Repairing Your Car in Your Own Garage Is Considered Illegal in Sacramento, CA | Hacker News Reader

Repairing Your Car in Your Own Garage Is Considered Illegal in Sacramento, CA

thedrive.com

320 pointsjosephcsible439 comments

This has been a growing trend in the US. The old argument for rules like this was often "broke cars reduce home value", so it's fun to try and see them use the pro-environment card but it's really to push out poor people. Every once in a while there's a city that makes a move like this because they are tired of broken down cars in poor neighborhoods and then end up repealing the rule when cops get uppity and apply it to middle/upper class people who are doing vehicle restorations in their driveways.

The big bummer in rules like this is that the wealthy people in office that are enacting this legislation don't know what a "major" car repair is because they've never done any. And their definition of a 'special tool' is anything beyond their Craftsmen "Baby's First Toolbox".

Can't there be a time limit to allow for repairs and restorations? A month, six months. Occasionally I'll come across a vehicle that has obviously been in the same place for years: cracked tires, oil spots and or larger weeds growing around.

It's usually obvious when something is getting worked on vs something met its forever spot in the yard.

Does not matter. If it is their property they should be able to stack cars in their yard and call it art if they want.

Telling other people what they can do with their property is fundamentally reprehensible.

There's a limit to that. If you dump a barrel of something, and it leeches into the ground water, or washes out into the neighbor's yard, then what you do matters.

Cars have fluids that aren't exactly environmentally friendly.

> Telling other people what they can do with their property is fundamentally reprehensible.

One man's freedom ends where another man's freedom begins. Fine if you're doing small scale car repairs on your own car in a residential zone, not fine if the smell from your hacky welding job disrupts my enjoyment of my property.

If you want to do shit that impacts your neighbors, go and rent a garage in an industrial or commercial zone.

Do you know of any examples of jurisdictions that recognize a property owner's right to protection from neighboring property owners' smells?

I've heard several anecdotes about people whose neighbors picked up a hobby that generated downwind impact, but the only times I've heard of the neighbor being made to stop were in cases where an HOA existed.

I'm German, we have a ton of court cases dealing with smell emissions (mostly, grills and heavy smokers), and these almost always end up with the emitter losing because they impact their neighbors in an amount that courts see as unreasonable. Basically, "don't be an arsehole" in legalese.

Interesting. It's worth pointing out that in general (though I'm still curious if there are examples here), the legal landscape in the US is weighted heavily in the other direction. One of the examples I'm directly familiar with was a friend who ended up moving because their neighbor picked up meat smoking as a hobby, and the wind was carrying nearly 24/7 smoke downwind into my friend's house.

> and the wind was carrying nearly 24/7 smoke downwind into my friend's house

At that point, he'd probably get a C&D order filed against him for emissions and a decent fine on top as well.

That's why I love the German system: people are protected from the influence of bad actors, not the other way around.

smoking meats makes you a 'bad actor'?

As soon as a neighbor is impacted so massively they are forced to move away, yes it absolutely makes you a bad actor.

FFS, if you plan on taking up a hobby that causes pollution, do at least the bare minimum and check out with your neighbors first and install appropriate mitigation measures (filters and scrubbers). Or, if you want to be a really good person, offer your neighbors some pieces of meat in exchange for tolerating the emissions.

>As soon as a neighbor is impacted so massively they are forced to move away, yes it absolutely makes you a bad actor.

Civic engagement with the goal of infringing upon your neighbors' right to use their property in whatever manner they see fit frequently meets these criteria. You are the bad actor.

Furthermore, policy informed by sentiments like yours have been tried and failed. Strict separation of commercial and residential activity is why places like LA and SF are the sprawled suburban wastelands they are today. You wanna live in the city? That means dealing with city stuff, which means hearing and smelling your neighbors and maybe a good old fashioned riot every 50yr or so. If you would prefer bugs, heat and the occasional devastating weather event every several decades move to Florida.

> Furthermore, policy informed by sentiments like yours have been tried and failed.

We have been running this kind of policy for decades in Germany, and the only ones complaining are people who don't care about their neighbors and society but only care for themselves and their enjoyment.

> That means dealing with city stuff, which means hearing and smelling your neighbors and maybe a good old fashioned riot every 50yr or so.

Surprise, I'm living right in the inner area of Munich. The only thing causing noise here is the street with an active 5-10 minute service bus line, and that's gotten better as the buses began to be switched over to hybrid and recently electric models. When we make a bbq event or a birthday party, it's customary here to ask the neighbors if it's OK, and to offer to come around for a beer and a steak. It's called "not being an arsehole on purpose", a concept that seems to be very foreign to Americans, at least on Reddit.

In the US, a lot of places have restrictions on raising livestock for example which can certainly have downwind impact, for example. My town is a Massachusetts right to farm town (as many are) though I don't know the exact details of the bylaws in my town.

There is a point where this is reasonable (no one has a right to let dead animals rot on their residential property), but it's also possible your sensitive nose is ruining your neighbor's ability to enjoy his property.

You're free to join a homeowner's association which will micromanage not only smells but also the location of your garbage can.

> sensitive nose

Last time I checked, fuel and many other fluids in cars are carcinogens or otherwise toxic. Leave that shit out of any place that isn't adequately equipped to clean it up.

> You're free to join a homeowner's association which will micromanage not only smells but also the location of your garbage can.

Here in Germany, that is usually governed by city codes anyway, no need for an HOA - trash cans usually have to be in a separate room indoors (for large complexes) or in an enclosure (e.g. [1], the first grab off of Google). We don't need micromanaging HOAs (and don't have them outside of condo complexes), because decades upon decades of experience have led to a democratically agreed set of basic rules - in this case: society has democratically decided that they don't want trash bins standing around in the open, partially because that's a fucking eyesore, partially because free-standing bins just attract vermin and pests.

[1] https://www.vidaxl.de/e/vidaxl-mulltonnenbox-fur-3-tonnen-20...

Your own choice of example was the smell from welding. With regard to releasing toxic or environmentally damaging chemicals, you are on much more solid ground.

For what it's worth, it would be better if people knew how to weld and how to prepare a workpiece for welding. Back when I worked on cars myself at a local hobby garage (common here in Germany, sort of the car equivalent of a makerspace), the amount of people who didn't strip off plastic attachments or removed paint was so excessive that my favourite shop imposed a rule "idiots setting stuff on fire or causing excessive smoking while welding have to bring in a crate of beer".

I definitely would not want to live next to someone learning how to use a welding rig.

> Last time I checked, fuel and many other fluids in cars are carcinogens or otherwise toxic.

Judging by the sheer number of Prop 65 warnings slapped on everything in California, that's hardly unique to automobiles.

Besides, it's already illegal to dump such fluids. Enforce the existing reasonable laws instead of introducing new unreasonable ones.

Welding smells a lot less than someone smoking a cigarette, so I doubt people would complain about that.

However, the noise of someone preparing stuff to weld with an angle grinder would definitely be annoying.

Unfortunately for anyone making a fuss about this, most suburbs tolerate the scourge of gas powered leaf-blowers every weekend, starting at an ungodly hour, and they're often louder than an angle grinder.

Edit: my point is just that it's weird to police car maintenance specifically, rather than general noise ordinances and/or HOA rules (for people who choose to have an HOA).

I wish people took noise pollution more seriously.

The same people complaining about car/mechanical work are the ones who have no problem with consistent leaf blowers/lawn mowers/parties/etc.

Depends on the welding, stick welding gives off plumes of smoke and vapors. Tig welding is the opposite and very clean.

Or, you can just talk to your neighbors about it ahead of time and come to some agreement. I know this relies on having sane, reasonable neighbors which is not a given.

I built a single engine airplane in my suburban garage over the course of six years, and it involved lots of specialized (and loud) tools. Air compressors, rivet guns and other pneumatic tools. Before starting, I visited both neighbors and gave them a heads up to see if they had any problems with it. We agreed on night and weekend curfews for the air compressor and tools and that was that.

I swear, 90% of our laws we wouldn't even need if people weren't total assholes.

When I moved into a denser neighborhood I traded out my small noisy air compressor for an old large one that operates very slowly. You can't even tell it's running from outside my garage, let alone outside my property. Even standing right next to it you can engage in normal-voiced conversation and no ear protection is needed. Unfortunately such machines no longer seem to be available new.

If one of your neighbors had said had just said no would you have just not done it? If you did it anyway based on when you thought it was reasonable to make noise until who would of been the assholes them or you?

I would have absolutely taken steps to address whatever their concerns were, including insulating/soundproofing my garage.

Whoa! Do you have a build log posted somewhere? What platform did you build on?

I think I just discovered a dangerous new rabbit hole…

E-mail is in my profile.

When I was growing up in the 80's we had a neighbor that built a plane in his garage. It was fascinating to watch it develop over the years and it really taught me a lesson about persistence.

I really wish I had a time lapse of that build.

this thread has lost the distinction between light industrial zoning, community aesthetics and personal behaviors. In the "USA" is not really useful because, due to history, these laws in one State can be very different than in another USA State; that property ownership is generally a County level authority; and City rules can be different again, by zoning.

There is no shortage of stupid, destructive behavior among humans, agree. However zoning is generally exactly to keep light industrial activity (poisons, smells, leaks) away from residential areas (children, people with illness, health). The personal Auto blurs that distinction and yes, is a source of poisons and bad aesthetics.. so there is work to do.

Two items -- people from Asian countries, or the Global South, or others, do have really different cultural aesthetics than Germans about houses and yards; secondly there is a different fundamental agreement in America about how to allocate rights and responsibility to land owners. Is it not true that most Germans do not own a home? Is it true that the Catholic Church in Germany is the largest apartment owner, by a large margin?

> Is it not true that most Germans do not own a home?

Yes, only about 47% own the home they are living in [1] - partially due to a strong history of government-provided and cooperative-owned housing, partially because land values around suburban and urban areas have exploded so far that young people can't ever hope of owning anything.

> Is it true that the Catholic Church in Germany is the largest apartment owner, by a large margin?

Good question. The Catholic Church is extremely intransparent, so serious estimates can't really be made [2]. The real estate market is extremely fractured - even the largest players Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia, with something like 550k homes, own just 2% of the market combined [3]. The Catholic Church has been estimated at about 130k units in the past [4], so they are while certainly a large player still not the largest, not even close.

[1] https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Wohnen...

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/katholische-kirch...

[3] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/vonovia-deu...

[4] https://www.domradio.de/artikel/zwischen-investment-und-sozi...

If I move next-door to you and start a garbage dump out front, this affects you substantially doesn't it? People should have to pay for their externalities.

I think the policy in question is stupid, but so is being absolutist about it.

The people who most commonly hold views like this are people who live deep in the sticks. It's ideal policy for people who live in a vacuum.

Current laws in many places do a pretty good job of accounting for that - you have a lot of leeway in your backyard, but more limits on what you can do in places visible from the street.

In my neighborhood, with lot sizes around 6000-9000 square feet, this seems like a reasonable compromise.

I live in an area with similar lot sizes, and front yards are gardens, gaudy makeshift gift shops, junkyards, art displays... it is pure chaos. I would not have it any other way. Keeps the HOA types from moving in.

Funnily enough, that's pretty close to the way it's seen "out in the sticks".

I'm happy to live next door to a grumpy old dude with six derelict cars rotting in his back yard. It keeps my property value low, which in turn keeps my taxes low and keeps the type of people away who would otherwise have an issue with my doing metalworking in my own workshop because of the noise.

The irony of this is the only real solution, in a property rights framework, if you care so deeply about the aesthetics of your neighbors is to live on a large tract of land. It's totally backwards.

I believe the traditional American solution is a "homeowners association" where some neighbourhoods strictly police the length of your lawn, other neighbourhoods don't, and you can choose when buying your home which type of neighbourhood you want.

They implement this entirely through covenants and deed restrictions, with no state involvement at all, as I understand things.

Exactly. Since all member property owners voluntarily restrict their own deeds, nobody is forced to do anything. It's completely voluntary, unlike town bylaws that can oppress minorities, like those who fix cars on their own property. These bylaws are clearly subsidies, because if you'd have to bribe those who aren't disposed to agree otherwise.

That’s it. I live in middle of our city in an increasingly rare SFH-zoned neighborhood, one of three adjacent in our community council. Two have covenants, mine does not. Had a choice to buy in either, I chose the no-covenant one. We have a lady walking her two goats down the street periodically, one neighbor used to have an old square body pickup in side yard with a tree growing up through engine compartment (hood long gone). I like it. My friend across the way in other neighborhood tells me laughable stories of enforcement letters and such. To each their own. Choice is good - I like this approach better than city-wide laws. One of my key political principles is that laws should be as local as possible and the need skeptically examined.

I don’t live in the sticks and I don’t have a view like this at all..

Literally, the sights and sounds of the neighbor running a garbage dump is less reprehensible to me than dealing with a bunch of racist busybodies in an HOA. At least if you have a problem with the neighbor, you you can put on some headphones or build a privacy hedge. If you have a problem with the HOA they can fine you indefinitely because they don’t like you (with some convenient excuse like the flower beds aren’t trimmed right or the grass isn’t green enough), and then foreclose on your house, kicking you out on to the street.

Today HOAs hit older people more than anyone else. So, yeah, there are busybodies who complain about noise and complain about lawns and house paint.... do you know who they tend to be, immigrant professionals who've bought their first house and use the HOA to get the old folks who are slower and now of lesser means busy keeping up with the bylaws.

I live in the bay area suburbs. Broken down cars in neighbors yards all around me. Idgaf. They paid for it and can use it as they please.

These are homes. Property value whiners need to find a neighborhood of empty investment houses to police.

I keep my property simple and tidy, but if anyone dared complain about it I would seek out the most absurd yard art possible in hopes of offending them and anyone that thinks like them out of my neighborhood.

> garbage dump

We already have laws re environment.

What really seems to happen with these discussions is dog whistles for “i don’t want them poors next door.”

The difficulty here, as in many cases, comes down to uneven enforcement and unclear lines. Consider the typical example of a consistently noisy neighbor and filing a noise complaint - in many/most cases, often nothing gets done.

That difficulty lies in the system - which can be resolved/upgraded via various means.

But the “concept” of one’s property as investment “outranking” one’s property as a homestead is, in my mind, part of the core concern here. Maybe it’s too “meta” but we already have laws re noise, etc as well as a system in place to modify broken laws.

Appreciate your reply!

Or weirdos who like art and vegetable gardens.

