Homeowner Associations

Homeowner Associations (HOAs) are (mostly) involuntary paid memberships into systems that can regulate nearly everything about your home and life around your home. Any deviation from those regulations, real or perceived, can be met with fines, a lien on your house, mortgage takeover, and threats of jail time. Where did this sadistic practice horror come from? Racism, of course. Listen in to our deep dive into the dumpster fire that is HOAs.

Recommendations

• Abraham: Escape Rooms
• Shane: Stephen King short stories (Collections: Everything’s Eventual, Night Shift)

Links:

1. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/homeowners-association-fee-hoa.asp#:~:text=HOA%20fees%20tend%20to%20vary,amenities%2C%20the%20higher%20the%20fees.
2. https://www.realestatenews.com/2023/02/15/most-new-homes-for-sale-are-in-an-hoa-do-buyers-care
3. https://hoa-usa.com/about/#:~:text=There%20are%20over%20370%2C000%20homeowner,homeowner%20association%20boards%20and%20committees.
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/realestate/what-is-redlining.html
5. https://www.buzzfeed.com/meganeliscomb/annoying-hoa-stories
6. https://www.familyhandyman.com/list/homeowner-association-horror-stories/
7. https://www.buzzfeed.com/meganeliscomb/petty-hoa-stories
8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
You're listening to Why we do whatwe do? Welcome to Why we Do
what we Do? I Am yourworthless pile of garbage Host Abraham, and
I'm your Fines upon Fines upon FinesHost Shane. We're Terrible Today, where

(00:27):
a psychology podcast. We talk aboutwhat people do and why they do the
things that they do, and tryand break it down and understand the psychological
principles that are underlying these strange,sometimes horrible decisions that we make. And
one of those horrible decisions is goingto be the central discussion of today's topic.
But first, we always like toacknowledge the day on which an episode

(00:50):
is published, and the day onwhich this episode is published is June twenty
first, twenty twenty three. Andso let's talk about some things we have
to celebrate today. In continuing withour ration of our friends from the LGBTQ
community, we are celebrating Pride Month. Yeah, so happy Pride Month,
y'all yep. In relation to that, it is World Humanist Day, so

(01:10):
we can be humanists by celebrating PrideMonth. I think, yeah, big
fan of that. It's also NationalSeashell Day, as somebody who lives near
the beach. That's a nice thingto celebrate. Sure. It's National Dog
Party Day, meaning both throw aparty four your dog and parties thrown by
dogs. Yes, the messiest kindsof parties. It's also National Day of
the Gong that's spelled g ong,not bog for folks that are miss hearing

(01:36):
me, Gillagong. It is alsoWorld Music Day. I'm a big fan
of that. Yes, me too, as both of us as musicians,
we have to celebrate that we're alligatedto at this point in time. It's
also National Day of Indigenous People indeed, and related to that National Aboriginal Day.
Yes, big fans of that.Just a shout out. Because it
is June twenty first, in caseyou didn't know, this is also the

(01:57):
Summer solstice, which means it's alldownhill from here. I mean it Isn't
that just kind of a good generalrule that it's all downhill from here?
Yeah, Like, right now inthis moment when you're listening to it,
you're older now than you've ever beenand as young as you'll ever be,
and it's gonna be the same effectingat the end of this episode. Two
YEA, A couple others I almostforgot about. It is Ghost Skateboarding Day,

(02:20):
World Draft Day, World Motorcycle Day, National Peaches and Cream Day,
Make Music Day, and National DaylightAppreciation Day, not Daylight Saving because that
can go to hell Daylight Appreciation Day. Yeah, there's a lot of good
things happening today. Act as amatter of fact, it sounds like everything
that we're celebrating is pretty great.It is awesome. Oh and it's National

(02:40):
smooth Day. Almost forgot that too. Oh yeah, you like that too?
All right, if you appreciate whatwe're up to today, not necessarily
listing holidays, that's not really whatwe do. We talk about psychology things.
And if at the end of thisdiscussion you were like that was really
good, then you should definitely likesubscribe, live rating, and review,
follow us on social media, youreach out and email us, tell us
how much you like us. Youcan join us on Patreon, you can

(03:00):
pick up some merch on our merchstore. And you can also form a
coalition to take down a tyrannical groupof horrible people and you call that coalition.
Why we do what we do AndI'll talk more about how you can
support us at the end of thisdiscussion. So, as I said,
we are talking about worthless pile ofgarbage, coalitions of horrible people, which
is to say, we're talking abouthomeowners associations. Yes. So these are

(03:23):
also called community associations or property ownersassociations, and these are private associations created
by real estate developers. The developmentfirms purchase large plots of land to build
housing and simultaneously establish a homeowners associationshortened to HOA. The HOA is integrated
directly into the purchasing agreement four homesbuilt on that land. So when you

(03:44):
go by this land, you arepurchasing as part of like, in order
to purchase this, you have tobe part of an HOA. Yes,
yeah, is automatic membership, yes, Now, the homeowners association is a
communal membership that automatically and involuntarily registersits members upon purchasing the house. When
you are buying house at an hin most places, you cannot opt out.
Either you get the house with theHA or you don't get the house,

(04:08):
and they usually kind of like there'sa pretty clear line with that.
And the implication of this, ofcourse is that there are very few options
for people looking to own a home. Yes, and we should specify for
those of you who are already gotyour typing fingers ready. There are some
voluntary h a ways. We knowthat that's a thing. They do not
make up a lot of them,but they do exist, right, And

(04:28):
membership and an h and voluntary asit is, is also not free.
Members pay fees ranging from ten dollarsa month to thousand dollars a month or
even more, with the average beingaround two to three hundred dollars. And
this is according to Investopedia where Ifound the information, although I found it
corroborated elsewhere. Yeah, now anexchange for this coerced tything that is is
collected from you. The h WAalso provide services to the homeowners, and

(04:53):
we'll talk about sort of not onlythe downside of HYS, but what people
call the benefits of HYS and theservices that an HWA can provide ranges from
maintaining a nearby green space to buildingand maintaining private roads and sewer systems.
If you're in a place with snow, it might do snow removal for you
in a very timely fashion because they'reonly there to plow that particular place.

