They detract from a “certain look,” which is what many of those nightmare-HOAs only care about. Makes their houses more valuable, so the poors can’t ever afford to live there, and it feeds their busybodied lust for power over others.
But solar panels, especially owned panels, only add to the value of the house. If anything that makes it harder for “the poors” to afford living in the neighborhood. Obviously that’s not my rationale for supporting green energy but I say it to illustrate that even their own weird and insular logic should encourage solar adoption.
Adding solar panels increases the value of your home (…sometimes—there’s certain insurance companies that might disagree), but having a different home means the other homes are now devalued compared to yours.
Now, you could force everyone to add solar, but the busybodies who head problematic HOAs are often resistant to change.
ETA: I also think it’s dumb, but that’s HOAs for you.
HOA members are often retired folks who refuse to give up any type of power. They fill their free time by making up problems for others just to entertain themselves.
Maybe they heard the Republican Congresscritter who was claiming that solar panels would draw too much energy from the sun and plunge us all into eternal darkness.
In the very progressive Northern California town where I used to live, there were still restrictive covenants on deeds, forbidding sale of houses to Black people, Jews, Mexican-Americans and Portuguese. Now that the records are digitized, the town government is finally going back and stripping all that language out.
It was only a decade ago that a town-wide ban on line-drying clothes was rescinded, too.
I don’t get why anyone would be against solar panels. Environmentally, economically, visually, practically, where is the problem?
They detract from a “certain look,” which is what many of those nightmare-HOAs only care about. Makes their houses more valuable, so the poors can’t ever afford to live there, and it feeds their busybodied lust for power over others.
Indeed, though I think that a house with solar is more valuable too, so that argument kinda falls flat.
It’s just uneducated, backwards thinking is all it really is.
But solar panels, especially owned panels, only add to the value of the house. If anything that makes it harder for “the poors” to afford living in the neighborhood. Obviously that’s not my rationale for supporting green energy but I say it to illustrate that even their own weird and insular logic should encourage solar adoption.
Adding solar panels increases the value of your home (…sometimes—there’s certain insurance companies that might disagree), but having a different home means the other homes are now devalued compared to yours.
Now, you could force everyone to add solar, but the busybodies who head problematic HOAs are often resistant to change.
ETA: I also think it’s dumb, but that’s HOAs for you.
HOA members are often retired folks who refuse to give up any type of power. They fill their free time by making up problems for others just to entertain themselves.
And they’re likely being fed faux news that solar panels are unamerican communism and they should only rely on clean, god-fearing coal.
And they’re using their power to crusade and stop it because they think it’s “right.”
Maybe they heard the Republican Congresscritter who was claiming that solar panels would draw too much energy from the sun and plunge us all into eternal darkness.
You probably don’t understand why anyone would be against having black neighbors either, but that’s the original purpose of the HOA.
In the very progressive Northern California town where I used to live, there were still restrictive covenants on deeds, forbidding sale of houses to Black people, Jews, Mexican-Americans and Portuguese. Now that the records are digitized, the town government is finally going back and stripping all that language out.
It was only a decade ago that a town-wide ban on line-drying clothes was rescinded, too.
My guess is if the HOA owner doesn’t have solar and everyone else does, then that would reduce the HOA owner’s property value.