Not necessarily so. Lots of expensive developments have HOAs so it's not about making life difficult for people of little means as they cannot afford property in these places -or even rent in these places. Yet, the neighborhood want to have some governance over the development. I prefer less oversight, but some oversight is appreciated to keep things from becoming unmanageable. On the other hand trailer parks, where many poor live, seem to not care much about appearance.

A garbage dump could stink up the place and create a health hazard. Some broken down cars won't hurt you

Sure about it? I've seen broken down cars leaking oil to the ground.

I've seen running cars leak oil and antifreeze

Wait until you hear about what fully-functional cars routinely leak into the ground and atmosphere :)

Certainly the total level of contamination is like 5 quarts of oil in this case? Unless the person is constantly refilling their leaking junker? Maybe offer them a drip pan?

Military vehicles often have dedicated drip pans that they put under the vehicle every time they are parked because it's easier to do that than fix the leaks.

> Military vehicles often have dedicated drip pans that they put under the vehicle every time they are parked because it's easier to do that than fix the leaks.

In the units I was in, any vehicle that had any fluids in the drip pan would get a thorough check next Monday to find the leak and would be in the shop as soon as the part came in.

While I'm largely in the camp of "it's my property I can do what I want" (this is why I made sure to buy a house without an HOA) the idea that a broken down car sitting there can't affect someone beyond being an eyesore isn't necessary true. I can say from personal experience that even a car that was in decent shape when it was parked over a sufficient number of years will dump it's miscellaneous fluids on the ground, get really smelly as the interior starts to decay and become home to any number of insects and wildlife. I also wouldn't care to speculate on what the tires, paint and metals are leeching into the ground as they slowly degrade.

Sure this isn't going to be an issue with a car on blocks for a few months, even a year, but I've seen cars essentially abandoned long enough if you wanted to move them you'll have to literally dig them out and remove them in pieces.

I mean this sincerely -- if you were looking to move, to someplace urban like Sacramento and you saw two houses, and one had a neighbor with multiple broken down cars in the yard and the other didn't, would you value them same all else equal? Like if it really came down to it, that wouldn't be a factor _at all_?

I'm positing (without evidence) that for most people it would be a factor, so the home owner would suffer some amount of real money harm. Much less harm in rural Alabama, much more harm in lower Manhattan.

I would gladly pay -more- to be near broken down cars. High chance they will not tell me what to do with my own property.

I would not even accept a free home in an HOA neighborhood.

Fair enough! I'm surprised by how many people feel this way in this thread.

Out of curiosity, do you also think that the majority of Americans feel that way? My guess is it's gotta be at least 90/10 that would be less likely to move next to a broken down car place, certainly enough to affect the buyer pool in a city.

If bad smell or clouds of insects enter your property, I'm no longer just affecting my property.

If my property just looks untidy, it's much harder for me to accept you have a case.

It does affect my property, because if I want to sell my house it has less value if my neighbors are filthy. Would you like to live next to a garbage dump?

Your first mistake was treating your house as a speculative asset instead of a house. Pardon me if I don't give an iota of a rodent's buttocks about your precious "property value".

I'm not rich. I don't have a portfolio of properties. It's not a speculative asset, it's where I poured all my life savings into. And if I need to move, it can make a difference between a small, cramped apartment and a spacious, livable one where I'm moving to.

Pouring all your live savings into a single asset is your personal choice. It still doesn't change the argument that a home should not be a treated as an investment vehicle. Even if you do choose to use a home as an investment vehicle, putting ALL your life savings into is a poor choice; you should probably downsize and split the savings among other vehicles.

It's not an investment vehicle. I just didn't want to be beholden to landlords, so I bought where I live, and it's expensive.

There's not a lot of room for downsizing.

Where does this logic end though? If I disparage a publicly traded company, and I somehow lower their stock value, do shareholders have a right to stop me?

> if I want to sell my house it has less value if my neighbors are filthy

Cry me a river about your house value. If you want to invest then invest in people. Homes should not be your investment vehicle. Homes should be homes.

If you have a filthy neighbor then you should help them to not be filthy. Unfortunately laws can have real costs that some people can't afford.

Does your neighbor have a garbage dump on their property? Perhaps you should offer to take their garbage to the dump. Perhaps you should offer to pay for their garbage service. Perhaps you should offer to help them store their collectibles somewhere that won't destroy them from the elements. Perhaps you should try to understand your neighbor instead of decrying your precious lost home value.

I have experience on this, and let me tell you, some of the people who believe in the 'fundamental right to have broken down cars in my yard' are _not_ the sort of suffering neighbors who need a community and some understanding.

When one of these folks moved in next to my parents my attempt to come introduce myself and drop off a sixer of beer was met with a shotgun.

> I have experience on this, and let me tell you

I also have experience on this, and let me tell you: neighbors' rights end at the property line (laws otherwise notwithstanding). I don't give a flying fuck about your resale value.

It's certainly not neighborly to be asocial but there's absolutely nothing wrong it and I'm glad you learned quickly that your new neighbor doesn't want to be disturbed.

Again, I don't care about your home's sale value. But demonstrate to me that something I'm doing on my property affects your safety and I will take action to rectify the problem. If I don't then you certainly have laws that can help you.

That's nice that you don't care, people who cost others money rarely do. I hope you move somewhere next to other neighbors who are on the same page, and it all works out fine, and i mean that non-sarcastically.

That's why I'm a proponent of these types of laws. You take an action that costs me $X, and then the state comes along and says and you can undo the damage, (easy in this case), compensate me, or go to jail and they'll sell your house.

Again, just to be crystal clear here: I don't think there should be a law punishing you for working on your car, or painting your house an ugly shade of green or growing your own tomatoes or whatever. But here in the United States houses are the biggest purchase most people make and if go to such an extreme you make it so I can't sell mine, that's no longer you living your life without hurting anybody.

In the case with the gun-toting the rude neighbor, he ended up being more than rude, and went to prison for abusing his children. The bank that took his house cleaned it up, so it all ended sort of tragically. I often wonder what could've gone differently to lead to a better outcome there.

> That's nice that you don't care, people who cost others money rarely do

That's quite reductive and very typical of people who only care about money.

> I hope you move somewhere next to other neighbors who are on the same page, and it all works out fine, and i mean that non-sarcastically.

I did, in fact, move where there isn't an HOA.

> here in the United States houses are the biggest purchase most people make

Yes, they are.

> and if go to such an extreme you make it so I can't sell mine, that's no longer you living your life without hurting anybody.

I completely disagree. It's not that you can't sell yours. It's that you can't sell yours for a profit. Too bad, homes should not be profits.

If you want your home to be for-profit then you should run a home business instead. Then it's crystal clear that you don't own a home but instead own an investment vehicle with all of the not-caring-about-actual-humans that goes along with it and all of the business taxes for it too.

inetknght it looks like we hit the flame war reply limit.

Only thing i'd like to respond to is that my view has nothing to do with making money or using the house as a business. Whether the house is worth the same, more, less than I bought it for is irrelevant to the question of if I am suffering financial harm from my neighbor's action.

If you do something that costs people money, then you make them whole, whether in occurs on your property or not, and whether they're in a mansion in the hills or a 500sf 1br condo.

I agree that houses shouldn't be investments and our current system is crazy, but it's completely orthogonal to the point at hand, except in the case of pushing more Karen types to take their financial stresses out on their neighbors =P.

> If you do something that costs people money, then you make them whole, whether in occurs on your property or not

By that logic, you're costing me money simply by owning land instead of me, or by working for yourself instead of for me. I demand you make me whole! /s

No, that logic does not hold up to the reality that people matter and that different people have different opinions about what to lawfully do on their own property. That inherent difference is fundamentally what is at discussion here. I argue that it is effectively impossible to hold your neighbors' (and their properties) responsible for your own properties value unless you can demonstrate problems with safety or the environment.

I agree. Homes should be homes, not garbage dumps.

I'm not a real estate investor. Let's say I'm moving to a big city. My current house's value is the difference between a 2 bedroom and a 3 bedroom apartment there.

> Homes should be homes, not garbage dumps.

Sure, absolutely. But different people have different definitions of "garbage dumps". To me, the only real garbage dump is that wherein pests can thrive or toxic materials can leak.

I've seen the other side of things where something that's simply "not new" but completely functional is considered garbage.

> Let's say I'm moving to a big city. My current house's value is the difference between a 2 bedroom and a 3 bedroom apartment there.

If that's a problem then that's your problem. I assume you'd be moving for work, in which case bring it up with your employer. You should not treat your home as a monetary investment vehicle. If I were moving for family or to get away from neighbors, then that's simply the cost for peace of mind. That's a cost that I have decided to take upon myself. That's a cost that I will have decided to spend to improve myself. That's absolutely not a cost that the neighbor has imposed upon me.

> Cry me a river about your house value.

you're the reason HOAs exist, it's a shame because HOAs suck but at least you have some idea of standards the neighborhood shares and holds themselves to.

> you're the reason HOAs exist

Racism is the reason HOAs exist (both originally, and, though their direct ability to implement it has been reduced, still in their major function and effect.)

India has seen an increase in RWAs recently. Sometimes people want a system to govern their community outside of government but also within laws.

I don't think one can say racism is the major function, especially in other societies that have HOA-like systems. Admittedly they tend to be the lighter version of HOAs and not the type that act like Disney Village dictatorships who find any excuse to fine residents. If the HOA is made up of residents (rather than administered by an outside party) they tend to be more representative of the wants and needs of the development and inhabitants they govern.

> India has seen an increase in RWAs recently

Not talking about RWAs in India, but, since you bring it up, there's been plenty of coverage of an upswing in racism in India, too.

> I don't think one can say racism is the major function,

Its fairly well-documented as both a historical motivation and a current function.

> especially in other societies that have HOA-like systems.

I’m not talking about “other societies” and “HOA likr systems”.

> [...] they tend to be more representative of the wants and needs of the development and inhabitants they govern.

And when those residents were selected for racism by advertising the development with (for older developments) direct and (for newer ones) coded appeals to racism, guess what one of the prominent shared wants is?

I cede that racism played a part in HOAs historically --however, there have been many new developments since then in the 2000s and beyond with HOAs. They cannot be racist since many appeal to new immigrants (as well as all sorts of American citizens of all stripes.

In my experience, HOAs hurt mostly retirees who don't have the same cash flow as recent purchasers of homes. Again, in my experience, newcomers to the States seem to be the most vocal in asserting the bylaws, presumably to ensure their investment keeps increasing its value. In second place come the people who are considering selling their house and also want to maximize value.

"I'm getting rats because of your garbage dump" is a completely different case than "ninnies such as myself are using an eyesore that's none of their business to try to fleece me for my equity."

Artificial human created abstract excuses to save a buck are not real externalities, they're problems people create for themselves and therefore nobody else's problem.

Smell and touch are real externalities but sight is not? Why do some senses get preferential treatment?

Bad smells usually indicate something toxic that destroys you by breathing it. The only analogue to that for sight is extremely bright light.

You're arguing a point I did not make.

Okay, let's run with this. Do I have the right to demand that you repaint your house, because it's starting to look bad and that drags down my property value?

HN is a hard place to be nuanced, but there's a line. No, you don't get to make me repaint my house. You do get to tell me not to dump all my garbage on my driveway. The line goes somewhere in the middle.

I would make garbage art in my driveway just for you.

Where I live, your grass cannot exceed a certain height.

Your house NEEDS TO BE MAINTANED. If paint is chipping and looking awful THE CITY will force you to take care of it.

This is of course true.

But there is a big difference between that which concretely harms you in the moment, and that which makes your home more or less attractive to home buyers.

No, you can bribe your neighbors to sign contracts to avoid whatever non-violent behavior disgusts you. Getting some majority of your friends to make a local law to do it is just a subsidy, paid for by the people whose behavior is physically harmless behavior is being constrained. Not everyone has the same pursuit of happiness.

Having a garbage dump and having a car that needs work are not the same thing. Why is it that when these discussions come up the proponents for controlling other peoples behavior always bring these ridiculous over the top strawmen with obvious answers? Why not something like "if I throw a candy wrapper in my yard and it blows into your yard that affects you doesn't it?" The same point is made, but then it becomes obvious what is and isn't an externality: me having a car in my driveway with a flat tire is not causing a negative externality for you. Me piling garbage in my yard does.

> Why is it that when these discussions come up the proponents for controlling other peoples behavior always bring these ridiculous over the top stawmen with obvious answers?

Because if the proponents expressed their real reason, it would sound petty or racist, and as they don't want to sound petty or racist, they have to invent "ridiculous over the top st[r]awmen" to hide their real underlying reason from view.

HOAs deservedly sometimes get a bad rap for some power-tripping leaders and busy-body neighbors out there, but this is where I think HOAs can be useful.

People who don't want to risk having an eyesore next to their house should choose to move to a neighborhood with an HOA. People who value personal freedom on their property should choose to move to an area without that. In theory, everybody should be happier.

Unfortunately, in some places it can be very difficult to avoid HOAs. In my area they are nearly ubiquitous.

Sadly HOAs are mostly powerless in these situations. They can send angry letters to the homeowners and even threaten them with leins against their house, but actually getting those liens is a time consuming and expensive process so they usually won't actually do it. Plus they aren't a penalty to someone who is never planning to sell the property. They'll leave when they die or when the bank forecloses on them.

HOAs only have power of people who actually care about being a good neighbor. They're basically only useful for harassing honest people and maintaining shared spaces. You only need a HOA if your community has a pool/park/community center/parking lot that is owned by said community.

As long as it's in compliance with the existing runoff and and "downwind smells" rules that apply to such facilities (which you are probably ignorant of or you wouldn't be making this comment) I don't really give a crap. It's his property. My right to do whatever is predicated on his right to do whatever.

Source: I live by a dump. You wouldn't even know it was there if it weren't for the obvious dump traffic.

> People should have to pay for their externalities.

I think this sounds nice in theory, but you open to door to neighbours expecting payment for positive externalities as well. "I just renovated my driveway and slightly increased your property value, pay me."

It also seems absurd to manage relationships between people living meters from each other by the same mechanisms we manage the operations of multi-billion dollar corporations. What next? Charging your kids for services rendered after raising them?

> I just renovated my driveway and slightly increased your property value, pay me.

Sounds similar to the result of having an HOA/condo association, shared payment for maintenance upkeep and improvements

I think if you buy land in a residential neighborhood then you do owe some concessions to neighbors, not many people want to live next to your rooster coup or mosquito laden abandoned pool.

What are your thoughts on laws that prohibit a property in an residential zone from hosting, e.g. an auto body shop or convenience store?

