You can’t go home again?
When I was younger, well, until I was 15 or so, my parents live in a town house in unincorporated Maine Township, in Illinois. The mailing address was Des Plaines, but it wasn’t and isn’t part of any city. Anyway, at the time I didn’t know or really understand, but the townhouses in the area do not have any sort of HOA associated with them. Everyone maintains their external structure and landscaping as they see fit.
Now, back when we lived there, I guess this was not really an issue. At least in the few “buildings” that I had much connection too. (It was pretty densely populated, with groups of 4 houses packed rather tightly. Maybe a satellite picture would be useful:
The longer buildings are the 4 long town houses. Surrounding are a lot of duplexes. My parents house was near the marker in that map. Anyway, my point that I am slowly approaching, was that back at the time when my parents first moved in and when I was younger, despite there being no HOA, the people in the contiguous units worked together so that at least the external apperance of the units were consistent. Now, not so much – you’ll see one quarter of a building with aluminum siding, as opposed to the original wood, and sometimes even units painted different colors than their neighbors. Quite chaotic. And the landscaping is just insane. Most of the trees are gone from the area near my parents old house, so there is just bare lawn – except for one house which is almost completely overgrown by trees that were not there when we left around 18 years ago. It’s really amazing.
The crux of this is that while this was a great place to grow up, for me, now it seems rather sad and run down. I am not 100% sure why, and what happened, but it made me sort of sad.