They really do have a lot of odd rules and personal regulations for a supposedly free country
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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I learned this after moving out of the US. I live in a third world country now and I feel more free here than I ever have in the US.
One example of this is that the traffic sucks here. Like its always crawling and slow, but the flip side is that you do not feel like you are constantly being hunted by police. Sometimes, not following the rules is what makes the most sense to reduce traffic and that is completely OK here.
There are many other examples, but off the top of my head that is what I thought of.
American suburbanism is truly wild. When you see how people live outside of the U.S., it's startling what we're putting up with here for the wonders of spending hours in a car every week.
It's technically against the law in my state to make a new neighborhood that doesn't have an HOA. I live in a neighborhood without an HOA because it was built before the law was passed. No one's running a tavern but we've got one neighbor who grows vegetables in a patch of their front yard. Another neighbor has a bunch of chickens and also a rooster. We're technically not allowed to have roosters but who's going to tell on them? Not me, for sure.
HOA truly scares me about American living. That a group of people can dictate what you can and can't do with your own house is absolutely wild. How is that home ownership?
In Canada the only real rule is don't leave your yard in disrepair.
It's worth mentioning that in the majority of residential neighborhoods, either they do not have HOA enforcement or the HOA is entirely optional, in that you can pay to belong to the HOA and gain benefits like access to community centers and pools, but then have to abide by guidelines.
In these places, you can ignore HOA rules if you're not interested in joining. I've greatly enjoyed telling their offended members that no, I will trim my shrubs when I feel like it, thank you very much.
There is still going to be a lot of regulations against like, turning your house into a tavern or something, but there is a little more freedom here in most places than people talk about. But it's still pretty bad and getting worse, there are more and more "master planned" communities that turn entire countrysides into oceans of rooftops in these homogeneous people hatcheries where you have to get approval to grow flowers in your yard.
don't leave your yard in disrepair
Even that should be your own business, unless you're endangering anyone
Freedom \TM
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No HOA for me. Long term goal is to build a greenhouse that connects the garage to the house, build a rainwater system for drinking that collects from the greenhouse roof, and collect water for the plants from my garage and house. The put solar in the back yard and plant some fruit trees and berry bushes.
The biggest pain is my city won't let you keep bees unless you have a certain amount of land, and I'd like to have a beehive passthrough for the greenhouse so my plants can get pollinated without letting pests in.
America is so dumb on so many levels.
Newer suburban housing often depresses me. You have these large, lovely homes, but they're crammed together so tightly that you could reach out of your kitchen window to turn on your neighbour's sink. The front yard is often just a strip of dry grass with a single crabapple sapling, and the back yard is a box the size of a small bathroom, devoid of both foliage and privacy from the eight other houses overlooking it, and serves largely as a box with air to place your dog in. This could be remedied if the developers weren't complete cunts and sacrificed a house or two per block to space the homes out a bit. But they can't waste an inch.
I certainly don't mean to throw shade at anyone who has purchased a home like this and enjoys living there. Everyone deserves a place to feel happy and comfortable. It just sucks that anything built in the last twenty years is erected with no privacy or quality of life in mind. It's just housebox. As long as you don't peer outside, you won't notice you're trapped in housebox. This is extremely common here in Alberta, and it's the reason my wife and I wound up buying an older home (1960s-70s) in a mature neighborhood. Most newer places we looked at felt as though they were missing a soul.
Just kind of gets to a point where the whole "detached home" thing doesn't really mean anything. May as well connect the walls into row housing and drop the price 100k.
May as well connect the walls into row housing and drop the price 100k.
Sorry, best I can offer is row housing that is $100k more expensive.
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
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My own property is being extensively reworked to produce a majority of our vegetables. We have already put about 185m² 2,000ft²) under direct cultivation in the back yard, and intend to wrap that garden around the entire property to the full 400m² (4.300ft²) available.
In the end, I don’t expect to have a single blade of grass on the property. It’ll all be flowers, fruiting trees and canes and bushes, and vegetables. All done in a modified Ruth Stout method, with a variation of flat-ground Hügelkultur thrown in.
Let’s just say that Bylaw is already pissed off with me, and I’m not even halfway done yet.
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