There should be jobs closer to homes in general. Building massive sprawl with no transportation isn't ideal either.

while i appreciate the freedom sentiment, i would think that there's a stark difference in any freedom in regard to population density.

in most german citys there is a set of acceptable colors to paint your house in (i.e. there is most certainly some authority that tells you what you can do to your property in any regard)

> in most german citys there is a set of acceptable colors to paint your house in (i.e. there is most certainly some authority that tells you what you can do to your property in any regard)

Out of respect for cultural differences, I won't protest you having this rule in Germany, but it doesn't sound great to American ears (I do acknowledge that Americans have disagreements about such things, but I think I speak for the norm that this sounds like people being busybodies).

Depending on where you (want) to live in the US your going to have a hard time finding a home not covered by an HOA, and that HOA will almost certainly restrict your house colors.

Not defending it, just observering that the difference for much of the US population is who is enforcing it, not if the rule exists.

I'm not a fan of HOAs, but there is a big difference between thinking that a hyper-local opt-in association is worthwhile and thinking that it should be part of the legal requirements.

Yes, Germans do not take liberty seriously. You could handle the color constraint by contract, but it's easier to force people than bribe them to sign voluntarily.

Well, only if there is a "Bebauungsplan" (a plan that describes the requirements of buildings and surroundings, up to the type of trees for example). If there is not, and where we built there isn't, no such limits exist. Beyond your states general laws covering buildings and such.

i recon most (all?) cities have that

Not even close. These plans are limited to certain areas, usually for those, sometimes surprisingly small, areas that have just recently been opened for construction. At least in my experience, there certainly are statistics to be found around that. E.g. we don't have one neither, my parents have one so, including the kind of trees to be planted in community places.

If you signed an HOA agreement you have to abide by it. It's as simple as that barring local laws about junk in your yard

Downvote me if you like but it's true.

Yeah. I get where the HOA side is coming from and believe they should have some ability to create communities like that for people who want to live in them.

But what we should be doing is capping HOA-covered SFH at a max % of an area, to ensure people still have freedom to live in non-HOA housing if they chose.

If someone wants to give up their freedom for pretty sidewalks, good for them. But it shouldn't be the only option.

Instead, a lot of areas have local government mandating/empowering HOAs for the sole purpose of not having to deal with their community issues, at the expense of placing people under the rule of petty, non-professional tyrants.

I agree on principle, but principle can have edge cases. I live on a 10-acre rural property, surrounded by similarly sized plots. A lot of the people out here are small business owners who run their businesses from home, so there is equipment and supplies all over their properties, etc. One of my neighbors likes to randomly shoot skeet and do target practice with his rifle. Another one likes riding four-wheelers, etc, up and down the adjoining property line.

Hell, I have three broken down vehicles on or near my driveway for years and no one's said a thing to me about it. At least they're on their own wheels and not up on cinder blocks :-)

How people want to live can be irritating, but we all moved out here for the space and more freedom to live our lives, so we have to try to get along. I'll put up with the noise from your shotgun at noon, but when you start setting off cherry bombs at 9PM, then I'm going to be pissed and you'll hear from me.

I think much of it depends on density. If we're in a tight suburb with 1/4 acre plots, my neighbor's weed infested yard with a broken down car makes it much harder to sell _my_ house. If they move in after I do it's plausible that costs me a hundred thousand dollars or more, by no fault of my own.

If they're on 10 acre lots with trees where I can't even see it, and my neighbor is just doing reasonable stuff to run a small business on ground with no zoning, who cares? On the other hand I can still hear it, so we might share similar positions on noise after hours.

What does it mean to own property? Does that meaning depend on a democratic majority? If so, then you don't have private property. Whatever restrictions you want to impose on neighbors due to high density can be done using contracts (added to deed). You don't need these laws. But people don't want contracts, because it's easier to force people to abide by rules that you can't get them to voluntarily agree too. These laws are a subsidy, because you'd have to bribe some people to sign agreements to accept certain restrictions.

>What does it mean to own property? Does that meaning depend on a democratic majority? If so, then you don't have private property.

Property rights are not absolute--just like free speech is not absolute.

You have to pay your property taxes and, as discussed on this thread, there's zoning which may restrict commercial activity in a residential area. There are doubtless other bylaws in a given place related to noise, smells, etc. The government can take a property by eminent domain as well.

It's about being reasonable. And what's reasonable on a 10 or 100 acre rural farm is different from what is reasonable in an upscale suburban community with houses on 1/4 acre.

> You don't need these laws

I don't want to go around proposing a HOA-style contract with every single person in earshot / downwind every time I move, and hope we can come to terms I can afford.

> it's easier to force people to abide by rules that you can't get them to voluntarily agree too

The issue is that some people's concept of "ownership" means "I can do whatever I want on this property, even if it imposes a high cost on others". You can pick your scenario, from "My home, my 3am drum practice" to "My home, my burning of this pile of nuclear waste". There's no magic way of assessing the "true" costs to me by your actions next door, so we need these laws.

If you live on more space near less people, then you need less of these laws, maybe none!

I understand (and agree) that for every "My neighbors yard is a literal cow pond" there's some Karen who is mortified at the shade of off-white I painted my house. There are also unlimited historical cases of the government misusing these laws to keep poor/minorities out. The reality is there are a lot of selfish assholes out there, and so laws help give you a little recourse when one moves in next door.

I don't feel unreasonable saying I want to sleep from 11pm-7am, and be able to sell my house some day with a value based solely on the greater market and what I do to it, not the crazy guy down the street.

That said, I live in a very dense city. I'm not moving to rural Alabama and expecting to impose that on anybody 2 miles away.

Your property value is of no concern to anyone else that just wants to live their lives in their homes. Trying to restrict the non-violent behavior of others is a dick move no matter the lot size.

I live in a small lot suburb with roosters and I have been known to angle grind at 3 am. Neighbors say nothing. I say nothing about screaming kids, blaring music, and the dude doing late night Tuba practice. This is just people living life.

If you value total silence and no evidence of lifestyle diversity around you, then perhaps rural Alabama is a better fit for you.

Thank god HOAs exist as a counterbalance to people who hold these opinions.

Yes and no. Degrees matter. It’s the age old problem of why we can’t have nice things. People not being roughly reasonable.

Yes it’s their yard, but it’s also our neighborhood. Yes they should have autonomy but also should know how to operate within civil society. There are limits. They need not be onerous and get down to small details, but people need to be roughly reasonable.

Can I call in emergency scares and call them “artwork” of the performance kind? Things aren’t things just because I say they are a thing. One can’t walk thru a TSA line with a weapon and “call it art”.

> but also should know how to operate within civil society

A society which threatens its members with state violence because they dare to repair their own property themselves on their own property is hardly "civil".

What do you mean? I think a few months is a reasonable time to have things on blocks to be worked on. Multiple years is unreasonable.

Speaking as someone that grew up poor, people hoard any fixable backup cars they can in case their primary ride breaks down forcing them to invest in a weekend getting another beater running.

Not everyone has the luxury of keeping all the cars they own in running order at once.

The fact you clearly do not understand this is exactly you have have no business making rules for other peoples property.

When you make laws to restrict behavior like this, you are really trying to get rid of the poors.

If you want to help discourage this type of behavior long term, vote for better public transportation.

I feel like people get too absolutist about this. At the end of the day, people should be free to do what they want as long as it doesn't interfere with anyone else's freedom to do what they want (aka do unto others, etc).

The problem with "let people do literally whatever they want" with their property is that it infringes on my freedom to live happily/healthily on my property.

If my neighbors blast music until the early hours of the morning and they don't turn it down when asked politely, is it "reprehensible" for me to call the police to enforce my village's noise ordinances? What if they're burning refuse and it spews over into my yard and ventilation? Or if they have an uncovered fire pit close to the property line?

That's not even getting into the long term effects on the community, like if people store or dispose of hazardous waste on their property (we all share the same water table!).

I don't think it's "fundamentally reprehensible." It's part of living in a free society that balances the rights of one against the rights of all.

Could repairing an ev in your driveway run afoul of this? Sounds like yes.

Leaking oil into the ground and air conditioning gasses into the atmosphere is already illegal. It sounds like preventing car repair is purely a nefarious regulation, whether it be an attack on rights to repair, or preventing depreciation of some over inflated asset. I would love to explain this away with simple ignorance. If so, let's just repeal this ridiculous regulation.

I once worked in an area that had a problem with smokers littering. They put out trash cans and ash trays and heavy fines. No success. They banned smoking within the area. The littering stopped, because it's a lot harder to hide smoking than hide littering.

Like another poster said, "this is why we can't have nice things." A few bad actors breaking ordinances that are unenforceable means the ordinances become more strict.

I'm curious how policing the no smoking is somehow easier than policing littering your cig butt. And so what, are the anti smoking police giving smokers tickets while ignoring actual littering of plastic and pollution cause hey, it's impossible? I don't see the problem as solved. But then again I'm being a bit ignorant of your specific situation.

It depends on the city code. In my county "junk cars" are not allowed at all although that's not super clearly defined, car repairs aren't allowed at all unless in "an enclosed building", and you can't have more then a certain number of cars visible from the street.

That said - last week my neighbor had his car up on a jack, in the street, for 2 days straight. He was repairing something under the rear of the car in cold weather. He's "allowed" to do this because none of us are mean and called in a complaint so the city didn't know about it.

I recently moved into a non-HOA neighborhood in Southeast Portland. We have several lots that have broken down equipment, vehicles, etc... It's pretty unsightly to the extent that my guy can't even use his driveway. None of what I've mentioned is my business. Where it becomes the cities business is if it becomes an environmental hazard or a hazard to the neighbors (eg: fire hazard). Not liking the way your neighbors house is arranged is simply not good enough reason to bring in the powers of a higher authority.

If laws like this were really trying to go after environmental impacts then the city could mandate that cars get put over an fluid reservoir. You can buy them super cheap at most stores and we used them in the military because of similar concerns with JP-8 and oil.

My neighbor has had junk and household replacement parts in his yard for years. He started a major home renovation then his wife got sick and eventually passed. A few months later, he moved in with his mother to provide her long-term care. His son still lived in the house but repairs stalled obviously. It's been about 5 years and they've really made progress this year. Eventually this home will be a real asset to the neighborhood but I've been really happy for our fence the past few years.

That's pretty much the same attitude I take. Our yard is pristine because I walk the grounds and pick up trash that blows in, I take care of my trees and gardens, I like working on the house, I have places to securely store tools, and I have a job that pays me well and gives me time to live my life.

A lot of people don't have that. In life I try to walk the line of, "You can do whatever you want until your actions violate my rights in some significant way."

My attitude is that if I really don't like something about your property, like tall grass, peeling paint, etc, then I should offer to help you fix it.

Not necessarily paying for materials, but just the labor part is usually a huge burden to many, such as the elderly. Hey, I have a lawn mower. It's no big deal to mow your lawn once in a while for you. Usually I'm too lazy to care about minor stuff like tall grass. I did help a neighbor fix a downspout since the contractor said she'd need fascia to put in a modern gutter and wanted $1k to do it. One hour of my time and about $25 in parts and scraps later, she has a working downspout. Isn't this what being neighbors is supposed to be?

That's just being a good neighbor I think. As far as communities go, people like you and I make good neighbors. The folks I was referencing have power and control complexes with a side of selfish motivations.

Can't we just let people do what they want in their property?

The number of people who willingly live in HOAs and support an ever increasing number of restrictions seems to indicate not.

There are people who work on car restorations for decades. Life intervenes!

The law does bring time into the equation — anything that would leave the vehicle inoperable for more than 24 hours is forbidden. The aspect that makes the least sense to me is that this rule applies even if you're working inside a closed garage.

> Occasionally I'll come across a vehicle that has obviously been in the same place for years: cracked tires, oil spots and or larger weeds growing around.

It depends, but those things can happen in a much shorter timeframe. I have a (running and usable) car sitting for a couple months and there's no oil spots but by the tires and weeds it could appear as if it's been there longer than the year I've been there.

> Can't there be a time limit to allow for repairs and restorations?

Have you ever tried a restoration? I haven't. But I've watched a few on YouTube. The amount of problems and delays (e.g., getting hold of rare or specialised parts) that can mount up is beyond belief. M539 Restorations spent a year working on an Alpina B7 and went through 3 engines (I think, it might have been 4 - I have a recollection of him buying one and immediately returning it but that might have been a different project) doing so (they're notorious for scoring issues).

What I have done, and am in the middle of, is refurbish a house. Similar issues. Take a 70 year old house where nothing is square and the last owner was a bodger and everything is a PITA. It's all doable, but it's a PITA. I recently had to wait about 8 weeks for materials for a particular job to turn up. That's especially bad, but having to wait a week or two if you need to go a bit off piste with materials or tools isn't. Being blocked by the weather (e.g., it's too cold in the attic for materials to cure properly) is also something that can happen.

The reality is it's just not possible to know how long a restoration or refurbishment is going to take when you start it, and you the one guarantee is that you'll find unanticipated problems you need to solve along the way, all of which adds to the time it takes.

(And this is all ignoring wider circumstances: you get laid off, or some surprise expense means you need to lay off spending on the restoration for a while, you fall ill, somebody else in your family falls ill, etc. Life's messy. Stupid rules about how long restorations and refurbishments should take are not helpful.)

All you can do is keep steadily moving forward until it's done.

> The old argument for rules like this was often "broke cars reduce home value", so it's fun to try and see them use the pro-environment card but it's really to push out poor people.

It's one thing if you're legitimately doing a small repair on your car like changing a blown tire or replacing a cat some meth head sawed off... but honestly, everyone knows how bad a car hoarder can fuck up the looks of a neighborhood, not to mention the actually relevant emission issues: exhaust from damaged or half-broken vehicles being worked on, oil and other contaminant spills both on ground and in wastewater management systems, noise from angle grinders and hydraulic lifts, spray paint wafting through the neighborhood and setting on laundry, the fire risk originating from operating with welders, blowtorches, plasma cutters or shoddy DIY electrical work...

The problem is, you can't legally define "common sense" or "not being an arsehole", and too many arseholes abusing a regulation-free environment end up driving rules such as the one being discussed.

Here in Germany, we have a sensible solution: there are "hobbyist garages" where you drive in, can rent any kind of tool you can imagine, lift rigs or parking lots, and work on your car. Everything there is above the board - the places have oil removers on the wastewater collection, are in industrial zones where no people live adjacent and have safe disposal for everything (oil, coolant, AC refrigerants, fuel, batteries, ...). As a result of the availability of these services, almost no one but farmers does major repairs on their own property, and the farmers don't bother anyone because they are way out in rural areas.