(05:15):
Will you actually get to that becausesometimes that doesn't always work out so well.
And of course the service that anHA will provide is issuing regulations about
people's private homes that they own,what they can and can't do with that
property. Yes, we're going totalk about all of those things and really
the astonishing power of these entities andwhat the power that they wield, But
we have to talk about a historyof ha's as you will not be surprised.

(05:39):
There's some pretty dark beginnings with this. Yeah, and we could start
with Jim Crow, and we probablyshould, but we'll actually start with Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, more commonly referred toas FDR. Now setting the scene here,
the soldiers are coming back when thesort of the nineteen twenties ish kind
of around that era, soldiers arecoming back from the First World War and

(06:00):
in the United States is coming outof the depression. We did an episode
about when the Democrats and Republican switchedpolicies. This is the time of flocks
that they're sort of crossing over,and FDR was one of the catalysts of
that. Anyway, it was alreadyunderstood at this point in history. Really
everyone kind of was getting the factthat one of the most stable paths to

(06:20):
wealth and security was owning land andproperty. Just having land and property was
a thing that would be like,this is the pathway to wealth, possibly
beyond almost any other pathway to wealth. And that's how scientologists are worth so
much today. Right, It's likeit's all tied up in property. They're
land wealthy. They owned a lotof land. They own a lot of

(06:43):
land to the tune of like somebillion dollars now. So as part of
FDR's new deal coming out of thedepression, he issues government ensured mortgages to
avoid foreclosures. So it made senseto appraised values of certain properties to code
for the relative risk of mortgages inthe areas. Basically, he was saying,
the government's going to own this mortgage. If it defaults or you default
on it, then it's okay.The government still owns it essentially and you

(07:06):
can just leave. Now. Thereare a lot of people in the United
States citation needed, but they're notgoing to go through an appraise every single
home. Instead, they're going togroup them by area and try and figure
out in this sort of district,if you will, or area, how
can we qualify the homes that arejust in this geographical region more or less,

(07:27):
and they ranked these A to Dand use these color coded maps largely
from red to green, indicating thisrisk. So red districts were believed to
be at the highest risk of propertydecreasing over time, and green is on
the not only is there not risk, but they might actually gain in value
over time. And so because ofthe risk of those red areas, they
then did not have to be includedin these lending programs, meaning that essentially,

(07:53):
they said, in these places,the risk is so high that the
value is going to decrease that weare not going to ensure moregages there,
which means that the interest rates aregoing to be a lot higher, and
they are going to be unlikely tosell the people who cannot put down like
a sizeable deposit or have some othercollateral on hand. Right, and not
coincidentally, and I mean that thisis not a coincidence, most of the

(08:15):
people in those red areas are blackand brown people, Indigenous people, and
Jewish people. Weird. Yeah,they had specifically some pseudoscientific hypotheses at this
period in time that posited that themere presence of brown or dark skinned people
in an area predicted the decrease andthe property values for the area. That
was it. It was just ifthey're there, property values go down inherently.

(08:37):
Like that was sort of a hypothesis, right, put a pin in
that kind of justification. We aregoing to come back to it, and
we shouldn't really have to point outat this part of the conversation the idea
that the presence of black people reducingproperty value is just completely not true,
except in so far as people chooseto manifest this as a reality by creating

(08:58):
policies, for example, make itimpossible to get resources to a particular area,
or by of course only you know, sort of making it impossible for
people to exist in areas where thatwouldn't be the case, and therefore forcing
them into areas that are less developedor are degrading over time on a need
of maintenance and that sort of thing. So it is not an inherent value
of being a dark skinned, indigenousor Jewish person that will decrease the value

(09:22):
of an area. But that waswhat they believed, but it sometimes they
manifested that through policies and ideas aboutthose people. Right, So what Abraham
is talking about here is this practicecalled redlining, and what that meant was
it was extremely expensive, if notimpossible, for marginalized groups to own a
home. So all those groups you'rejust talking about, it's nearly impossible to

(09:43):
actually own anything. So this alsomeans it was a way of both segregating
people by race as well as preventingthem from obtaining wealth and force their children
to attend poorly funded schools as well. That's a different topic. And also
digital redlining with ISPs and networks isa thing in Abraham has a specific story
about that thing. Yeah, sothis is obviously a more modern version of

(10:05):
this, but it does exist,which is that high speed internet tends to
not be available in areas that aresort of in the poverty or like low
income areas, and that it doesnot mean on the outskirts of town.
I'm actually right in the heart ofthe city that I live in. I
mean not like downtown, but we'relike in a we're very urban where we're
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
is almost entirely minority groups for thiscountry, and we cannot get like fiber
Internet or other high speed internet.We have one service provider that comes here
with like terrible rates and service,and so we sort of feel the effects
of being digitally redlined in terms ofnot being able to get access to high

(10:50):
speed internet. They simply say it'sjust not available, like that's there.
Like, yeah, you're address,we cannot get you this. I'm like,
but like two blocks north or threeblocks south, you can just not
in my neighborhood. Yeah, it'sridiculous. Moving on from Internet though,
going back to our timeline, sowe were moving through sort of the New
Deal era and the redlining that happenedas an outcome of the Green New Deal,

(11:13):
where the government was essentially backing thesemortgages. In nineteen sixty eight,
the Fair Housing Act was meant tocurb these extremely discriminatory housing practices that were
going on, but at that pointthe damage was so systematic and thorough that
it's nearly it may be impossible thatwill ever completely reverse the damage that was
done by those policies, and withthe civil rights movement in full swing in

(11:35):
the nineteen sixties, the legality ofredlining was really on the chopping block and
so these acts and these policies weremeant to make it so you could not
actually redline districts, and so thatsort of meant like, what are we
going to do to keep segregating thesepeople? Right? And so many landowners
in cities all across the US hada quote gentleman's agreement that they would not

(11:56):
rent to black, ben brown,Indigenous Jewish, or people of Asian descent.
You might think yourself, that's terrible, and yeah, that's terrible.
I mean there's really no way aroundit. But some legal covenants blatantly read
quote no user agents may use oroccupy properties at this address or development end
quote. Yeah, this is avery recent history, so, like I

(12:16):
want to be clear about that.This isn't like this isn't like seventeen eighteen
hundreds, This is like my parentswere alive during this time. Yeah.
Yeah, this was within a generationago that this was going on, and
they had that directly. Now,as we said, some of them were
just understood this is like handshake agreements, we won't do this, but some
of them were directly written down.Yeah, But the more subtle discriminatory practices

