Note to Self: Never Live in Tampa Bay

This is just outrageous, and I don’t care AT ALL what the background circumstances may be. A man is thrown into jail because he can’t afford to comply with the home owner’s association rules of having a green lawn.

Prudente has owned a home in the deed restricted community since 1998. The covenants require homeowners to keep their lawns covered with grass.

Earlier this year, the Beacon Woods Civic Association took Prudente to court after he failed to install new sod on his browning lawn, which had withered after his sprinklers broke. The association had already sent letters telling him to re-sod his front and back yards by certain dates.

In an interview at the jail Friday evening, Prudente said he thought he had made a good financial hardship case to the association: His adjustable rate mortgage went up an extra $600 a month. Wachovia repossessed his Toyota Scion. His daughter and her two young children, who had fallen on hard times, moved in with him and his wife, Pat.

This is a perfect reason why I will never own a home in a neighborhood with an association in control. I understand he is in jail because he disobeyed a court order, but that case should have never been brought up. I’m trying to read through Jefferson’s writings and I just can’t find that quote of his where we are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of greenness”.

There are few things I think a community should have control over in regards to other peoples’ houses. I don’t have a right to tell you what color to paint your house. I don’t have the right to make you have a green lawn. I don’t have the right to tell you not to put your car up on blocks and work on it on a Saturday. Most importantly, and oh how this has been lost in general society, I don’t have a right to not be offended by you. If I don’t like you, I’m moving away or talking it over with you. Do I have a right to some standard of decency in my neighborhood? I believe so. If your house is full of trash and mice are infesting the neighborhood, I think that’s a right of mine to make you clean up your mess. Dead grass on my neighbor’s lawn is not a sufficient reason to charge him with my legal expenses, fine him, and throw him in jail!

I swear to you, John Adams is rolling over in his grave…