This argument always struck as similar to telling someone that because they wear ugly clothes, we're going to run them out of public spaces. Except worse because it's their own house.

Well, if you want to work on a car project, you can always go and buy/rent a property in a mixed zone area.

Residential zoning restrictions are old and are made that way for a reason - so that people can live and relax in peace.

> Residential zoning restrictions are old and are made that way for a reason - so that people can live and relax in peace.

Zoning in the US does not have such an innocuous history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning_in_the_United_States#Or...

Besides:

> Well, if you want to work on a car project, you can always go and buy/rent a property in a mixed zone area.

These are few and far between these days, and consequently a lot more expensive. So depending on how much money you have, no, that's not always an option.

> So depending on how much money you have, no, that's not always an option.

So, just because you don't have the money to start your company complying with the laws and regulations, you should be free to simply ignore these rules and make a profit by offering cheaper services than those companies complying with the rules?! Or even for your private car that needs a fix - no, the laws and regulations apply for everyone just the same, and just because you don't have the money to rent out a garage I don't see any reason why you should infringe on everyone else's rights.

Your comment reminds me of a famous quote:

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.

―Anatole France

Or having an ugly front door "ruining the look of a neighborhood"

"I see a red door and I'm going to use state violence to force you to paint it black"

> here's a city that makes a move like this because they are tired of broken down cars in poor neighborhoods and then end up repealing the rule when cops get uppity and apply it to middle/upper class people who are doing vehicle restorations in their driveways.

Basically, they are making up their own laws by trial and error, which just seems bizarre to me.

I am completely ignorant of the law in this regard – how ridiculous can city or county laws get before someone is obliged to step in even if no one in the jurisdiction challenges it in court?

Or is it possible that the county could start fining people for, I don't know, staying up past midnight; and that would be fine so long as no one in the county sues?

Yes, cities have can enact pretty much any law they want until it's challenged in court. Just as an FYI, many cities have enacted curfews before, typically, I think for children and teens.

Thanks! I found out today about curfew laws and some of the concerns about them [1] in the US; had never heard of them previously since I came here as an adult.

It seems like an issue affecting a fairly large section of the population (15-17 year olds and their parents) that the Supreme Court has never examined.

----------------------------------------

[1] https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1206/curfews

I don't know why you're downvoted. Maybe the answer is obvious to some, but my public school and college degree never really educated me on this. I'm quite interested.

What recourse does one have if your county imposes unreasonable rules? I imagine some of this is political and some of it would be jurisdiction/constitutional?

So maybe you could sue on the basis that a law is unconstitutional or that the county doesn't have the right (where maybe the state does).

And otherwise your only other recourse is to run/campaign/vote in county elections?

Edit... My county claims to be a "Council-Manager form of government."

Guess I've got some reading to do on my county's politics -- though I do plan to move soon.

Yep. The answer under democracy is either to "vote harder" or to try to persuade government agents to wield the coercive powers that they have granted to themselves to your advantage.

"What recourse does one have if your county imposes unreasonable rules?"

"Reasonable" is determined by judge and/or jury.

Even with what seems like plain language in preemptive state laws or the constitution, it seems like those don't place many restrictions on what a local government can do, as the protections are quite limited and in some cases have been watered down.

If you want a good example of how this works, look at the firearms preemption situation in PA. There are constant cases and appeals about what laws municipalities can make. The people in power will make whatever rules they want with no repercussions, even when they know they are barred from doing so.

Back to your original question, I think the only real solution is to move to areas where the population has a similar mindset. Those options may be limited though. This is especially true with increasing federal regulation, or when population distributions in a state effectively give cities power over the entire state (see NYC+suburbs and NY in general).

> move to areas where the population has a similar mindset.

> Those options may be limited though.

This ^

I'm looking at small towns in rural areas now. I really just want to raise my own kids (homeschool), do some light farming, and maybe at some point start a small business in something I'm interested in that maybe I can use to help my kids become self sufficient.

The regulations and cost of living in _so_ many places are making this next to impossible. I'm glad I bought a fixer house when I did, or I'd only be able to afford a condo these days. : /

I wouldn't say that they're all doing it by trial and error. When this was done in my hometown it was explicitly done by a city council targeting a certain set of neighborhoods (that have since been gentrified). They wrote the law with such specific intent that they failed to see how it applied to anyone else.

> The big bummer in rules like this is that the wealthy people in office that are enacting this legislation don't know what a "major" car repair is because they've never done any. And their definition of a 'special tool' is anything beyond their Craftsmen "Baby's First Toolbox".

Same way politicians approach gun regulation

Right? Who needs self-defense weapons or even a funded police dept. when you can hire private security and gate your community? Even better if you can cover the private security bill with taxpayer dollars!

Case in point: Cori Bush spends $490,000 on private security while calling to defund police

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/cori-bush-...

Exactly. This is your average politicians understanding of firearms - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJmFEv6BHM0

Excuse the cringe commentary/meme style format

And yes, of course the politician is from California.

You can't spend years fighting something and not develop an understanding. They're doing stupid as a dog and pony show to rile up the voters. You see this on all sorts of issues.

the specialized tools clause makes me think the law was to prevent operating a car repair business out of your home

Then it should be more specific.

It says it is also illegal to repair a can at your home unless it is registered to someone who lives there. Compared to that, the specialized tools clause is unsuited to that purpose. But it's great for the purpose of creating the ambiguity necessary to inflate the scope of the law per "discretion".

Cars, especially modern cars, very frequently require specialized tools. I’ve got a garage full built up over the years.

I think the intent was to reduce the repairs to those trivial enough to do with a wrench.

Though, they seem to permit brake jobs, which often require weird specialized tools to get stuff apart.

I'm not in favor of this kind of law but I've also seen shade-tree mechanics show a complete disregard for the environment: dumping oil into the dirt, releasing freon into the atmosphere, etc.

Dumping oil in the dirt is downright nice compared to dumping it in road drainage.

Where do you think things go once they get in the soil? Contaminated groundwater is as bad as sending it down to a river. It just takes longer to get there.

Probably 40 years ago, my dad used to dump his oil in a spot in the yard. Years later I realized that spot is about 100 feet from his well.

Somehow, we are all still alive. (He did stop doing that eventually).

Yeah, when I was a kid we had the 'oil bush' behind the garage. The bush my dad spent twenty years trying to kill by dumping old oil on it.

How bad it is depends on a few major factors:

is there a well nearby?

how is the soil layering and composition?

microbial activity?

how deep is the water table?

is there a body of water nearby? (where the drain water runs)

is the drain water treated in a plant? (is the treatment biological or chemical)

and so and so forth

The results can range from "no problem at all, the oil will sit undisturbed for hundreds of years and clean it self up" to "end up straight where it kills somethings".

Anyway, it occurred to me that oil change is probably on its way to become a historical footnote. Barring specalised applications, all motor vehicals will be electric probably, adoption seems to have reached a tipping point.

It’s kind of dumb to stick oil in the ground anyway. Used oil is still valuable, when you “recycle” it most people don’t realize it’s going to be burned by a recycling facility. But if you have a diesel engine, or a diesel heater, you can actually use it as fuel.

> all motor vehicles will be electric

I guess I’m one of the crazies who would bet against this happening in my lifetime at least. The problems with grid capacity for scaling up electric vehicles, their unsuitability for long uninterrupted trips, lack of towing performance, etc., seem well-covered enough that the notion of no new ice vehicles seems like a bright-eyed futurist pipe dream at this point. Could it happen some day? Sure, but the futurist’s problem is all about timing, not direction.

100% may be unlikely but certainly most. The vast majority of trips aren't long uninterrupted ones beyond the range of even current EVs nor do they require towing performance.

Grid capacity maybe. It would help if people stopped buying massively oversized vehicles for their actual everyday use in general. (But overall I'm fairly optimistic that EVs can be accounted for.)

> majority of trips

Majority of trips don’t exceed the capabilities of a Smart car. My CPU goes mostly unused. We don’t size for even the mean, but the realistically conceivable max (capability or capacity).

> Grid capacity

We struggle to support the demand for air conditioning and actively ask people to reduce their demand on the grid. Increasing demand by orders of magnitude seems inconceivable without a radical increase in generating capacity, which imposes a huge time constraint at the very least.

Again, I’m not arguing the direction, mostly just that the timeframe which to me seems a lot, lot longer than the popular representations.

> Majority of trips don’t exceed the capabilities of a Smart car.

Correct, that's why I drive a Smart car.

> The vast majority of trips aren't long uninterrupted ones beyond the range of even current EVs nor do they require towing performance.

Buyers tend to buy for multiple uses. Their vast majority of trips may be in the range of current EVs, but they still wouldn't purchase a car that can't do 1 trip out of every 30.

I would guess it's far lower than 1 out of every 30 for most people. The number of cars I see towing anything on the highway or in town is miniscule, and the share of all trips above 30 miles is just 5%.

https://afdc.energy.gov/data/mobile/10318

I wish this data was segmented further, because 30 miles each way is no problem for an EV! But still, a longer trip doesn't mean you can't make the trip - especially with the number of fast chargers increasing, it just means you have to stop to charge a bit longer than if you'd stopped for gas.

(But as an aside, I really wish car share systems were more common in the US. It feels silly to have everyone driving around in oversized vehicles when they're only occasionally needed.)

> I would guess it's far lower than 1 out of every 30 for most people.

So? It doesn't have to apply to most people, it just has to apply to many, and judging from the number of trailers that are sold, and aftermarket towbars that are installed, many people actually do intend to use their car for towing.

> The problems with grid capacity for scaling up electric vehicles, their unsuitability for long uninterrupted trips, lack of towing performance, etc., seem well-covered enough

Those are very temporary problems. I would be very surprised if EVs don't end up outperforming ICEVs on all those metrics within a decade or two, and that's a pretty conservative estimate.

Certain for large lorries it's an unsolved issue, unless we have a large battery breakthrough.

The weight of the battery to actually move goods very quickly becomes a major issue.

Engineering Explained did some estimation around this and doesn’t think weight is likely to be a serious issue. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv44W7xa4IU

Granted that’s in part because EV trucks are allowed to be 2000 lbs heavier than ICE trucks in the US.

When you put oil into dirt it is slowly eaten by hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria and fungi. This process takes a long time, years for a typical backyard. This natural process can cope with small amounts of oil like a drip here and there but if you dump an entire car's worth you are gonna have a problem. If the dirt becomes saturated with oil it could wash into your neighbor's yard in the next rain storm.

https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Oil-Eating_Bacteria...

True, but since changing your own fluids is still permitted there, I don't see how this helps much.

What one shade-tree mechanic releases or dumps pales in comparison to what is causally released by all the cars, trucks, and 18-wheelers on the road daily.

It's similar to blaming single use straws for the plastic problem.

While true that most personal impact is tiny vs industry/the whole world we still just shouldn't be ok with dumping waste thoughtlessly?

In the end a lot of stuff is still caused by 8 billion insignificancies..

And imo also this straw (strawman) argument has been exaggerated. Yes, it is also a tiny and mostly insignificant bit, but where was it blamed to be the root cause of the plastic problem? It is another tiny simple thing one can just avoid without much personal luxury impact, so where is the problem? Trying to draw that into ridicule like this not much better, imo.

I just save all my used oil and every several years, call up the same person I found with an oil burner setup for a 6-pack.

Used oil has value!

I do the same with my apple tree trimmings.

Changing oil is specifically allowed here, and I'm pretty sure every first world country has rules against dumping oil and other polluting elements.

If this is the goal, it's really backward as it is only loosely related.

In Germany, the place you bought the new oil from has to take the old one back. In case of Amazon, the recycling partner is (used to be?) is a nation wide chain of auto shops.

That's also true in much of the US. Every auto parts store has to take old oil for recycle, regardless of where you originally bought it. They don't even ask.

I like the "don't even ask" part, some places over here can be rather difficult in that regard.

> dumping oil into the dirt

This is still illegal most places regardless of where you do your service. All auto parts stores (in California at least) let you drop off as much oil as you want for free and they dispose of it. Some Autozones will give you an empty container to transport the oil back to them (if you ask).

> releasing freon into the atmosphere

A/C systems are closed, so unless you have a leak, it shouldn’t ever make contact with the outside. Even DIY tools to “recharge” it have special one-way connector valves that connect directly to the one-way connection valve on the A/C system. We’ve come a long away in this tech.

I'm telling you what I've seen people actually do. These aren't the minority either, these are most of the poor shade-tree meth heads I grew up with in the PNW.

> This is still illegal

But not enforced because you're not going to catch someone pouring oil over a fence on their own property into a bunch of weeds at night.

> transport the oil

The shit gets everywhere. No thanks. They know they can go to autozone or leave it in a clear plastic container, but that's extra work. I'm not sure people realize just how little free time blue collar folk have.

> it shouldn’t ever make contact with the outside

Pulling the A/C unit out to lighten the car for the dragstrip. Why bother renting an A/C reclaiming machine when I can just open the valve and let it vent?

Again, I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to work on cars, but trying to ignore the real environmental dangers here is burying your head in the sand.

I agree, "shade tree mechanics" often do disregard environmental considerations. But, they tend to pretty much disregard all laws and regulations, when they're inconvenient for them. Hence the shortcuts to "save time."

The question is: what ought to be done about this? I don't think a blanket ban on other than "minor car repairs" is it, but I also don't think the type of person you're talking about here is going to be too fazed by fines and inspectors.

I'm just saying the environmental cost is real. I feel people are dismissing it because "it's not legal to dump fluids" when the reality is that it's pretty common—and pretty hazardous at a local level.

I think if you banned all automotive work at home (including oil changes) that would reduce the amount of environmental damage like this. It's far easier to catch someone changing oil than dumping it. However there are obvious socioeconomic reasons why I don't think this is something that should be done.

I'm not proposing a solution, I'm just pointing out we shouldn't ignore the environment here. Or expect poor people to care about the environment because they very much do not. I know the people that do this and if I challenged them on it they would say "the government pours oil on their own gravel roads to keep the dust down anyways" or "if the government cared about the environment they wouldn't have killed Stanley Meyer" or some other claim to point out perceived hypocrisy.

So your argument is that we should enact laws that ban all automotive work at home because some people do not follow the existing laws around dumping motor oil. Do you really not see the flaw in this argument?

Every single comment I've posted on this topic (including the one you just replied to) I've been careful to point out that I expressly do not think such laws should exist.