(12:37):
are very difficult to prosecute or rectifyeven as laws began to change in favor
of trying to build towards some semblanceof equality. And also, let's be
let's be honest, like these practicesare still going on today. Oh yeah,
we're getting to that. Yeah,yeah, we're gonna get to that.
So why are we talking about allthis specifically redlining in relation to hwas
Well, because the purpose of redlining and the purpose of hs and there

(13:01):
is a linear path from one tothat. There's a direct line A to
B, like there's no circumventing andkind of like detours or anything like that
is a direct line from redlining rightto h oas and how hias operate.
So as and this point in time, we're starting to reach the suburban sprawl
that's just exploding across the country inthe nineteen sixties and seventies and after that,

(13:22):
of course it's obviously still going on. And you know, people are
moving out of the cities. There'sa lot of reasons for that. It's
actually not different from migration, andthat they're sort of push factors and pull
factors for why people move out intothese suburb areas, right, right,
But these old explicitly racist house covenantswere essentially impossible to write or enforce if
they were written into those agreements asthey were developing these new areas, so

(13:46):
they had to find a way tosort of work around it. And as
a quick side note, so thehouse that we're in right now, that
we're living in, was built innineteen fifty eight. We have the original
agreement for building on this house,and it explicitly says and I meant to
find it before we recorded this,but I forgot. It explicitly says in
the development agreement of the property agreementfor this house something along the lines of

(14:07):
black or brown people will not bepermitted to own or occupy this house and
less serving as a in the roleof like a servant. Wow, that's
like a written down on a governmentdocument that we have that came with the
house and we purchased it. Andso it was like, holy cow,
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 beforemy mom was born. That's bonkers.
I mean, I wonder now I'mwondering if my house has that.
I mean, we have an hA, so I mean, I'm sure
it's somewhere, but I'll have thelook at I'll have the look and see.
Yeah, Well, while you processthat, because again that's a whole
thing, that's a legal document.While you process that, it's probably worth
listening to some ads because that's probablybetter palate cleanser than anything we're gonna say

(14:50):
right now in the rare instance thatads were maybe the more preferred thing to
listen to. We're bringing you backto our discussion. So again we're talking
about this timeline through the history andthese explosion of suburbs, and it's now
impossible to write explicitly racist language intothe purchasing agreements for houses that were being

(15:16):
built. So new racist developers neededa way to keep out to the quote
unquote undesirables, to keep them outof their neighborhoods without being sued by explicitly
putting that language in. And soa private entity that's not under the scrutiny
of the government, but with thepower to force membership into programs in which
they can target anyone at any timewith any financial penalty they please, would

(15:39):
allow them to maintain the veneer ofequal quality while also being able to exercise
unchecked tyrannical bigotry and racism enters.Ah, yes, so check this out.
The first proto versions of HYS couldbe considered as far like, we
could look back as far as nineteenoh five in Pasadena, California, and

(16:00):
these are planned communities meant for wealthysingle families. They included deed restrictions that
explicitly outlined that non white and laternon Christian families could not purchase properties in
these areas. Super interesting, I'dI'd love for them to be like,
Eh, do you go to church? I'm like no, and then they
keep you out of the neighborhood.They'd be interesting. Yeah, I wonder
how they checked for atheists, Butthe same groups have already been outlined.
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
of nineteen sixty eight, so we'regoing up to nineteen forty eight. The
Supreme Court ruled that the covenants thatthese planned communities had written could not be
enforced, but private contracts meant thatlords could continue to enforce segregation and discrimination
until that Fair Housing Act took place. And in nineteen sixty three, the

(16:45):
Federal Housing Association enacted a mortgage insurancepolicy that explicitly diverted money away from multi
family homes and strongly motivated expansion intosuburbs and single family homes. And so
what that meant is in urban areaswhere they're been a lot of multi family
homes, which often was the waythat people who had immigrated to this country,
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
their name, were then trying towork their way up the economic ladder.
They would often be in these financialhomes because it was a way for them
to save money while continuing to sortof grow and expand. And they basically
said, well, we're just notgoing to fund those anymore. We're going
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.
The people who were primarily benefiting fromthe thing that they diverted money away from
was people who are black and brown, in Indigenous and Jewish and people of
Asian descent. It's a roundabout wayof just being super racist is essentially what
happens. And you're going to findthat a lot in systems where it's like,
here's what we'll do, but it'slike this, specifically, this policy

(17:52):
that you've created directly impact this groupof people and you know it, but
you're not doing about it. Butthe lack of land available for suburban development,
and the Clean Water Act of nineteenseventy seven, which required stormwater to
be detained in new residential developed areas, where justification to start including hways into
more new developments because they could privatelyregulate the size and uniformity of houses and

(18:12):
development areas and manage the stormwater detainment. So basically, these two things together,
the expansion Clean Water Act together kindof like laid the groundwork for an
HWA to exist. And that's actuallya really important feature of part of how
they became so popular. These localgovernments tend to really like hways specifically because
the HIA will cover the cost ofthings that a government's normally responsible for.

(18:37):
For example, the HWA might coverlocal road construction and maintenance, or other
public space upkeeps such as parks.I've even seen that they might have pools,
playgrounds, something that kind of almostlooks like a theme park, although
not quite that extravagant. Yeah,and all kinds of these spaces of that
nature, And those municipalities that havevery little money may even mandate that hiways

(18:59):
be written into new developments in orderto pass the cost of those services that
the government would normally be responsible forto the people who are then purchasing homes
in the development through the HIWA feesand fines. Right, So it's essentially
the government is using hias to sortof subsidize housing in those areas, even
though that's normally government's responsibility. Thesecompanies and can sort of come in and

(19:23):
say we're just going to take thatover for you, and the government's like,
great, that's one less cost wehave to justify, sure, and
then the HWA gets to come inand do whatever they want. The thought
just hit me, like how manypeople who live in has who like,
hate and can't stand socialism, likethe irony of that, Like you are
taking part of your money to payfor things in your neighborhood that benefits everybody

