Neighborhood Rules

I read “Retired Rod’s” post titled “Nope, not an RV in sight!!” and it reminded me of our situation. I am also an Amateur Radio Operator or HAM as we like to be called. I recently sold my Icom 746Pro and 2KW amplifier (I couldn’t use the amp with my Tech license) to pay some bills but there was more to it than that. Our neighborhood has restrictions much like a Condo association, minus the association and Condo’s! No outside antennas allowed!

We live in a single family subdivision and when we bought the house we weren’t told there was a huge book of “association type rules” to abide by. For instance, no fence, no shed, no amateur radio antennas, no working on the car in the street or driveway, no RV’s allowed in the driveway and no RV’s allowed to be stored anywhere on the property etc.. etc.. etc.. did we get a copy of this rule book? No, but the town claims it exists and they “enforce the rules”.

I can see a rule against painting your house neon pink and neon green or something like that but I can’t wash my own car in my own driveway? Come on you’ve got to be kidding me! I’m guessing they save the rules enforcement for people who go over the edge because there are fences everywhere, sheds, RV’s and everybody works on their cars or washes their cars in their driveways and why shouldn’t they? I have never seen anybody bring home a dilapidated RV like the one in “Christmas Vacation” where cousin Eddie used the sewer to drain the sh*tter!                 

Or heck maybe something worse like this! Doh!

Just imagine the possibilities!!

How about these parked next door?

These pictures are from people complaining about these rigs being parked in front of their house(s) in Venice California. If you haven’t heard about that situation check out this Google search.

Ok, I got carried away when I found all of these, I digress.

This last year they relaxed the rules so if you own an RV it can be parked in the driveway during the summer season but it has to be stored elsewhere in the winter. This rule doesn’t matter for us, our rig is 12ft longer than the driveway!

This picture is 12 years old but shows how short our driveway is.

The house next door to the left (west) of us is abandoned so we use that driveway when we need to work on the rig quickly or have the RV overnight like when I worked on it last fall to fix the floor.

Of course, our neighbor called the police the first time we brought it home because it was a “suspicious vehicle” even though we told everybody it would be there and they saw me walking into and out of it. Some people have nothing better to do I guess and we didn’t talk to them for months after they pulled that one.

Ronda brought up a good point, our RV is 36ft long, it blocks the entire neighbors driveway when it’s there which means the view in the direction is blocked as well. This can put people off and I understand that, however, if our driveway was long enough I would not hesitate keeping the rig at home, it’s our property and if the property was big enough to handle the RV, we should be able to do so.

Our ultimate goal is to sell this house, downsize and buy a house further west that has some property where we can keep the RV until we retire. Maybe not this RV of course but which ever one we end up with when the time comes.

Until next time, have a great day everybody!