Fair enough. Sometimes I am blindly emotional when I feel like my right to do stuff to my own things on my own property is questioned.

How far does this go? If you have a riding lawnmower you have to change the oil in that too. Are we forcing people to spend money to haul their mower to a shop to get the oil changed? ATVs?

I'm completely against this. You're expecting poor people to pay for things they can do themselves if they're willing just because a few people dump oil in their weeds at night. Your freon argument doesn't sway me either. Wrecks cause freon dumps all the time. Your neighbor pulling freon out of one car isn't causing that much environment damage.

Also: if you're concerned about it, report them.

I wonder if the solution here is entirely different. Maybe instead of asking what-ifs per-se we ask, "well, why would someone not do it the proper way." The answer there is, whether justified or not, the current process is too much of a "hassle" (I don't see it as such but for someone dumping motor oil down storm drains for them it apparently is). We can't make them do the current process that is more of a "hassle." So how do we make a more "hassle-free" process? Maybe like garbage, one Wednesday a month, the recycling/garbage company picks up jugs of fluids? We have an existing process, so maybe we just rope one more thing into. The county/city already does garbage pickup and disposal, why not fluids?

I realize you're not proposing a solution. That's precisely why I was asking about one. I'd like to see the environment protected while at the same time people retain the right to do repairs on their own vehicles on their own property.

I think we just need to be real that, there are environmental externalities to many many things. Even when we take a good faith look at various issues it's entirely reasonable for other factors to trump environmental concerns. (Moral, economic, social, cultural)

> I think if you banned all automotive work at home (including oil changes) that would reduce the amount of environmental damage like this.

Sure, and if you banned all alcohol consumption, then that will reduce the amount of kids damaged by alcohol.[1]

Still doesn't mean that banning is an idea worthy of consideration.

[1] The negative effects of alcohol on a population is far worse than many other things that are banned, and yet alcohol is not. Many things would get immediately unbanned if the bar was "needs to be more damaging than alcohol"

Why not just charge something like a core fee like with batteries though?

I don’t see how someone sees one thing wrong with an activity and go “yeah let’s ban the whole thing”

> Why not just charge something like a core fee like with batteries though?

That doesn't work with motor oil for a number of reasons. It can burn off, new engines don't come with any oil, etc.

> I don’t see how someone sees one thing wrong with an activity and go “yeah let’s ban the whole thing”

Scroll up and see what my initial post was and you'll see this is the direct opposite of my position from the beginning.

Having the option to leave your oil in a clear container more than accounts for the environmental dangers. That is not 'extra work'. When you're doing an oil change you need a container to catch it in anyway- but the claim here is it's too much work to put it in a clear container?! Used oil is trash, so I guess you'd argue it's 'extra work' for people to take out their own trash as well.

> Pulling the A/C unit out to lighten the car for the dragstrip. Why bother renting an A/C reclaiming machine when I can just open the valve and let it vent?

This is very rare in the grand scheme of things and the most common case is simply to recharge a line that had a slow leak. Both the valve that allows you inject coolant on the A/C system and the valve on the pressurized can are one-way by default. Yes, a little get leaked every time you do this because there is a void between where the valve attaches to the pressurized can, but this is all about trade offs.

If your A/C is leaking, you can usually fix it as it’s usually just a brittle gasket or a flare connection became loose over time. Most people I’ve helped have vacuumed out their refrigerant before disassembling so they can simply pump it back in. Why pay for new coolant if you can borrow the vacuum tool for free and just use what you got already? Yes, I’m sure some people just open the valve and let it rip, but most undertaking this repair at least watch a few YouTube videos.

You can pick up an AC manifold on amazon for about $20 and cans of refrigerant (not top off kits) are available at any auto parts store. There's plenty of reasons to need to open the AC system in a car.

Unfortunately AC repair shops generally price gouge. I've seen shops charge > $100 just to evacuate a system for you, which is just hooking it up to their (admittedly very expensive) recovery machine for a couple minutes. Take the car back to have it filled again with about 4x $6 cans of refrigerant and they'll charge $200+ to once again hook it up to their machine for about 20 minutes. Ask them to diagnose your busted AC system and they'll inevitably tell you the evap coil is leaking and it's a $2k+ repair because of the 15 hours of labor involved in removing and reinstalling your entire dash. Go home and follow some youtube directions and find out it was really just a leaking oring on the condenser.

It's no wonder people do these repairs at home. Maybe the fix is for the auto industry to move to a less harmful refrigerant and design their AC systems in ways that don't require them to be disassembled for various unrelated repair work.

> Maybe the fix is for the auto industry to move to a less harmful refrigerant

I think 1234yf is supposed to be a lot better. I'm not sure what the adoption rate is, though.

You're not paying for the repair. You're paying for the peace of mind that comes with a "legitimate business" that you can sue if their shop burns down with your car in it, has an expensive machine that avoids discharging refrigerant, follows labor law, etc.

It's the same reason people pay more for products that are ethically sources.

That said I think the prices are crazy and would be lower if the financial burden of running a "legit" shop weren't so high.

They’re are plenty of reasons to open the system, my point was that it isn’t a simple fluid top-off that oil or engine coolant is. A leaky A/C system is really an exception and people who work on their cars typically understand the work that goes into this and why it shouldn’t ever need topping off in ideal circumstances.

I agree that refrigerants need to be safer, but it’s not my experience that people who are relying on their cars to literally survive are going to just pop the refrigerant valve and let it rip.

So draft a law that forbids dumping oil into the dirt, releasing freon into the atmosphere, etc. And if those laws already exist, why aren't they enough to dissuade the practices but this anti-repair law is?

Because they're harder to enforce and accidental leaks happen.

Highjacking planes is illegal but we still don't allow guns and bombs on planes, it makes it easier to enforce.

Risk mitigation is a part of public policy.

Actually, we do allow firearms on planes. In the US, you must declare them and store them properly in checked baggage. The rules strike me as suitably tailored to the actual risks, unlike the repair law in question. And that's assuming the repair law was actually intended to address environmental risks. I am highly skeptical.

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/transporting-firearms-and-ammunit...

> I'm not in favor of this kind of law but I've also seen shade-tree mechanics show a complete disregard for the environment: dumping oil into the dirt, releasing freon into the atmosphere, etc.

"I'm not in favour of banning alcohol, but I've also seen how easily minors acquire it".

So? That's an argument for enforcing current law, not implementing a complete ban.

I think you and many other have completely misunderstood this sentence, which is on me for not being clear. Now that I slept on it I think I see where my fault lies. It sounds like everything after the "but" is me contradicting the first part when I meant to just convey more information, not to contradict it entirely.

When I said "I'm not in favor of this kind of law", I literally meant that. I'm not in favor of a complete ban: full stop. You're arguing as if I have the opposite position.

I'm saying the environmental costs are real. That doesn't mean that I therefore think that there should be a complete ban, simply that there are real costs that we need to be mindful of. Socioeconomic costs outweigh the environment here, IMO.

I think if you read my comments again with this in mind you'll find you're not actually disagreeing with my real position.

What I've been taught is, the part of the sentence after the "but" is the part that's being emphasized.

Imagine if you had written:

> I've seen shade-tree mechanics show a complete disregard for the environment, but I'm not in favor of this kind of law.

It seems like you think that's the same sentence as before but to me, and I suspect other readers, they say different things.

If it is not "will somebody please think of the children", the excuse is "somethihg something environment" now

Every time I hear someone say “something someone else does on their property it lowers my property value”… I respond with “with investment comes risk. either your house is your house or its an investment. But that does not make ALL houses investments. If the risk is too much, pop smoke before the value is too low.”

I’m told I just “don’t get it.”

No. I don’t get it. That’s the problem. :p

Why should an investor not exercise agency to try and influence the outcome of their investment?

Because of the harm they cause to the people around them, as discussed in the comments here.

And why should I give a fuck about what investor wishes. In my opinion bar direct / illegal actions like throwing garbage in neighbour's property we should be left alone from interference.

Oh I think they should attempt to register their opinion, but in the end, that’s as far as it can go - if we truly “care” about a human’s right to private enjoyment of their own “property.”

Now rephrase that taking into account the fact that said investor enacting his will onto another person without their consent.

If what I do with my property negatively affects your investment perhaps you should've taken that into account when conducting your risk analysis instead of throwing a fit and making your problems my problem.

So clearly, I can start a toxic chemicals factory in my basement, next to your house? (I'll move elsewhere of course)

Or, absolute principles are rarely absolutely applicable.

I feel like your argument undermined itself? There is a clear argument against your neighbor having a toxic chemical factory that has nothing to do with investment values, such as "it makes my home an unsafe place to live". The whole point here is that the point of homes is to be homes, not investments.

There's a clear distinction here: risk to other people and their property. There's a reason people who make arguments for controlling other people's behavior have to come up with over the top, ridiculous scenarios with obvious answers. If you're trying to find an answer, find the principles and work from there and you'll find absolute principles are fine. There's no risk to you or your property if I decide to have a car with the hood up parked in my driveway.

What if you have a different car with its hood up on your property every day? What if you're painting them and venting it out of your garage? Toxic chemicals is not a wild scenario, it's the logical next step.

[edit] I'm somewhat surprised by the contention that merely stating this hypothetical is "emboldening" the investor class.

Pardon: >> EMBOLDENING THE SUPPORT FOR THE INVESTMENT OWNING CLASS

whatever that means.

I bring it up as it was my experience as a renter whose quality of life (not investment value) was substantially impacted when I lived next to people who were operating a quasi-legal home auto repair shop. I think it's unfair to assume that anyone asking where a line should be drawn on what someone can do on their property is carrying water for faceless, inhumane capitalist corporate investor-vampires, or whatever. And BTW, doing whatever you want on your property at the expense of the neighbors' quality of life or investment value? Kinda antisocial as well.

If toxic chemicals is the problem, legislate that.

We already have laws re environment - STOP EMBOLDENING THE SUPPORT FOR THE INVESTMENT OWNING CLASS by pretending those laws don’t already exist.

No example given isn’t already covered by a law that already exists.

Except in the correlation to a “market” that this “investment” will be expected to perform on.

It puts capital and profit over humans and is deplorable behavior.

So legislate the next step then. "No dumping or releasing toxic chemicals" it's not that hard, and the fact that that's not what's legislated, but it's what is used as an excuse for totally different sets of rules tells me that's not the motivation here.

Regarding your edit: the ire comes from (at least in my reply) the idea that your logic or example is so shallow as to “by default” support the class of people who can afford to treat homes like investments.

There are entire cohorts of people who cannot. Who own one home, barely, or are beholden to a landlord’s (sometimes corporate) whims.

Saying “what if they leak oil from junk cars” - resolved via environment law already.

“Noise complaint.” - resolved via law already.

Too many cars, too much blight? - laws already.

Every single example provided couches this as a potential harm to someone else’s investment, and strengthens the divide in class between those who can afford to “invest” and those who cannot and strive to simply exist.

Yes, people DO worry about investment. I do. I own my home. My only home. It’s paid off, largely speaking.

But it’s my home. I have NO desire or assumption that its value will go to my children or provide retirement income.

Because it’s a home.

And I look at my fellow working class neighbors in the same way.

If someone complains my home needing paint (it does) will affect (effect? I always forget) their investment - I will happily let them paint my house or they can f off.

From the article:

>> it's believed that the code is intended to prevent small independent repair shops from popping up in someone's backyard

While other laws may cover each of the potential negative secondary effects of a backyard auto shop on the neighbors, that doesn't mean the group of behavior leading to violation of those laws should remain undefined.

Again, to me this has nothing to do with keeping value on an investment. My experience with this was renting... I now own (one) house, and my problem with what the neighbors do has to do with how it affects my health and quality of life.

Claiming every possible negative effect is covered by law makes no sense. Leaking chemicals? Could take years to be discovered in the water table. Noise? Not really enforced anywhere... especially not if the activity in question is otherwise legal / doesn't require a license.

I don't think it was a shallow objection... and I believe you're reading it through a classist lens of "what if some rich investment owner next door told me what to do on my property" without considering the other side, e.g. someone renting next door to people who do noxious stuff.

[edit] also, I can see from your point of view as a homeowner myself who's surrounded by creeping investment properties and Airbnb's... and certainly if they were telling me how to paint my house they could f off too. But that's aesthetic and about their investment value. I guess what I'm saying when you get down to it is the aesthetics of auto repair aren't the part that bothers me, it's living next door to the noise and pollution.

I do appreciate your replies and can see where you are coming from as it pertains to the article. Zoning is what zoning is - and that’s to be covered by the auto shop or pet store or etc etc.

What “triggers” me is this idea that the default state is “consider investment” and not “does it harm one’s ability to enjoy their home.”

Sure you cab define “enjoy” as “watch value go up” but that’s clearly not what I mean.

The whole “and it harm none, do as you please”, imho, does not consider the wallet.

Which, when thinking about investments, is thinking about class divide and puts $ over people.

My neighborhood is largely renters. I’m a 1 family across from another 1 family. On my sides are multi families. Renters. Owned by corporations but not kept up. Some in pretty crappy disrepair.

If I wanted to claim they affected my prop value, I could. But those corps have MUCH more money to defend and hit back (my house needs paint, etc) … just the same. (That’s not my style though as said earlier)

Anyway. I’m tired and rambling. I do appreciate the replies and I do hope I’ve helped some bit to look at anything that comes out of the gate thinking $ before people - is widening the gap and harming people.

Ironically, people do this all the time - it's called a fire pit[1]. But people rarely complain because it's not "icky".

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/wondering-what...

I know some people do outdoor burning in rural settings to address debris, etc. Curious now if there is a cleaner way to burn that debris other than an open fire.

The article actually mentions that hotter fires are (generally) cleaner, so adding oxygen/air would improve things.

Sure but they're also enacting their will on someone through a social construct (the legal system) designed by society to enact the popular will on individuals.

If you live next to someone concerned about their investment, perhaps you should consider what mechanisms exist to prevent you from using your property in a way that would affect their investment.

This kind of argument can go on and on forever because there's no right answer. The homeowner can do what they want within the confines of the legal system on their property, and the investor can do what they want within the confines of the legal system to protect their investment.

The only “right” answer lies in the idea that one’s home should out prioritize another’s investment.

Investment supports a class driven, divide building system.

Homes support humans.

One of the two above clearly, imho, has “right of way.”

For you. But for me, applying pressure (political or financial) to get my way without deleterious consequences to myself is the way to live.