(19:44):
in your neighborhood. If that's notthe definition of socialism, you know what
I mean like it's like like orat least part of it, like it's
there, like you're doing it solike it just it makes you laugh when
people are like they just don't evenknow. The spirit is definitely there for
sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So since then, the prevalence of
hwas and new developments has continue togrow and spread like an aggressive, malevolent
cancer made feces. So fifty threepercent of the owner occupied households in the

(20:11):
United States are currently underway. Yeah, and so that's that's just the ones
that currently exist, but they're proliferatingat an enormous rate because eighty two percent
of new homes built in twenty twentyone are in an HIA, which is
up from only forty percent of newhouses being built in in nineteen ninety.
Eighty two percent of new houses arebeing built in hys, so the remaining

(20:34):
eighteen percent is all that's left ofnew houses being developed to meet the you
know, the growing population that arepeople who may not want to have the
new may not want to be forcedto live in an h right, that
reality is disappearing extremely quickly. Yes, So understanding that there's a lot to
unpack here, but let's talk aboutwhat kind of power HAS actually have.

(20:57):
Let's start to unpack that, becausebecause I think it's important to understand what
it is that HAS actually do rightnow. One thing to understand is because
they take over services for the localgovernment, they often sort of function as
a little local government in a way, except that they're not regulated by the
government. They have extremely little orno oversight, and it's essentially a board

(21:19):
of people consisting of a couple ofpeople who often live in that neighborhood.
Although we'll actually get to that theremight be a board, but they may
not be the managing people who aremanaging the HWA. And so in terms
of talking about their power, theanswer to what can they do? The
shorter answer might be what can't theydo? But we'll get a quick list
of things that they can do anyway. Yeah, So, generally speaking,

(21:41):
they have the legal right to setrules and enforce them through punishments such as
fines, which homeowners are then legallyobligated to pay. If fines weren't bad
enough, HAS can put a leanon someone's mortgage where the HA takes ownership
of your property until they are paidfor the fines that they decided to charge
you. So they basically they giveyou fine, you don't pay it.
They give you lots of fines youdon'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
pay us, right, and thenthey can even foreclose on someone's property,
which is they can kick them outand take over when someone owes a debt
on that property. And again,the JO did not buy that house,
the HWA did not build that house. The HWA has no actual equity in
the house. Like, you don'tyou didn't take the loan out, what
the HWA you took it out withwhatever? Your mortgage holder is, right,

(22:25):
right, But the HWA then getsto they write into their laws that
they can just foreclose on someone's houseif they don't pay the fines that the
h has charged them, which tome is completely insane. Yeah, that
would be like if if someone inyour neighborhood was like, I'm gonna go
ahead and just um, I'm gonnatake your car because I don't like the
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.
It's wild, yeah, but that'show the laws are written. That's how
Yeah, they basically allow them todo that sort of thing. And if
HOA does choose to exercise one ofthose manus, then the homeowner is in
a situation where they it's really difficultto get out of it. If they
HA is putting a lean on theirmortgage or foreclosing on it. The homeowner

(23:08):
can't just sell their house. Theycan't even just refinance their house to get
the money they need. They're completelytrapped financially and legally. Yes, so
it's a lot of power. Buths also have the power to set rules
about all kinds of things. Andwe're gonna say this is an incomplete list,
but check this out. You buya home in an this is what
they can tell you that you haveto do to live in this neighborhood.

(23:32):
One, they can dictate how tallyour grass is, and we're talking like
there are times where people are likewithin inches. Yeah, I've heard of
stories where people will bring like aruler out into a yard and be like,
oh, that's too tall. Yep. Absolutely, they can tell you
how many and how few trees orshrubs you can have, as well as
which kinds and colors of trees andshrubs that you can have, So they

(23:52):
might say you have to have aminimum of like such and such shrub or
tree at this size. Yes.They also can dictate the inclusion emplacement of
decorations on and around your house ifyou ever get a chance to and this
is just a a mid show recommendation, if you get a chance to look
up Frank the Gargoyle, it's definitelyworth looking at that from the perspective of
like a homeowner in a battle withsomebody in the neighborhood about decoration placements.

(24:18):
It's a real joy. I thinkyou all appreciate it. Okay, I'll
just give you everybody spoiler. Frankthe Gargoyle wins. Okay. Yeah.
They can also dictate the size ofany flags you might fly, how long
your car can be in your driveway, how long a guest car can be
in your driveway, so they cansay, hey, this is parked too
long. Yep. They can tellyou how long your garbage can can be

(24:38):
out at the curb, where itmust be stored, and whether or not
it can be visible even if theycan't see it. They can tell you
where you can and can't store it. They can even dictate whether you can
place a shed in your backyard.Doesn't matter the color of your house,
the garage, the shutter, thetrims, etc. And whether or not
you have shutters or can have shutters. They can specifically dictate how long your

(25:00):
garage door can be open, thecolor of the lights on your house,
any and all features of your front, back, and side yards at all.
Yes, they can also dictate whetheryou can hang signs in your window.
My HOA specifically says no political signs, so like, there's no political
signs in my neighborhood at all,which you know is a blessing in a
curse, whether or not, andhow long a commercial vehicle can be on

(25:22):
or near your property, and whatkind of mailbox you can and can't have,
But it doesn't even stop there.Hwas don't have to set rules to
threaten to impose fines. They cancharge you fines if they don't like something
you post on social media. Ifyou refuse then to remove the post.
They can threaten to simply add anew rule and change it. They don't
like something that you're doing, andthey just do it. And also they

(25:45):
can legally restrict people from buying houseswhen those people are using subsidized funds to
do so. And this has actuallybeen an effective strategy, a strategic way
to target minority families, specifically forfolks that don't have the means that are
seeking to buy a house, whoare able to get subsidized loans and be
they're able to get all the financingfor its can still say no, not

(26:07):
in this neighborhood. There was aspecific case that many listeners may have heard
about in Texas in which the rulesthat they wrote that had to do with
these subsidized homes, ninety three percentof the families that were targeted by that
specific rule, or black and brownfamilies and people of minority descent. I'm
like that is like some surgical,precision level segregation that they are enacting.

