's lawyer Gerald Patronite said the association has no right to stop his client.
He cites a 2003 state statute that addresses the homeowner's rights in such a dispute.
'Essentially, no deed restriction or association can abridge this right to display the flag,' he told AOL Real Estate.
Mr Patronite said that the HOA's rules state that a flag can only be displayed if affixed to the home.
But doing so would mean Mr Quigley would have to put up a much smaller flag.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
When people move into homes with HOAs, they should read the rules. I totally disagree with the rule but I assume it was there for homeowners to read. Why anyone would want to live under that authority is a mystery to me.
Which is why I would rather live in a one room tool shed in some rural area that in a mansion in one of these home owner associations. If I wanted to live in place where everything was dictated down to whether I could fly a flag or not, I would just move to Communist China and skip the middle man. It amazes me that some of the same people that scream about the government taking away property rights, will willingly sign over far more to live in one of these communities.
What a simple world you must live in. Here in central Florida is is nearly impossible to buy a home which isn’t in a HOA.
Then the real estate and builders are very adept at making sure people DO NOT know whats in them before closing.
I live in a community where the HOA was poorly put together. The little Hitler that runs it has tried to intimidate me several times in the past and I had to put my foot down on his neck once. Next time I won’t be so nice.
I’ll never live in another community with an HOA.
HOA Nazis strike again.
They are required to give them to owners and make you sign for them. And I have family in the area. There are plenty of places to live without HOAs.
Our HOA is trying to pass changes to “allow” flags in our development. They can’t get enough people to the meetings.
Our state has a law which forces HOAs to allow flags.
Dude moved into an HOA.
What if the neighbors started flying flags from Mexico or Norway?
Someone is bound to get pissed and the HOA has decided on rule that mitigates anger and preserves the quality of the neighborhood.
He was given an excellent alternative instead of an ultimatum
He is now just an arrrogant SOB.
Dude moved into an HOA.
What if the neighbors started flying flags from Mexico or Norway?
Someone is bound to get pissed and the HOA has decided on rule that mitigates anger and preserves the quality of the neighborhood.
He was given an excellent alternative instead of an ultimatum
He is now just an arrrogant SOB.
When you read the find print on these “vet being told he can’t fly flag” stories, it always comes down to:
(1) He moved into a neighborhood that has covenents.
(2) The covenants always have a provision for flying the flag in some manner, usually a common 3x5 flag attached to a pole mounted on the house.
(3) The vet is mad because he wants to fly 15 foot flag atop a 30 foot flagpole in the middle of his front yard.
If he didn’t like the provisions of the covenents, he shouldn’t have moved in.
“They are required to give them to owners and make you sign for them”
Sure they are require, but do they? No, they’ll usually throw them in the package after closing. I held a license for a few years and saw exactly how they do it.
The only places without an HOA are custom built homes and developments about 40 years old. In Florida any home which is older than about 10 years doesn’t meet hurricane code and is unsafe during a hurricane and incredibly expensive to insure.
(c) If the disclosure summary is not provided to a prospective purchaser before the purchaser executes a contract for the sale of property governed by covenants that are subject to disclosure pursuant to this section, the purchaser may void the contract by delivering to the seller or the seller’s agent or representative written notice canceling the contract within 3 days after receipt of the disclosure summary or prior to closing, whichever occurs first. This right may not be waived by the purchaser but terminates at closing.
http://www.ccfjedu.net/HOAFS720ParII.htm
Like I said, it must be nice to live in such a simple perfect world as you.
He has a 20 foot flagpole in his front yard. The picture below shows flags being flown in the neighborhood that are withing the covenenats.
He's allowed to fly the flag, he's not allowed (under the covenants which he agreed to follow when he bought into the neighborhood) to erect a 20 foot flagpole in his front yard).
The U.S. flag law fundamentally changed what HOAs could do in this regard, but it did leave some ambiguity. You have an absolute right to fly a flag. The question becomes what right you have in constructing a structure on which to fly the flag.
Virginia's law says nobody can stop you from flying a flag AFFIXED to your house. But HOAs can still regulate flag poles to some degree; the federal law makes that really hard though, as the above link explains.
The flag pole is NOT the flag, and clearly you would want some control, otherwise a person could build a lighthouse in their front yard, put a flag at the peak, and say they were just exercising their rights to present the flag as they wanted to. That is of course an extreme example; what about a 100-foot flag pole that requires guy wires?
But most people want to put reasonable poles in their yards, and under federal law now, it's hard to stop them, regardless of what an HOA's covenents say.
The Virginia law now places the burden on HOAs to prove that their restrictions on flag placement/size/etc. meet a compelling HOA interest; further they must write a coherent regulation for it, and include that regulation in disclosure packets. Otherwise the regulations are unenforceable.
So a lot of HOAs are now trying to write such regulations, but some can't because they can't get enough people to the meetings and they require supermajorities to change their covenants (which are now invalid because of the law).
My non-legal opinion is that the law, having superceded the covenants, would support a board writing up new regulations without needing to change covenants, so long as the covenants previously allowed the board to restrict flags.
Our board hasn't gone through the process of writing up such regulations, and we pretty much have always approved flag poles, so it's not a big deal, although nobody has ever tried to drop a 50-foot pole in their front yard either. We have one house with a pole about as tall as the house though, with flood lights. (We can regulate the flood lights, and they point away from the street toward the pole).
Having said that, I wonder if there will be litigation coming about whether lights on the flag fall under the same regulations as the flag pole. There doesn't appear to be any case law yet.
The issue is not that he cannot display the flag.
The issue is that he cannot just arbitrarily, on his volition, put a flagpole up in his front yard to display the flag.
What if every homeowner did that in an association?
Did he get permission from the HOA Architectural Review Board?
Did he install it properly—because if it is common property(which in some HOAs is anything outside the walls of your home)and the thing falls and hurts somebody or HOA property(ie, even the roof and walls of his own home) the HOA insurance policy will get a claim against it. That means the premium for the entire association goes up—and everyone pays the increase through their dues.
Moral is: The HOA is not at fault. They are enforcing the rules everyone agreed to when they signed on the dotted line. The HOa is just trying to maintain community standards to keep propArties looking good and uniform. That’s a major reason people live in such common interest communities to begin with.
The HOA is NOT forbidding the flying of an American flag. You can fly a 3x5 flag from your home, nothing wrong with that.
But you cannot erect a pole for any reason in front of your home in common area just because you want to—noble reasons or not.
If he wants to do that, sell the home, and move to a non association neighborhood and erect a flagpole—oh, but you will have to get approval from the town first and a permit—oops.
Next.
What a dumb thing to say. Why do you imply I live in a “simple, perfect world”? I can read and understand how HOAs work. They have rules. You live there, you follow the rules. You don’t want to follow the rules? Don’t live there. Do a simple real estate search for the Orlando area and see how many single family homes are not in developments with HOAs. It ain’t rocket science.
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