Why shouldn't I simply arrogate to myself the right to direct all of society's resources to my own comfort? The Veil of Ignorance is nonsensical. I can condition probabilities of outcomes on my current state and choose appropriate action.

Why would I discard any power I have? That just transfers the balance of power to power of another sort that others have.

The logical conclusion of this is a panopticon, where those with more power lord over those with less in all areas of life. Sounds great for some, I guess.

Me, I like some freedom.

Well, the problem with building such weapons is that they may be pointed at you. Price that in and the best case is lots of rules for you and few rules for me.

Which I like. Your desire for freedom is unlikely to be very deep. You'll give it up to impose rules on your neighbor, most likely.

What if I'm using my home as an investment to fund my retirement? for which I have no savings... this is never as clear as you think it is

> Sure but they're also enacting their will on someone through a social construct (the legal system) designed by society to enact the popular will on individuals.

Your argument is premised on the law not being for sale and thus the distribution of power being extremely unequal and therefore unjust, but (at least in real life) you're wrong.

There is a right answer. "What's mine is none of your god damn business." If you're investing in property, great, don't make your problems my problem.

Exactly. They “hedge” their investments through monied expression and bullying of others enjoying their own property.

Pretty standard sociopathic capitalist formula, to be honest.

Eh, I'm not with you on the whole anti capitalism angle to all this, I think "what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours so leave me alone and I'll leave you alone" about covers it.

Fair point. Just consider: the only reason one investor will complain abt “value” - is because that value exists on a market that’s (purpose) built to extract as much “value” as possible with very little, often fought for, regard for humanity.

Sorry, you live in a society so that doesn't work in theory or in practice.

"I also exist so you have to live bu my rules" it doesn't make a lot of sense when you boil it down to itst essence. Just because I live in proximity to people doesn't mean they get to dictate the terms of my life beyond whatever involvement I have with them directly.

Just because you want it to be that way doesn't mean it will be, and me and others like me will keep pushing to be left alone by people who get a hard on looking to exert power over us.

> Just because I live in proximity to people doesn't mean they get to dictate the terms of my life beyond whatever involvement I have with them directly.

They do though, always have and always will. Society can't function unless they do. You keep the noise down, don't play with noxious materials, you can't put a shooting range in your yard facing their house, can't build a building too close to their property, can't operate a business with customers without certain permitting, have to maintain a certain level of cleanliness... I could come up with dozens of things you have to do for the sake of your neighbors.

I mostly agree with this, but I'd slightly adjust the phrasing.

No investor is owed a profit (unless contractually stipulated).

Because this is my home, not your investment. Invest in something else if people living their lives on their own property seems like too much of a risk to your "investment".

my property my rules is a slippery slope. For example, many cities require you to purchase a permit to have a garage sale because neighbors don't want you running a flea market out of your yard.

This is how we got to a housing crisis.

They should - and they should fail. It should not surprise us that people try to use the force of government to achieve their personal goals. But we should be mad at ourselves for voting for politicians and legislators that allow the government to wield this power in the first place.

I'd expect them to consider the implications of their actions towards others before exercising their agency. Nobody is excused from ethics just because money is at stake

"Housing cannot be simultaneously affordable and a good investment."

Housing as an investment first and a place to live second is a disease. It penalizes the poor, new arrivals, and the young, transferring wealth from these groups to people who bought homes back before the disease took hold. This is not wealth earned by working hard or creating value. Instead it's wealth extracted by obstructing value creation to collect rent from a captive audience.

Most of those benefiting from this condition would never have been able to buy in today, but "I've got mine, fuck you."

Any place dominated by this dynamic has zero claim to any kind of liberal or progressive title. This includes the supposed liberal bastion of the San Francisco Bay Area, a massively distorted housing market that creates one of the widest divisions between rich and poor anywhere in the US. Places like Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina are more progressive than San Francisco because a working class person can afford a home.

Most of the country has this disease to some extent, but obviously there are a few hot spots that are particularly bad. I picked on SF because it's among the worst and also among the most sanctimonious, continuously holding itself up as some kind of progressive bastion while implementing what amounts to red lining on a massive scale.

Unfortunately I can't think of any solution to this problem that isn't painful. Either we inflate the rest of the economy until a loaf of bread is $15 but housing is reasonable again or we let housing collapse.

I’d be careful calling this a disease.

The fact is, for many people having a home that they build equity in is the closest they’ll ever get to some kind of “savings” account. When the home is paid off in 30 years they no longer need money saved up to buy a retirement home because they will have full equity of their house which may have gone up substantially in value. They could then sell this property and downsize and continue to live off the proceeds from the equity they sold.

If homes weren’t investments, it means people would have to be a lot more serious about saving and investing money for the future, and frankly that just isn’t going to happen at scale given human behavior.

That's the disease: the use of housing as one's primary source of savings and retirement funding.

There are alternatives like pensions, improving social security and medicare/medicaid, etc. The de-prioritization and gutting of these has probably contributed to housing taking their place.

But housing isn't a sustainable answer. It's basically done. Current generations can never see the kind of housing appreciation their parents did. Prices simply can't go up much more except in areas that are undervalued and never saw a run-up in previous decades. New buyers today risk the opposite: straining to buy into overvalued markets only to see them crash and leave them underwater. Housing as a source of retirement funding is a one-generation-and-done phenomenon.

Personally I would not touch real estate in overvalued metros today unless I were rich and could afford to lose 25-50% of the value of the home. If interest rates don't come back down to near-zero and/or if the trend toward telework and geographic decentralization continues, these areas could very well crash.

Pensions, social security, and Medicare/Medicaid can all be wiped out with the stroke of a pen. A hard asset such as a home is not so simple. I think there is still room for housing to be the best investment a person could make in their life.

> I think there is still room for housing to be the best investment a person could make in their life.

If so, only at the expense of the next generation who will find it even harder to afford a place to live. When housing prices go up it means the next generation will find it that much harder to afford a place to live.

A stroke of a pen can make your home someone else's too, so not sure what's your point?

This myopic "but government" fearmongering is itself a cause of the disease.

The "hard asset" value of a house is a very small component of its total value. The majority of the value directly relies on the government policy of overwhelming monetary inflation dumped into the financial industry. That policy can be changed much easier than bona fide entitlement policies, and perhaps it has even started changing already.

Apparently, someone repairing a car in their own garage can significantly reduce the value of this so called hard asset.

Delta of moving to smaller or cheaper is entirely reasonable case. But the appreciation is bullshit and massive extraction of wealth from those that can least afford it.

Housing is a good investment because it is a place you live in. When you own (and live in) a house, you ideally make both a short-term profit (by having a place to live) and a long-term one (from reselling it later). These aren't mutually exclusive.

Renting is short-term cheaper than owning, though (depending on local markets). I've rented a bunch of properties way out of my mortgage price range.

And I think gp's point was that if housing prices rise (so that they're a good investment) then they become unaffordable (as we're seeing). One or the other, not both.

> Unfortunately I can't think of any solution to this problem that isn't painful. Either we inflate the rest of the economy until a loaf of bread is $15 but housing is reasonable again or we let housing collapse.

Or we could build more housing?

Please lower my property value so that my property taxes go down, thanks.

It's unfortunate but telling that the code site has this wording, but there is a steelman version of this type of sentiment. Sufficient neighborhood blight can have a direct impact on the quality of life of the people living in the neighborhood, even if they don't plan to ever sell their house and don't care about resale value. I would argue this is far more the case with things like ostentatious lighting, noise violations, and bad smells than with something like non-functional cars being visible in driveways, and this doesn't personally bother me. I do my own repairs and my next-door neighbor has been working on a project RV for nearly two years now, which I'm also fine with.

However, I am absolutely not fine with the party house AirBNB next door to me on the other side that is constantly hosting bachelor and bachelorette parties with DJs and strippers playing loud music on Sunday night when I need to get up early in the morning to work on Monday, also filling up the entire street with vehicles and leaving nowhere to park for people who actually live here. So yeah, that I'll complain about.

"Property value" is the biggest cop out. When someone says that what they really mean is "I don't like the look of that", but they can't just say that, it has to have a vague monetary penalty for them to be taken seriously.

Whenever someone hits you with that make sure you get them to document the reduction in their property value in dollars, including methodology. It's not possible, houses sell for whatever someone buys it for and you can't know the mind of buyers. Maybe the fact that your door is off-tan instead of off-medium-tan will make some buyer reduce their offer on a house 5 doors down by $20,000, but there's no way to prove that.

I learned in my home buying process that values are mostly meaningless, and completely subject to what buyers will offer.

When you buy a house, the bank orders an appraisal to ensure the property is worth the offered price, in case of foreclosure. What's the first thing the appraiser looks at to determine value? Comparables, which is an industry term for similar houses/properties in similar areas and what they sold for. What's the best comparable? The offer you made on the property you're attempting to buy. It's cyclical.

I agree that people should not be penalized for living in and using their homes. If I buy a house with a garage, you shouldn't get mad that I work on my car and even gasp make some noise during the day while I do it.

It's terrifying that public education lets someone graduate high school without the most basic understanding of how pricing works.

The entire appraisal industry is largely a scam IMHO. At most they can tell a bank if an offer is outside the realm of reason for the neighborhood, but that's basically just a search of recent sale prices. They won't even send someone out to look at a property.

Last time I went to sell my house the market was in a fairly volatile state and I didn't have a good idea of what a fair price for my house would be. So I called multiple appraisal companies asking if they could give me a fair market value figure I could use for the listing. Not one of them would do it. That's not their business they told me. They basically exist as one of many dubious middlemen that takes a cut out of each home sale while offering little value.

I wouldn’t disagree with you except to point out that they do exactly what they’re intended to do. Protecting the lender. Even then, it’s just one of the many checks in the underwriting process.

They do however tend to thwart rapid price surges in the market. Depending on if you’re buying or selling will change your opinion on if that is good or bad.

My mortgage lender's appraisal involved an in-person evaluation both times on my house (first house purchase - initial mortgage followed by a refinance). In SF Bay Area, so maybe things are done differently where you are?

I'll grant that they largely rubber-stamp the offer price, but if the property has hidden defects it might be good for the bank to try to find that out before lending.

> When someone says that what they really mean is "I don't like the look of that"

No, they mean "people who are in the market for a house like mine tend to not like the look of that."

Again, how do they know the mind of buyers? Are they in telepathic communication with current home buyers?

I think you are both onto something there.

Of course nobody in telepathically able to figure out what goes on in some buyers' minds. I don't know if/how many buyers would really consider it in a "let's bid $20.000 below asking because the neighbour three doors down has a broken car in his driveway" or "because the lawn isn't a golf-green" way.

What I do think many buyers will consider is whether to buy at all. And that's not about being able to quantify it. You can see from just a few of the other replies here that people do consider that, whether you like it or not. Many buyers will not even consider to buy your house, if the neighbour's yard is overgrown. Like the difference between this being your neighbor: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PGgOiHH_4Sk/maxresdefault.jpg vs. this https://fthmb.tqn.com/bUupIggP7-_Duha--avqVcXqLqc=/960x0/fil...

Now both are overgrown but one screams neglected, possibly even abandoned. The other, while not everyone's cup of tea, seems intentional and lively.

Or to take cars. This to me looks ugly and abandoned. Don't want to live next to that person: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ub_p4acppHE/TWv_24yosLI/A... but this is awesome https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c9/81/97/c98197ac689cdef00eb5... and that tractor definitely needs repairs from time to time.

The problem comes in when trying to do something about one without affecting the other. I don't know if that's possible via a law at all as there's so much nuance and personal opinion and aesthetics in it. I bet in this large HN crowd you'll find someone that even disagrees w/ my opinion that the second yard I linked to looks awesome. I'd buy that house!

I think that's exactly right.

A lot of people will look and think at least somewhat subconsciously "If a neighborhood tolerates that sort of thing, what else do they tolerate" and just keep driving by.

And I say that as someone who let some stuff around my property get a bit out of control (but mostly out back) over COVID but I have a fairly large property and my neighbors have even larger ones and I'm well off the road.

But my messy country garden is just a messy country garden that pretty much no one but me needs to look at. Neighbors might reasonably think differently in a neat upscale suburban neighborhood.

I strongly lean to the live and let live side but there's a, to me, distressing amount of Screw my neighbors, I'll do whatever I want because it's all about Me on this thread.

i don't think it's a cop out, I certainly wouldn't buy a house on a street with a bunch of broken down cars on it.

And that is why people do it.

Standard house-buying advice is to buy "the worst house on the best street".

So having some broken-down cars on your property may make it "the worst house" on your street and therefore more saleable.

> Standard house-buying advice is to buy "the worst house on the best street".

“Worst” here really meaning selling for the lowest value compared to what is implied by size and neighborhood.

> So having some broken-down cars on your property may make it "the worst house" on your street and therefore more saleable.

It may signal that it is likely to be underpriced and get people to check it out, but that’s about it.

Let's say a house is actively burning down next door. If you were to sell right at that moment, the value of that home would be decreased due to the fire risk. However, there isn't any sensible methodology for predicting the exact amount that house would decrease in value.

The point I'm making there is that for some changes, price will most definitely be affected negatively. However, it would also be impossible to quantify how much the price would decrease with any degree of accuracy.

Now, is something like "door color" going to have this clear of a negative impact? No. We should ignore those requests as largely absurd. But there are definitely activities that would have clear negative impacts on price, even if that can't be quantified in an accurate manner whatsoever.

Does this mean we should legislate changes to help maintain property values? No. But it's certainly a valid claim in some circumstances.

If I build a shed on my property that my neighbor doesn't like they could come with their hand out.

If I bulldoze my house and build a beautiful park, they'll never send me a check.

In my view this has to go both ways or neither.

I don't think it's unreasonable for laws to enforce some level of risk mitigation for consumers making purchases as significant as houses. But a line has to be drawn somewhere and I firmly believe that fining neighbors for having ugly cars in their driveway is far beyond any reasonable line.

But if a politician gets elected with such a policy being a key election promise - i.e. indicating a majority of residents do agree there should be such a policy - is it still 'far beyond any reasonable line'? Why should you personally get to decide where the reasonable line is? (FWIW, I do actually agree with you, but your and my opinions are just that - opinions).

I value being able to do what I want with my house.

I'm willing to pay a premium for that value.

I am only willing to consider an HOA if it comes with a steep discount.

The more people there are out there who think like I do, the less it makes sense for people to try to tell their neighbors how to live.

If for example, a derelict car sitting on my property is causing them monetary distress because it's affecting their property values, I'd suggest they make me an offer for the car. Otherwise, I would advise them to leave my property. Their "investment" is not my worry.