(26:30):
Yes, that's almost more effective thanjerrymandering. That's like so fine tuned way
of like extracting people who are notwhite from a particular neighborhood. Yep,
it's awful. One other quick thingI'll add before we add go to add
if you will, is just that, like obviously we mentioned several things that
they do, so like they canoffer to do a lot of things,

(26:52):
like even including doing the lawn andyard maintenance on your own house, like
that might be a thing that theyoffer. They might even do things like
cleaning gutters. I think I've seenas being part of them. They might
actually do the waste management for yourgarbage, as you said, they might
do sewage, the road maintenance,sidewalks, public lighting, all kinds of
public spaces, benches, dog parks, like they might maintain a lot of

(27:14):
those things and establish them, andthey might otherwise not exist if the Hway
hadn't put them there. Obviously,as we said, a lot of these
places operate on shoestring budgets if it'sa local government anyway. Although we've said
like all the things that they candictate about people's houses, which to me
is completely insane. Yeah, completelyinsane. But we'll get there a little
bit later. I also think itis worth pointing out, like they do

(27:36):
also offer services that part of thereason that people do sometimes likes sometimes small
number of people occasionally, but sometimesit's because they do those other things too.
Now we have a whole bunch ofstories to share with you, and
before we do that, take abreath. Listen to some ads and then
we'll get into it. And nowwe're back from all of those wonderful,

(28:04):
wonderful ads, let's take a secondto hear some horror stories about HS and
how they have been well within yourlegal rights to operate like this. So
I think that's something that we gotto be clear about, is that these
stories that we're about to share areHS that are operating within their legal limits
and engaging in these behaviors towards residentsof their community. So first and in

(28:27):
ha in Virginia, the HWAS didnot have adequate equipment to manage a snowstorm,
and people within the h OA we'resnowed in for three days while the
streets only a block away were plowedby the county yep so county owned properties
were good. They were stuck.Yeah, So, as I said,
maybe not the best for managing snow. In one place, a person was
fine for having her shutters be thewrong color, so then she took her

(28:49):
shutters down and then was fined fornot having shutters. The fines were daily
and ended up being thousands of dollars. You're gonna hear that story is several
times. Yeah, and some hwasthey can impose additional fees at any time
to cover the cost of some projectthey wish to accomplish. So they can
decide that they are going to takeon some project in the neighborhood and then
require all homeowners to pay more thanthey're already monthly, quarterly or yearly HWA

(29:11):
membership fee. They could say,Hey, we gotta go fix the pool.
Everybody's going to chip in, andso they pull money from everybody and
kind of just dictate that out ofnowhere. Yeah, they just sort of
pull it. And one HWA theysent around an auditor to regularly inspect homes
for wear and tear other damage.The HWA sent what the homeowners described as
a rude note demanding repairs and threateningfines if those repairs weren't met to the

(29:33):
owners whose trim had started to showsome of that wear and tear. One
person also in this HA got anotice of non compliance and a fee because
of dryer lint build up on theirdryer vent so wild now immediately after moving
in, one HA came to thefamily's house at six am to tell the
homeowners they had chosen the wrong garbagecollection company and they needed to cancel and

(29:56):
get the right. One homeowners andone HWA had a thirty minute window to
return their garbage can after the garbagetruck came by or else that they would
be fined. And the garbage truckpickup started at ten am and most people
are already at work at that timeand were then unable to comply with that
rule. Yeah. Now one,kids are not allowed to draw on the
sidewalk with sidewatch chalk or else thefamilies are fined. In one, the

(30:18):
HA had not cashed one of thehomeowner's checks, so they charged him late
fees even though he'd been paying ontime. And then they also tried to
rehome his dog for some reason.I would be so mad. Yeah,
there's no way now. In onein Washington, DC, homeowners were punished
not for using the wrong color ofpaint on their house, but for using
the wrong brand of paint to painttheir house. The HA threatened to take

(30:41):
away their parking spaces. Yeah,if they didn't change it. A person
in a wheelchair had requested a handicapparking space somewhere along the property, and
the HIA called them selfish and thenrefused to comply with the request, which
seems to I think violated explicit actthat has been passed in the government.
Yeah, yeah, that seems likea reral problem. Now. One h
had rules about how many plants youcould have in your window and other window

(31:03):
decorations. They even got a warningnotice the residents. They got a warning
notice for leaving their towel out todrive for more than an hour after swimming
in the pool. Yes, theyhave these people who are sort of watching
like hawks for this sort of thing. One person was fined four hundred dollars
for quote unquote weeds in their yard. They were back and forth at the
HIWA and it turned out that theywere talking about the persons shrubs like their

(31:25):
bushes, and then they refused thesame. HWA refused to correspond with the
residents via any means other than mailedletters. They would not accept phone calls,
emails, or in person meetings.That's so frustrating. Now in one
h a person received letters of violationfor quote inappropriate fencing when they used a
baby gate only when they were outsideto keep their kids and dogs from leaving

(31:45):
their yard. One person was ina hospital dying of cancer when the HIA
sent a notice requiring them to changetheir patio curtains to the correct color because
they're patios all the wrong color.Yeah. Wow, unbelievable. Person got
repeated warnings to remove the well fromtheir property, but they didn't have a
well. Turns out a house withthe same number but on a different street

(32:07):
had a foot tall ornamental flower potshaped like a well. THEA was responding
to that but sending it to thewrong address. Yea happened sometimes, I
guess, yeah for not an actualwell. One HA limited owners to one
dog per household and threatened fines anda mortgage lean if people got a second
dog. Wow, a mortgage leanjust for having a dog. So well.

(32:28):
Yeah. Some people moving out oftheir house got a warning to remove
their moving storage pod after less thanone day of having it at their house
to help with the move. Sothey haven't parked, they're packing stuff up,
and they're telling the jo selling themto move right away. Yeah and
one hia. The approved color forthe house was difficult to get for the
garage doors, and what happened wasthe owners needed to replace their door.

