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Comment by beardog | Hacker News Reader

The tower is governed by a condominium association, so essentially everyone in this town has to follow private contract law as opposed to government ordinances.

Here's their rules https://begichtowers.com/uploads/3/4/0/4/34048295/house_rule...

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> If you do drip water or fish slime in the building, you must immediately clean up after yourself or call maintenance for assistance. (Adopted April 13, 2007)

I wanna know what on earth happened in March 2007 lol

Someone slipped?

"Oh yes, of course, the great slime event of 2007 ..."

First rule of Begich Towers is... we don't talk about March 2007...

They do have a mayor and city council too, but I imagine the tower association has just as much if not more impact on day to day life

Makes me think of the Mayflower Compact.

What an absolute nightmare of rules haha. Jesus Christ, what a miserable existence.

I don't see anything particularly out of line with regular apartment rules in my experience. The only thing I can see is the quiet hours do start a little early; 11pm is more common than 10pm.

Yeah I'm generally not taken aback much, sounds about in line with a large NYC apartment. The one thing I can't live with is no roof access when there is such an elevated expansive view.

To many of us a large NYC Apartment also sounds like a nightmare...

For me when I bought my house the number 1 rule, unbreakable that I gave my realtor was absolutely, under no circumstances how me a house with a HOA...

These people didn't buy a house, they bought a portion of a larger building. That entire premise is utterly unworkable without some organization managing the larger structure. Most of the rules in the above document relate to usage of the shared portions of the building, not the specific condo that the person owns.

Apartment rules are necessary but not to everyone’s taste

People on here that are unfamiliar with rigid quiet hours, allow me to introduce you to how Germany does things (Ruhezeit) -

https://blog.lingoda.com/en/what-is-ruhezeit-in-germany/

Another German here. I'm legitimately surprised by this article saying that the entirety of Sunday is considered Ruhezeit. It's true that most stores are closed on Sunday, but I've done plenty of vacuuming and laundry on Sundays and never had anyone complain.

Just to be sure, I just checked the house rules attached to my lease contract, and they define Ruhezeiten as Mon-Fri 13-15, 22-6 and Sat-Sun 13-15, 22-8. This is in East Germany, maybe the entire Sunday thing is a West German thing?

I was helping my mother in law mow the lawn a sunday afternoon, just like swedish people does it. Turns out that is a nono. West Germany.

I remember not being allowed to mow the lawn on Sundays. Nobody would call the cops on you, but your neighbors sure wouldn't like it.

Why 13-15? Is siesta a thing in Germany too?

I kind of miss when the UK had much stricter Sunday trading laws.

I'm not religious, but there was something kind of nice about having at least a part of the week when pretty much everyone was off work, and most things were closed.

Of course it was also a massive pain in the backside if you needed something and the shop was shut.

Man I would like something like this here, even a very weak version. Last Christmas day our neighbors across the street had an all day "party", turned the stereo up so far you could hear the bass through the whole neighbourhood, and I couldn't think at home, had to leave for most of the day.

I get people want to celebrate, but does the music/bass need to be that loud, really.

> The only thing I can see is the quiet hours do start a little early; 11pm is more common than 10pm.

If we lived there, my wife would appreciate 10pm vs. 11pm being quiet hours, as she's often in bed well before 11pm.

Looks like some of the few newer rules are from 2007 which is when the railroad tunnel became also accessible to vehicles. PR move for visitors, it seems.

Most of the rules struck me as being driven by necessity because a few eccentric assholes. Example:

> The tops of the elevators shall not be used to move any materials

Imagine the very deep sighs from the board when they had to institute that rule because some asshole was tripping maintenance mode on the elevator and using the top to move stuff for some reason...and when told not to, shouted "IT'S NOT AGAINST THEM ROOLS!"

The rule about kids not playing with toys in hallways seems a bit authoritarian but was probably prompted by parents not sufficiently supervising their kids and toys getting left around and stepped/tripped on.

The rules regarding entering an apartment are a bit more protective than in my state; a landlord has to provide notice (but only if not an emergency) and certainly doesn't have to leave a note, nor have a third party present, nor maintain a log.

The biggest thing I see a problem with are the laundry room policies which seem like how they leverage control (ten days, in Alaska, to get a washer/dryer if you get a laundry room? Come on) and their excessive impound fees. Fifty bucks if you leave your gear in the wrong place at the wrong time of year?

Fifty bucks if you don't return a cart within thirty minutes of using it?

Fifty bucks if you leave your car in the loading dock longer than 30 minutes after unloading it?

Basically violating any rule is "at least" fifty bucks. If you do it again, the fine doubles. It sounds like the fine doubles indefinitely, too.

I did laugh at the "Horizontal Properties Regime Act". That is some straight-up dystopian-sounding bullshit.

The problem with all this "driven by necessity" crap is that if you let it run its course it turns into an authoritarian dump. At some point you need to put down your foot and say "common resources can be used by everyone even in uncommon ways"

> The rule about kids not playing with toys in hallways seems a bit authoritarian but was probably prompted by parents not sufficiently supervising their kids and toys getting left around and stepped/tripped on.

When I was a little kid growing up in Whittier, my neighbor across the hall would come out and scream and threaten us for playing there. He'd yell, "You don't live on this floor!" to my friends. It was winter outside, and dark and snowy, so there was really no other common area we could play in. I remember getting a big slot-car race track for xmas and setting it up in the common laundry room so we could play without getting in trouble.

> Fifty bucks if you don't return a cart within thirty minutes of using it?

To be fair here, you're not seeing any of the previous iterations of that rule. I have to imagine it started fairly minor and the board kept escalating it until it actually reliably worked.

You might be shocked at how unreasonably repressive a lot of standard condo and apartment rules can be. I worked in the industry and recall one building where every unit had a really nice balcony, but they were almost all empty and unused because the rules were so strict.

But in practice, I think most of these types of rules are rarely if ever enforced.

Haha, yup, that's what my previous condo was like in Toronto, Canada. Pretty much nothing allowed in the balcony, no flags, furniture, bikes, etc.

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