Thats my line of thinking. My property is my property and I will do what I damn well please on it. You don't like it? Sounds like a you problem and not a me problem.

See also: lawn parking bans.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-10-28-me-406-st...

It reminds me post of person who was poor at borderline to homeless and explained this "experience" to middle-class. It was shared here, on HN some time ago.

Poor people need to do engine rebuild in their garage because they don't have money for mechanic or new car, and they need car to get to work every day...

As a car enthusiast that mostly had to work on my cars outdoors in parking lots for most of my young adulthood, owning my own home with a garage was a huge milestone in my life. Make no mistake- I was excited about the garage, not the home- and without the garage I wouldn't have bought it!

Shortly after buying this home, the HOA passed a new rule that strictly banned all car maintenance, even in my own garage, even if the garage door were closed. The other people in the community (elderly retired urban white collar workers) could not understand at all why this was such an issue for me, but I felt like my home had been stolen from me. They had blocked me from using my own home for the main reason I had purchased it. I was really stressed about this, and couldn't sleep for months I was so angry... and I eventually had to just sell the place and move.

I find the attitude that doing real work with your own hands is "low class" disgusting. I grew up upper middle class in a family of scientists and engineers, where I learned a sense of pride in doing things myself, with my own hands... and that having to pay someone to, e.g. fix your own car for you is disgraceful. It's something a functional adult should be able to do for themselves. It infantilizes you and renders you helpless when you are, e.g. broken down in a remote place and can't just call for help.

You can better thrive in a high tech world if you deeply understand your tools and machines, and fix and maintain them yourself. It also lets you build a connection with the machine that is rewarding. I feel I can trust my vehicles with my life, because I maintain them with care, and know them inside and out.

> The other people in the community (elderly white collar workers) could not understand at all why this was such an issue for me, but I felt like my home had been stolen from me. They had blocked me from using my own home for the main reason I had purchased it. I was really stressed about this, and couldn't sleep for months I was so angry... and I eventually had to just sell the place and move.

I'm really sorry, that sounds terrible. It sucks to be so powerless in the face of such injustice. I think you made the right decision though. There's only so much one can do in such a situation. It's best to accept one is beat and do what one can with what's left. A hard lesson of maturity but a better life in the long-run.

I agree that the attitude that doing real work is "low class" is disgusting.

I also think the attitude that paying someone to fix your car "is disgraceful" is disgusting.

I want to clarify, I don't think paying someone to fix your car is disgraceful, and that isn't what I said. My problem is with having the inability to do basic maintenance and repairs by choice, because you think it's beneath you (e.g. low class) to learn. It's like an adult that can't dress themselves because they've always had a servant do it for them. If a person is capable but just doesn't have the time, is incapable because of a disability, the repair is free under warranty, it costs more to do it yourself because of special tools needed, is an unusual job that requires a high level of experience, etc. I don't see that as disgraceful.

We only have so much time though, sure I can do a fair bit of home and vehicle repairs but I find it fascinating and only have one kid. My friends with 2-3 kids and no passion for looking under any hood I don’t begrudge them paying somebody to do it.

I agree, I am a single dad, and although I love working on cars, finding time to do so is really hard. Despite what I wrote, one of my cars is actually in the shop right now for a very expensive major engine repair covered by warranty. My love for tinkering doesn’t extend to ignoring my son so I can pay thousands for parts to do a huge expensive job myself that someone else will do for free! But if it wasn’t free, and I didn’t have the money to pay, I sure as heck could do it.

You’ve made the right choice. I haven’t had a choice at various times in my past, so I’ve spent a lot of time over the years fixing house/car/etc. instead of playing with my kids (of which I still did plenty). When my daughter was in maybe 8 or so, someone started to explain the concept of a piston to her, and she interjected, “I know what a piston is, I’ve changed spark plugs before.” Hearing that helped give perspective on some of it.

In a similar vein a lot of HOAs ban growing food in your yard. I love walking around my neighborhood and seeing the cool things people grow, but I don't live in an HOA neighborhood. I guess growing food at home doesn't fit the class profile some neighborhoods are going for.

I live in Sacramento and I happen to also do work on my own cars. This law has not been formally challenged and suspect it won’t hold up if actually done. This law has been used to to persecute car enthusiasts by their neighbors who work on cars a lot and it’s honestly disgusting. Other than direct complaints, however, the law has not been actively enforced.

I’m the last 12 months at my home in a historically low-income neighborhood, I’ve done a clutch job (clutch, flywheel, throw-out bearing, rear main seal), coolant tank and hose swap, radiator fan swap, popping out minor dents, touch up paint work, oil and filter change, spark plug change, cabin and intake filter swap, and probably some other stuff. Never once had code enforcement or Sac PD come knocking.

Granted, I have a lot of privilege that not everyone has: I am white, fairly well-off, I can do work in the privacy of my fenced-off backyard or 1-1/2 car garage, I know many of the people who work in city inspections and code enforcement (who I have asked about the law specifically and everyone says it’s only been enforced by these departments during hoarding situations, unsure about SacPD).

My partner (who restores classic European cars with her dad) and I often help our neighbors by loaning tools, provide an extra hand, and on two occasions, offered our backyard to do the repair, with the condition it is done within a few days. I’m not worried about being caught personally because it’s such a low priority “crime” that won’t be investigated for days if at all and would require someone to actively report it.

I do think it’s important to share one’s privilege which is one of the reasons why my partner and I are very keen on helping our especially low-income neighbors. These people often have a job they must be present at and cannot afford a costly repair or a new vehicle, penalizing them for trying to maintain their own property is an egregious and unnecessary overreach that actively perpetuates “illegal to be poor” we so desperately need to move beyond.

I'm out in the far reaches of Sacramento County where it's mostly small farms and large lots. People pretty much do what they want and enforcement only comes around if someone makes an issue of things. Mostly there's a tacit agreement to mind your own business and everyone sticks to it.

Large lots don't make all neighbor problems go away but it makes a lot of them do so. Especially in a more rural/farming-oriented community.

My grandfather and his dad were both mechanics in California. It's another sign of America's war against tradespeople, personal economic agency, freedom to tinker, and manual labor.

In a related phenomenon, lawmakers don't have qualms with hiring undocumented persons to work for them, their supporters taking out advertisements of wages in foreign newspapers to encourage undocumented migration, or ICE ostensibly "enforcing" documented migration while avoiding enclaves of undocumented persons if they happen to work for large organizations (major meat packers and other large agribusinesses) who pay the correct indirect bribes to the right politicians. Public racist recriminations of people who are victims of Monroe doctrine, American neocolonialism, and America-led climate change seeking a better place for themselves to not starve, or be kidnapped or murdered.. but to certain groups of ignorance and hate, a wall is "needed" to "keep them out."

> ignorance and hate

To many, it’s admirable to do what you say and say what you do. If there’s a law, enforce it. If you don’t want to enforce it, change the law. If you can’t change the law by convincing enough people, tough luck - it’s what democracy and rule of law nominally means.

Casting everyone opposed to illegal immigration as “hateful and ignorant” makes about as much sense as charging open border advocates as “enemies of the state”.

If you have to denigrate your political opposition to understand them, you probably are not really interested in understanding them. Without understanding the steelman opposing view, you become a very poor advocate of your own.

> To many, it’s admirable to do what you say and say what you do. If there’s a law, enforce it. If you don’t want to enforce it, change the law. If you can’t change the law by convincing enough people, tough luck - it’s what democracy and rule of law nominally means.

In the US- law enforcement have quite a bit of authority to exercise discretion. Since we say (and courts have supported) that officers have discretion- part of doing what we say is choosing not to enforce laws sometimes.

I'm not making any arguments about immigration one way or the other, but the law does not excuse anybody from considering the ethics of their actions

Enforcement and prosecutorial discretion are ideally the exception rather than the rule, I think. Principally because discretionary enforcement is too often abused as selective enforcement. Structurally (systemically?), I don't think it's good to have laws on the books that, with a wink and a nod, nobody "really" believes.

But to my original point - none of this critique comes from hate or ignorance.

> avoiding enclaves of undocumented persons if they happen to work for large organizations (major meat packers and other large agribusinesses)

ICE has been useful to these employers in the past. Immigrants at your workplace talking about forming a union? Just give ICE a call and you don't even have to hire your own goons.

Do your low income neighbors work on their cars at their houses? Have they been busted for doing it while you haven't?

Yes, most do but may not have adequate driveway space.

People I directly have contact with, not yet. A few of them have stories of their friends/family/other neighbors getting warned for it, but I haven’t seen anyone directly ticketed for that as an offense alone.

Would love to see a straw poll of what these lawmakers consider "tools not normally found in a residence". Oscilloscope? Not "normally" found in a residence (I would say <10% of households have one). Can be used to study engine timing (exactly what I'm doing at the moment to fix my ride-on). In my humble garage shop, I also have, lets see... OBD2 reader, specialty 12-point driver bits, a precision lab scale, a bunch of old Starrett metrology tools, oxymap torch, HHO gas generator, etc., are those normally found in a residence?

These "I know it when I see it" kinds of laws are terrible.

Why didn't they just ordinance the noise or the improper disposal of chemicals if those are their concerns? Local laws always seem so reactionary and poorly thought out.

Harder to catch those in the act.

God forbid should the bar for depriving people of their property be high.

> Local laws always seem so reactionary and poorly thought out.

Try attending a few City Council meetings, and observe the mental acuity and time frames of the Council members, and citizens who speak up during Public Comments.

> if those are their concerns?

Likely because those are not their "real" concerns, but they can't legislate their "real" concerns (because those would be illegal due to other statutes). So they try an 'end-run' around the "real" concerns by dreaming up something vague like this that can be "extended" to cover most anything at the discretion of the local enforcement officer.

You can tell the law's premise (It's about people dumping chemicals! Think about the $HealthConcerns!vague, gasp) is a bunch of nonsense by how its actions (No maintaining cars) don't actually address those concerns directly. Hell, the premise CLAIMS that it's about dangerous chemicals, but still allows the most common interaction with dangerous chemicals a normal car owner will perform (an oil change),

There has to be a term for this. It's super common, but I don't think "Disingenuous lie of a piece of legislation" rolls off the tongue as well as a proper term for a law which is defined/described to perform one function but is obviously meant to perform another.

The premise is also completely unenforceable. Who's going to go into someone's garage and inspect the state of their vehicles to determine if they're in a state of (active or not) disrepair and being worked on, or if "Ted Across The Street Opened His Garage Door And It's Messy In There How Uncouth"?

Usually laws like this are anti-poor so I just call them that. Municipal governments have been turned into HOAs and the median American voter wants to live in an exclusive neighborhood. It's sad how badly these suburban utopia views distort society and the economy.

> Municipal governments have been turned into HOAs

HOAs were just a hack around municipal governments being prohibited from engaging in certain acts (mostly, racial discrimination); municipal governments have always been like HOAs, otherwise.

I don't like this law.

But I did live in a town home association where a guy with a one car garage started his own sorta secret cheap ass repair business. At random tools you had lots of noise from air tools and so on. He claimed the cars were his (and some seemed to be, broken down... leaking oil) but we had people come buy and ask us where they should drop off their car for that guy. Rando cars in the neighborhood was a problem for everyone. I had 3 cars towed that parked in my driveway (my house number was similar to his) and was angrily confronted by two of those "friends" (customers) about it.

Took a while to get the dude kicked out of the neighborhood / association.

Gotta be some way to let responsible enthusiasts do their thing and take issue with folks with those who leave junk cars out and etc.

Usually HOAs have strict rules about running a business out of your home. Also, this is not about the cars or the repairs. This is a jackass that thinks he can skirt common sense and rules. Noise? Noise complain. Leaking oil? EPA. Parking all over the place? Towing.

Oh they did and he violated them. But strict rules doesn’t necessarily provide for a quick resolution.

Let's find some common sense here... This is one of those open ended laws that's designed to allow authorities to take action if a problem arises based on good judgement but most of the time you can ignore it it.

If you use "specialist equipment" to perform an auto repair inside your closed garage no one is going to know. But if you are constantly repairing cars in your garage, it's likely that will cause a nuisance and you will get cited.

This is just like a "no food or drink" ordinance on public transport - no one is going to enforce if you are sipping coffee from a travel mug or eating a candy but can enforce if you bring on a bag of McDonalds and leave it on the seats.

I agree and while I am a supporter of such laws, I do see the problem of "selective enforcement" that these policies tend to bring with them. Either they apply for everyone, get enforced by everyone and the enforcement agencies are monitored for that, or it will get abused.

For example, in a lot of public transport in Germany, alcohol consumption is banned, after young people partied and trashed trains too often. Enforcement is usually only limited to these people as well (and let's be real, it's disproportionately targeted towards non-white people), and people looking like managers or tradesmen don't get into trouble - obviously, young people are right to call that "double standards".

A law that relies on the good judgement of the people enforcing it is a bad law, both because reasonable people can disagree on what constitutes "good" judgement and because the law needs to guard against both malicious and unintentional misuse of the state's power.

Ultimately every law relies on judgment calls. It’s impossible to make laws 100% clear cut in all situations.

That's no excuse for obnoxiously vague laws. Let's say, hypothetically, the premise of "save the environment" is valid. Instead of banning "tools not commonly found in the residence", which is completely open to interpretation, you could specifically ban refrigeration evacuation equipment.

This is still bad (as it singles out HVAC repair folks), but it's worlds better than letting enforcers arbitrarily decide whether a vacuum pump, security torx set, tachometer, or ignition tester is verboten.

Also, oil changes are specifically allowed, and they are one of the primary causes of pollution from home car tinkerers.

Thankfully nobody is suggesting that laws be made 100% clear cut in all situations.

But that's not how laws work in reality.

The police decide whether to enforce a law or not - eg whether to give you a speeding ticket or not.

The district attorney will decide whether to bring a case to trial.

Even the supreme Court, as we've seen with Roe v. Wade, can decide a different interpretation on the same fundamental laws and constitutional rights.

As an engineer who has worked with a lot of lawyers, a great observation I once received from one was that the law is fungible and should not be treated like source code.

The statistics make pretty clear that the examples you listed are all pretty good examples of my point.

Police disproportionally apply traffic laws to some groups vs others, and DAs apply similar profiling in deciding who to charge and for which crimes. It's not a good thing.

Exactly, fungibility is a problem, not a feature. If the law were not fungible and the police were obligated to charge any violations, and the DA was obligated to prosecute any charges, then the law becomes a nuisance to everyone and we'd see a lot more citizen involvement in reducing that nuisance by more strictly limiting state power.

