Sense of Belonging

I was driving through the neighborhood tonight on my way home from work.  Now that the time has changed, the drive is in complete darkness.  And in that part of the neighborhood, that means nearly complete darkness because that's the non-association side and there's no street lamps.  I recalled someone once who was just agahst - "Why on earth would you want to be part of an association?"

I thought of how the next street over, a less traveled street, how rundown the houses are.  Some, I suspect, might just fall over soon.

And no one cares.  Their neighbors might, but who cares, really?  If things get bad enough, you can call the City's code-compliance officers on them, but that's pretty fascist.  Which is ironically, my friend's argument against HOAs was that it felt fascist to them.

But I thought about my past living experiences.  There was with my family, then in a college dorm, then an apartment complex, and then a non-association neighborhood in a pocket of county surrounded by cities, and then an association neighborhood with nearby non-association homes.

So in every case but the non-association, there was something there: community.  We're all in this together.

Even if that means I have to get approval in advance on any color I want to repaint my house.