(32:49):
They couldn't get it to match theirhouse, so they decided to get it
to paint the same color as theirhouses trim. They were threatened with a
mortgage lean if they didn't change theirgarage door color. But in this since
the HA didn't even have rules aboutgarage doors, they just said about,
you know, threatening this lean becauseit didn't match the house, instead of
match the house as trim. Yeah. Now. One family had to leave
their wrecked car parked in their drivewaywhile it was being assessed by an insurance

(33:13):
company. They notified the h ofwhat they were doing and why they were
doing it, but still received afine for illegally parking a car in their
driveway. One family was fined becausethey were accused of leaving the gate open
at the public pool, although theyhadn't actually done that, somebody else had
and the HWA also bizarrely included anote that the husband of the house had
been seen at the pool with twowomen. That was true, the two

(33:34):
women he was with one was hiswife and the other one at the same
time that they were there was theirneighbor. They were just there hanging out,
So weird. Yeah. Now,One person who was recovering from a
broken ankle and was unable to mowthe lawn was fined for their grass getting
too high. Yeah, it literallycouldn't do it. Homeowners in one HA
had family over for Thanksgiving dinner.All their family parked on their property and
in front of their house, sothey weren't taking up any of anyone else's

(33:57):
space. But the HIA called thepolice about illegal parking for the cars and
the families of the house. Everybodygot parking violation tickets. Wow. An
that had no rules about house colordemanded one homeowner changed their color because the
color had they had chosen was quotetoo bright. Yeah. One person received
notices of violation every time they leftitems by their front door. One time

(34:19):
their shoes were wet and they letthem buy their front door to dry because
they didn't want to bring them intothe house groceries as they would set groceries
down to them bring them into thehouse. They got a warning about that
they left their swimsuits out to dry. They got a warning about that the
items had been cleaned up by theowners so quickly that they didn't even get
pictures of the violations, which theynormally did in this place, but they
sent the warnings anyway. One persongot fined when someone else parked in front

(34:44):
of their house. They didn't knowwho, and the HA told them,
if it's in front of your house, you get the fine. Yeah,
wasn't even their car, was anyonethey knew the car that they just left
it there. Yeah, this onewas wild. One h had rules against
having pickup trucks in the neighborhood aftersix pm. Not semi trucks, not
delivery chucks, just pickup trucks couldn'tbe in the neighborhood after six pm.

(35:06):
Now. One person got in troublefor leaving their RV in their backyard,
in their backyard, like where it'saway from everybody. One family was fine
and threatened with jail time for paintingtheir swing set to match the colors and
the trees the swing set in theirbackyard that they put up. A family
who was almost destroyed in the firehad to wait nine months to start rebuilding
while the HA hassled them over aminute design details of the new home they

(35:29):
were going to build. So Iguess they were just like having to live
out a hotel or something the wholetime. Probably. Yeah. One HA
had rules against how large a dogcould be. It was no more so.
And this isn't like the Grand Pyreneea great Pyrenees dogs. Their size
limit was thirty five pounds, andthey even prohibited a Vietnam vet from keeping
his support dog because it was overtheir size criteria. Unbelievable. One family

(35:52):
was prohibited from flying an American flagbecause it was too big. There was
one instant. This one is likethe ha did not win. This was
kind of fun. There was apolitical yard sign that someone was allowed to
put up, but it was fourinches larger than the approved size, and
they were back and forth with theHWA. They ended up going to court
and in the resulting legal battles,eventually the homeowners won and the legal fees

(36:15):
bankrupt the HWA, all because offour inches of sign. You know,
sometimes people just the battles they pickerare really bizarre. Yeah, it's really
interesting. That was the hill theychose to die on, and they died
that the hill and they died there. Yeah. One chway. It was
found to be using more than threehundred thousand dollars of collective fees to pay
for personal expenses. Yeah, they'reliterally embezzling money from the community. One

(36:37):
HWA had a rule about walking dogsbefore seven am, and one of the
enforcers chased down the dog walker ina golf cart with flashing lights and sirens
to confront the dog walker who waswalking on public sidewalks. These weren't even
ha sidewalks, they were public sidewalks. And this this is another one where
actually the HWA kind of got theircome up ins or at least this person

(36:57):
did, because what happened here isthe h person called the police. The
police got there and was like,this person's walking on public property. You,
on the other hand, are blastinga siren that is above the alloud
noise level for this ordinance. Alsowhen your tail lights is out on your
golf cart. Also, you're notallowed to be flashing lights here. And
so they ended up towing the person'sgolf cart, which I thought was So

(37:20):
that was pretty sweet. You know, it's you're hearing all these stories.
I'm very grateful because like I livein an HLA, but it's fairly chill.
There are problems, there are concerns, but like I have been sarcastic
online and like, you know,my wife will be like you already get
us kicked out of this neighborhood.And luckily I get I get along with
everybody. So like it's fine,but like there are some of the things
that you pick up on are reallypetty, and it's really fascinating to kind

(37:43):
of watch it all play out becauseit's just so like there's so many people
that have so many big complaints aboutthings that are really not problems. It's
really interesting to watch on the inside. I left out like way like what
I The list that we gave youwas a fraction of what I found in
horror stories. Yes, and Ididn't. I wasn't choosy. I literally
just went through and grabbed everyone everyonethat I saw until I was like,

(38:05):
this is going to be an episodewhere all we do is tell horror stories
about Hwa, So I'm gonna goahead and stop here. Yeah. I
wasn't even trying to select the worstones, like they are brutal and petty
and terrible to me. It's I'vealways had this question because I've only ever
lived in one Hwa and I hatedit with every fiber of my being.
But I've always had this question ofwhat should our rights be, particularly as
like homeowners although HIA is definitely doexist in like condos and apartment buildings and

(38:30):
that sort of thing, But whatwhat should our rights be in this space.
I think it's definitely worth I'm backingnow beyond the pettiness and the tyranny,
the bigger problem here is that hsare so prolific it is nearly impossible
to purchase a home that isn't inan HWA if you and if you want
to try to avoid that kind ofdraconian authoritarianism. Now this means that your

(38:51):
options for where you send your kidto school, how far you live from
work, those are things that youmay be forced to reconcile. So you
may have to kind of, like, you know, suck it up,
live in an h way to getthose benefits that you're trying to get,
and then so you kind of haveto deal with the good and the bad
in that situation. Yeah, Imean, should we have the right to
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
mountain where like I can't structurally supporta house. There are people who maybe
they want to live in a communitywhere they police each other to death.
They should be able to have theright to do that sort of thing,
and live in that little hell swampof their own creation. But if your
choice is down to only eighteen percentof the available new houses that are being
built in this country, then thatmeans that you're restricted from all of those

(39:36):
things you can't You're restricted where youcan send your kid to school, You're
restricted to how far away you haveto live from work. You're restricted like
what access to like groceries and thingsthat you have now, because you're sort
of being forced into this shrinking areaof development that is the only place that's
a refuge from getting away from thesehorrible, terrible people that run these hwas

(39:57):
And most people don't even want hsany It has spilled way past the point
of making sense and just proliferating waybeyond where people actually want them to exist.
Right and further, many, ifnot most, of the rules of
has are specifically in service of quote, preserving the quality of the houses for
resale end quote. Now, whichagain has the little or left to do

(40:17):
with excluding people who can buy housesin a particular area. Remember that certain
people were considered to lower the valueof houses in an area. Remember that
whole thing. So, if thegoal of the HA is to preserve the
resale value, and that's kind ofan embedded systemic thing. Then it makes
sense that people are getting excluded.But also many people try to avoid purchasing

(40:37):
houses in HA, so the resalevalue is already lower. And also some
rules are pretty absolutely ridiculous and couldn'tpossibly have an effect on a property's value,
such as leaving a towel out todry for more than an hour any
like that. Those not resale issues. Those are people with too much time
on their hands complaining about things.Also, also, once you have paid
upwards of one hundred thousand dollars,it seems ludicrous is that someone else should

(41:00):
be able to tell you what todo with that property. Yeah, like
that just seems like a good cutoff. Yeah. I think that if
we look at neighborhoods that don't havehys, they are not seeing plummeting house
values. So the idea that anhway preserves a house's value, I think
is just wrong. I don't thinkthat it does that. Right. In
places where that's not the case,houses continue to maintain their value because location

(41:21):
is everything, and if you're ina good location, then you can your
house is going to have good value. And if you upkeep your property,
you're going to have better resale valueas well, So like there's already built
an incentive to do those sorts ofthings. And as we said, like
you've already purchased this property, Likethe idea that someone then gets to dictate
what you do with your own propertyand the place where you live, to
me is so far beyond, likeincredibly. Assinine and I did kind of

(41:46):
look around to see like how commonis this around the world, and there
actually are quite a few. Manycountries do have hways, although where what
I was looking, the majority ofthem seem to be in like condos and
like apartment complexes and things where it'slike sort of grouped housing, if you
will, and not necessarily individual homes, sure, which is a lot of

(42:07):
individual homes in the United States arein h Condos are fairly common to have
hias as well, and they alsoreported having similarly draconian and petty squabbles and
they're hiways. One example I sawwas that in a building where one side
of the building gets a lot ofsunlight, so the people there were like,
it's really hot in our condos.We like to be able to like

(42:30):
put up shade to just help youknow. Was this endless debate in the
HIA about whether they could put upshades, what color they would be,
how much they could spend on,on what size and style they would be.
It have to be for the entirebuildings, not just one side was
getting shade, even though only oneside was getting hit by the sun.
Like very impractical, stupid petty thingsthat were they were debating. As just

(42:52):
to me, the whole thing isjust so blood boiling to hear about and
like all of these things. AndI'm one of those people that I just
I will not live in an haway. I'm like, if that means
I never leave this house, fine, i will not live in an h
away. I'm not going to letsomeone tell me what like how tall my
grass can be, or what kindof tree I can have, or how
long I can park on the driveway. That to me is so far beyond

(43:15):
what should be reasonably acceptable for aperson to tell me what I can and
can't do. Like there's some thingsI understand. Don't launch launch a rocket
in your neighborhood or a rocket propelledgrenade. I'm understand. I understand that
that is a bad idea. I'mnot going to do that. Yeah,
like, please don't fire guns atrandom, Please don't drive in one hundred
and fifty miles an hour through aresidential neighborhood. These are all things that
I am perfectly on board with becausethose are things that put a lot of

(43:37):
other people in danger. But like, please don't like leave your garage door
open for more than five minutes.That I'm not going to tolerate. Like,
I that is absolutely crazy. It'sunreasonable. Yeah, very unreasonable.
I needed to take a step backand list of the soothing sounds of screeching
tires on wet pavement or something.Here's some ads. Okay, So can

(44:07):
we do something about this horrible nightmarewe have found ourselves in. There's very
little we can actually do, whichis kind of a problem. You can
organize people in your neighborhood to tryto dissolve an h It may work.
There are a lot of reasons itmay not. You know, the thing
is, it's a lot of timesHA involves a lot of people and then
very few people in power, andtrying to get all that together to address

(44:28):
that is a little bit of achallenge. Yeah, you can avoid trying
to buy a house in an H. That's obviously going to be difficult for
people because as we said, theyare so ubiquitous that it's really difficult to
make that choice. You can moveout of your H. You can join
the board of your HA and tryand change the rules, but this may
not work due to management companies,which I'll have to talk about in a
second here, But those are somethings you can try. We can also

(44:50):
elect officials who can change the rulesabout HS. That will be really nice,
but you get to pay attention tolocal politics and stuff like that,
and a lot of people don't wantto go through that effort. Yeah,
and there's like no government oversight rightnow, and there probably should be,
so you know, people who aretaking that on as an issue. But
here's the thing. Let's say thatwe get out hwas under control. The
pettiness goes away, and like someof the nonsense fines and like snowball effect

(45:15):
fines go away. I would arguethat even if they could be toned down
and their petty grievances addressed, they'restill a terrible idea that should be just
completely abolished or largely abolished. Forone, there is a practically direct linear
path from Jim Crow to hwas likethis whole idea was founded on a backbone

(45:36):
of segregation and preventing minority people fromgaining wealth and status and success. Like
that's what they were largely designed todo. They were largely to keep those
minority people out. Second, theywere largely away of One of the ways
they function is they're a way ofa municipality punting their responsibilities to homeowners.

(45:57):
The thing is, you pay taxes, and then you HA taxes and the
forms of fees for the job thatyour taxes should already be doing. So
essentially it seems like they're just budgetingpoorly in these municipalities to try and have
people come in that then pay taxesbut don't get those services and instead pay
more taxes in the form of HIAfees, right, And that to me

(46:17):
is just that's wrong, that's stupid. Third, what happens to these has
you run into for profit companies,and that's where these management companies come in.
These are companies whose only job isto go in and help run the
HA, which means that they'll sendin an auditor to drive around looking for
infractions. And when their bottom lineis to make money, then they are

(46:38):
going to be looking for infractions anythingthat they can come up with, because
their bread and butter is charging peoplefind, right, their job is to
ratchet at fees as quickly as theycan because all they want to do is
make money. That means that theywill change the rule, means they're going
to be filing extremely petty fines aboutnonsense thing sometimes things that like aren't even

(47:02):
actually in violation of the rules,but they kind of spin to make it
sound like they are. Like oneperson, they were like, your driveway
isn't clean enough. You have topay to get at powerwash and if you
don't, we're going to find you. And your lawn ornaments don't meet our
decoration code, so you can't havethose, and they just find her without
you know, this happened to someone, and like their fines are daily for

(47:22):
every separate infraction ended up racketing upto seventeen thousand dollars, right, So,
like that is a crazy amount ofmoney. And that's what happens when
you get these privatized systems that aretrying to regulate this and fourth forcing people
to conform to the set of arbitrary, petty, draconian rules about their own

(47:42):
property. To me, is justcompletely insane and like the most maddening way
that they have the power to dothis. And again, it would be
one thing if these are voluntary,but most of them are not. You
do not get to choose your choiceseither. You don't get to have a
house where you have to follow ourstupid rules. And to me, that
is just not fair. That's justnot fair. Like if they want to

(48:06):
be have their own little thing andpolice each other to death, then that's
fine. Just leave the rest ofus out of it, because we don't
want to play your stupid game.We don't want to be in your stupid
club. Go set your own handson fire somewhere else and stop setting me
on fire. So I'm very workedup about this. It's it is a
thing about which I feel very passionatelybecause they are just getting people over for

(48:27):
no reason other than to be dicksabout it and to make money. So
that's what I have to say abouthys, it's not a cool thing.
This episode should be why we don'tdo this, you know why we don't
do this thing? Because yeah,it's bad. It's it's all bad.
Like it's not, like I saidbefore, I have not had a personally
bad experience, but it is likean extra tax in an extra bill that
I've got every month to stay inthe house that I'm living in, to

(48:51):
make sure that my kids go tocertain schools and all that, and like
it's it's like it's an unfair thing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, So
my main take home point is Hway'sque there's no better take on point.
Yeah. Anyway, do anything elsebefore we wrap up? Nope? Nope,
anythink you covered it? We dohave some recommendations before I do that.

(49:12):
I would like to thank the crewof people we have. Fact checking
and writing from Shane Jess and myself, editing and production by Justin Greenhouse.
Thank you all so much for listening. If you like to support us,
if you are also an anti HIAperson, which honestly, all statistics point
to the fact that you probably are, and all statistics points of the fact
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
get all kinds of access to behindthe scenes stuff, extra content, ad
free stuff, whatever. You canalso email us directly to tell us how
much you hate HIAS at info atWWDWWD podcast dot com, follow us like
us, do all the things onsocial media whatever, you can talk with
us there, you pick up somemerch at or merch store, and I

(49:52):
think that is all the things onthat for the people who have already joined
us on Patreon. The Wonderful,Wonderful list of Awesome Humans includes Mike m
Megan, Layla, Mike T,Justin, Kim, Joshua, The Daily
BA, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, and Brian. You guys are amazing.
We really appreciate you. You're somuch better than an hway. Although
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
to say for my thing. SoI'm missing to anything or I think we
need to add before we get toour recommendations. No, I think that
covers it perfect, all, right, recommendations. It is recommendations. So

(50:36):
the recommendation I'm going to make todayis for more reading. So I know
I know everybody likes reading. Youall know that I like reading, and
I have been reading Night Shift byStephen King, but I'm not recommending that
book specifically, I'm recommending Stephen Kingshort stories. Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah, because I think a lotof times people think that like Stephen King
is like this horror writer that justwrites nothing but these big, sprawling epics

(50:58):
like It and Dark Towel and TheStand When the Truth is is a lot
of his stories and a lot ofthe movies that you might see that are
kind of adaptations of his stuff comefrom a short story somewhere. So like,
for example, Salem's Lot is ashort is a short book, but
there's a movie and kind of stuffabout that. But if you've ever seen
Maximum Overdrive that's based on a shortstory he wrote called Trucks, It's only

(51:19):
like ten pages, but like theyit's really interesting and really fascinating what you'll
find and discover any short story collection. So there's two that I specifically recommend.
Everything's Eventual Night Shift. Those arereally good, easy ones to jump
into. They're not huge books,but there's some really cool tie ins and
stuff. Love that. That's great. Yeah, Yeah, I didn't need
to read read me some more StephenKing cool. I am recommending escape rooms.

(51:40):
Have you ever done an escape room? I have? There's so much
fun. Yeah, they're super fun. Most cities have them anymore, at
least one. Honestly, I've beento some fairly small citizen was able to
find an escape room there. Ifyou've never heard of them or you've never
done them, essentially what it isit is an hour long room full of
puzzles and like puzzles like jigsaw puzzles, but like logic puzzles and that sort

(52:02):
of thing, where you are usuallytrying to go through some narrative. A
really common one is like you arehelping the police with some investigation, or
you are the police doing some investigation, or someone's trying to kill you and
you need to escape something. That'slike a really common theme. Yeah,
they span all kinds of themes.So I've seen some wild stuff. Then
as you go through the room,there are clues in the room that help

(52:23):
you like open locks and open doorsand get into secret spaces to find more
clues to open more locks and moredoors and codes to then eventually get out
of the room. And you tryand do that in most cases in less
than an hour. And so they'rejust a lot of fun. You can
find them in a lot of places, and I recommend to go checking them
out there. They're fun time thatcan be frustrating if you're someone who does

(52:45):
not like working with groups of otherpeople, or if you just don't like
puzzles, sure, or if youdon't like dark. A lot of them
are dark, which is not myfavorite thing. Yes, but they're a
lot of fun. So I tendto recommend escape rooms strong, recommend on
that they're so fun. Perfect.Well, I think that's all I have.
Thank you so much for recording withme today, Shane. Anything else,
I'm listening nothing all my in Allright, This is Abraham, this

(53:06):
is Shane, and we're out.See ya. You've been listening to Why
We Do what We Do. Youcan learn more about this and other episodes
by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope
you have an awesome day.