Reducing that nuisance by making the law fungible instead means those in power people get to be selective and make exceptions for friendlies while oppressing their opponents.

> As an engineer who has worked with a lot of lawyers, a great observation I once received from one was that the law is fungible and should not be treated like source code.

Yes. This keeps lawyers employed, because rich people and companies can employ a "great lawyer" to present creative interpretations of various fungible laws; whereas poor people and companies cannot afford to do so, and have to fall upon the mercy of those enforcing the law, like in the cases you mentioned.

This does not mean that we should just accept the state of affairs. Laws with clear-cut examples and precedents will reduce the inherent unfairness that I cited above.

This is especially true in the US, where lots of groups with differing backgrounds form a melting pot culture where norms can change rapidly. Even if you are a member of a group that's a beneficiary of the status quo, that is not guaranteed forever; so it is to your benefit to have clarity in law.

Discretionary enforcement is often selective enforcement. Biases are very hard to overcome. With as many laws as we have on the books, clarity of law and unbiased enforcement is a worthy goal. Maybe you never get to 100%, but we should not be okay with not trying for that ideal or setting that expectation.

Would that legislators considered it their job to curate the law books, meaning removing and trimming laws, not just adding new ones.

> based on good judgement but most of the time you can ignore it it.

When it comes to laws and the American justice system we should absolutely ask where does it end. I have yet to see a law use good judgement. And sometimes that "judgement" leaves people dead. Philando Castile died for driving while black. In fact, there was no reason to pull him over other than the fact that he may have looked like a suspect.

So no I do not give the justice system in this country any common sense. It has proven repeatedly not to operate with any.

Breaking news cop acts with good discretion, oh wait that's not something that goes in the news because its the normal state of affairs.

> This is just like a "no food or drink" ordinance on public transport - no one is going to enforce if you are sipping coffee from a travel mug or eating a candy

I've been told off by an official for sipping water from a small pet bottle on a balmy summer day in the metro. I wouldn't know if being obviously foreigner had anything to do with that or not.

> This is just like a "no food or drink" ordinance on public transport - no one is going to enforce if you are sipping coffee from a travel mug or eating a candy but can enforce if you bring on a bag of McDonalds and leave it on the seats

I suggest going to your local municipal courthouse some day and listening to the cases. Because you're extrapolating from your own experience, and are completely wrong.

Say more

If the problem is the nuisance caused by people constantly repairing cars in the garage then cite those people for the noise, visual pollution or whatever is actually causing the nuisance.

It's like those people saying cannabis should be illegal not because cannabis it's a problem per se but because it gives the authorities a pretext to stop people, look for unregistered weapons and otherwise help with their investigations. I get that the job of the police is hard, but that's how it's supposed to be.

Or if they just don't like they way you look.

Selectively-enforced laws are, and always have been, a recipe for abuse.

> Let's find some common sense here... This is one of those open ended laws that's designed to allow authorities to take action if a problem arises based on good judgement but most of the time you can ignore it it.

Give me a man and I will find the crime.

This is the kind of law-ness that allows racism and authoritarianism.

One of my tests for a law is: "If this law were enforced 100% (regardless of feasibility of doing so) would we still want this law?"

Otherwise, we're asking for selective, discriminatory enforcement, and also overly-strict laws which we tolerate because they aren't enforced much. $250k and/or 5 years in prison for some ripped MP3's anyone? Not enforced much, so we tolerate it. But if enforced 100% how would we feel about it?

Or unless, you know, they just don't like you for some reason but now have an excuse they can use to go after you.

Is there really common sense though? A similarly low stakes example, when public drinking was banned in NYC in 1979, there was a direct quote from the council member who sponsored it that basically implied the same thing, that proper judgment will be used [1].

> “We do not recklessly expect the police to give a summons to a Con Ed worker having a beer with his lunch,” said Councilman Frederick E. Samuel, DemocratLiberal of Manhattan, who was one of the primary sponsors of the bill.

Nowadays, 40 some odd years later, yes, that same ConEd worker will definitely be cited if they crack open a drink. Judgment has long since been thrown out the window for a literal interpretation of the law, and it's likely the original context has also long since been forgotten.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/10/archives/new-york-to-ban-...

Since Shelly v. Kraemer in USA it's illegal to write zoning code that explicitly excludes poor/black people from an area. The main way it is enforced now is by writing code that prohibits anything but single family homes in an area or setting a minimum lot size to indirectly force prices upward. Residential zoning isn't all bad in theory but it is still an effective tool for creating housing areas that are segregated by class.

> it's illegal to write zoning code that explicitly excludes poor/black people from an area. The main way it is enforced...

I follow your reasoning about discrimination based on economic background but you lost me at "black people". Economic segregation is taking place, yes, but how is this racial discrimination in any sense?

Black people make up a much smaller proportion of the upper income deciles so forcing prices upwards in an area makes it less diverse by default.

You do have to worry about the home mechanic who buries all the old oil and antifreeze in his backyard, or pours it down the sewer, when they should be collecting it in containers and taking it down to the local auto parts store, they usually offer free disposal.

In our township, you're not allowed to have a 'disabled' vehicle in your driveway. That means a vehicle that doesn't have current registration. You also can't park an RV or boat on your property for longer than 5 days in a row. And you can't park your vehicles on the grass.

In high school a friend and I tore the engine and transmission out of his car, in his mom's driveway. After a couple days they got a letter from the township, and we had to push the car into the garage. There are no rules to what you can have or do inside of your garage (as long as it's illegal), which makes sense.

We have a neighbor down the road with 6 cars in their driveway. Some don't have engines in them, some have a tarp over them, the rest they shuffle around parking in the street and such so they can go to work or wherever. It's a nuisance but nobody has yet to call in a complaint.

I guess the worst case scenario is the unlicensed home mechanic who has several vehicles that are not theirs, in various states of disrepair, scattered all over the property. People are always waiting on parts, or money to fix the car, days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months...

I'm with you on the "dumping oil and antifreeze down the sewer" part. And if they are cycling the cars onto street parking, that's not their property, and I can see disallowing that. But the rest? I don't understand the motivation behind them. How is having non-working vehicles on your own property a "nuisance" to others? How is having car tires touching grass instead of concrete a nuisance? None of these things make sense.

If the goal is to prevent people from running professional repair shops in residential areas, we have business permitting and laws just for that. Enforce them instead, don't penalize homeowners who want to work on a few cars as a hobby.

> And if they are cycling the cars onto street parking, that's not their property, and I can see disallowing that.

It's annoying but it's perfectly legal to park in the street here.

> But the rest?

Because nobody wants to live next to this:

https://imgur.com/a/zfF7IC4

Speak for yourself. I'd rather live next to that person than somebody with an immaculately cared for, landscaped yard/outdoor area.

This would've prevented my grandfather from transitioning from the military to becoming a mechanic for 30 years, and from doing any of his own repairs at home. Whether someone creates an eyesore or hazmat site comes down to their character. Next, California will concoct a law stating soldering electronics is illegal because lead solder might be used. These are laws targeting blue-collar tradespeople suggesting they are beneath contempt.

Present American culture is at risk of losing the values of self-made people. An unsympathetic lawmaker might respond to your story by saying your grandfather should not have become a mechanic through that path, but by following the basic, mainstream path of going into debt for schooling, then going into debt to own a shop. The underlying perspective of certain people in power is to keep everyone indentured so they cannot disrupt the ruling class. This is a seachange since the founding of the country in which the intention was for as many people to be free as possible - slaves not withstanding!

Home auto repairs are a way for the poor to gain an income and build skills. Large formal garages see that as competition and arrange for these laws to slap it down.

> Home auto repairs are a way for the poor to gain an income and build skills.

These people, of whom there are less and less every year anyway as modern cars are essentially a mixture of a server farm and a chemical plant on wheels, can always go and rent a dirt cheap plot in an industrial zone, instead of making their profit on the back of neighbors annoyed by someone running a commercial operation in a residential zone.

Sorry, what? Am I understanding you correctly that your recommendation is for lower income people to rent a plot of land somewhere just so that you don't have to deal with them using a specialty automotive tool in their garage?

> just so that you don't have to deal with them using a specialty automotive tool in their garage?

FTFY: so that they don't run a commercial operation causing noise, emissions and traffic in a residential zone. Don't make profit off of just loading off the externality cost of your operation on the back of your neighbors. It's not that hard to grasp.

If I'm doing my repairs in my garage, what does it matter to you whether I'm constantly working on my personal cars or other people's cars?

Simple: built-in expectations.

A residential zone comes with the expectation for everyone buying a property inside the zone that traffic will be the people living there and occasional visitors, that noise and emissions will be kept to the usual amount caused by people living and the likes and that car repairs are limited to stuff like changing your tires.

If you're running a commercial shop fixing up cars, you are violating the expectations of a property in a residential zone: your property attracts more vehicle traffic, possibly even from heavy tow trucks, your property emits noise from all the tools or from vehicles running without (or with defective) mufflers, your property emits smells of fuel, chemicals or burning stuff.

If you're just fixing up your own car, you cause way less of these emissions, and way less annoyance for your neighbors.

In short: your neighbors signed up for peace and quiet guaranteed by the residential zoning, and you are violating that agreement.

Residential Zones are government inflicted tyranny. A basic car repair garage, a machine shop, coffee shop, barber, etc. basically cause 0 noise. The idea of zoning towns into different districts infringes on people's rights, and is also economically disastrous causing trillions in lost gdp in the US alone. Zoning needs to be abolished, or at minimum drastically relaxed to a more sane system like Japans. I have no issue with my neighbor fixing his car, or charging for it. Why would I?

> A basic car repair garage, a machine shop, coffee shop, barber, etc. basically cause 0 noise.

They attract traffic, pedestrian and vehicular. Vehicles need to be stored somewhere, which means either they abuse and block the street or you have a giant ass parking lot eyesore.

> The idea of zoning towns into different districts infringes on people's rights, and is also economically disastrous causing trillions in lost gdp in the US alone.

WTF, where do zoning laws infringe on people's rights? Everyone has the freedom to choose where to buy or rent a property, and if you're not fine with living in a residential zone, then buy a property in a mixed use zone! Re-zoning operations are more of an issue, but these usually have to be decided at higher levels of democratically elected governances anyway.

> They attract traffic, pedestrian and vehicular.

So? What's bad about that?

> where do zoning jobs infringe on people's rights?

If I own property, I have a right to use that property as I see fit. I should be able to build a building on it, take the building down, build a business, this is a fundamental right of being a human.

> So? What's bad about that?

Easy: other people bought their property at a premium for the government guarantee that they would be able to live in quiet and peace. If you want to not abide by these rules, you have to go and buy a property in a zone that does not come with these rules.

> If I own property, I have a right to use that property as I see fit. I should be able to build a building on it, take the building down, build a business, this is a fundamental right of being a human.

Then buy a property that does not come with restrictions. You live as part of a society, so respect at least the basic rules of that society. You wanna know why so many HOAs turn out to be so "dictatorial"? Because they all had that one person too many who decided that they didn't care about their neighbors.

I think y'all are just fundamentally working from different starting points. Sure, if part of the agreement when I bought a property was "government guarantee that they would be able to live in quiet and peace", then enforcing that makes sense. But in the US, there is no such general guarantee.

It neither really is in Europe, you have right to quiet between 22-06, but that's pretty much it. The poster defending blanket bans is German. Germany is one of those countries with excessive regulations and would be one of my last options to move within Europe.

It reminds me of people from town apartments moving to village house and then complaining about rooster making noise, tractor in the street making noise or someone dare to use circular saw on weekend! I mean I moved next to fire station (maybe 200m direct unobstructed view), should I go complaining about their sirens? Though I'd appreciate if they used just lights after like 2000 when kids go sleep and there is really no need for sirens because of minimal traffic anyway until first junction.

I'm not convinced that residential zoning should even exist. (UK planning permission seems crazy) Seeing some of the new housing estates pop up near me with zero amenities is shocking. No shops, no chippy, no pubs, no hair dressers etc.

Meaning you have to drive to do absolutely anything, this is a far cry from the older village I live in with a first school, nursery, two pubs, shops, bus stops, a chippy, local mechanic and barbers all within easy walking distance.

These business add a lot to the property value (Especially the school) and are a positive to the residents, it's crazy how we've adopted a more American approach to planning... (We need to do the opposite)

Here in Germany, new residential areas are carefully planned to include space for all the mentioned amenities. The key thing is that these decisions are made by democratically elected representatives, although developers can also give their input.

They're talking about mechanics renting space so they don't have to do in their driveway, it has nothing to do with being poor.

So you essentially say work from home should be banned, because that's also "running a commercial operation in a residential zone".

If you have problem with noise or chemicals I can understand your concerns, but certainly not for running a commercial operation in a residential zone. Same goes for piano lessons etc.

And regarding noise I wonder how are lawnmovers regulated if you have problem with car repair.

My grandpa had his own workshop in his own house and can't imagine someone banning him from working from his own house, especially if he lives there longer and run shop longer than any neighbor who moved there.

> So you essentially say work from home should be banned, because that's also "running a commercial operation in a residential zone".

No, because working from home doesn't cause negative externalities imposed upon the neighbors - quite the other way around, the fact you're working from home reduces the impact of commuting.

> Same goes for piano lessons etc.

Unlike repairing a car in a shed with its door open, piano lessons should not cause noise emissions. If you're giving musical lessons outdoors with neighbors being forced to listen, you deserve everything that's coming for you.

> And regarding noise I wonder how are lawnmovers regulated if you have problem with car repair.

Gas-powered lawnmowers should be banned, and so should any form of leaf blowers, alone for environmental protection.

> My grandpa had his own workshop in his own house and can't imagine someone banning him from working from his own house, especially if he lives there longer and run shop longer than any neighbor who moved there.

Which is why things such as "grandfathered in" provisions exist. It's fine if you choose on your own to move to an area with someone running a car shop, you knew that there was a car shop, but it's not fine for someone else to move in and run a car shop or other negatively impacting business that ruins other peoples' property.

> No, because working from home doesn't cause negative externalities imposed upon the neighbors - quite the other way around, the fact you're working from home reduces the impact of commuting.

You didn't say anything about externalities, you was talking about ""running a commercial operation in a residential zone" which is same as musical lessons or any other work from home and honestly I don't even know why you care whether I repair my own car for free or helping friend or charging stranger, what does it have to do with (not) producing noise. I said I could understand noise/chemicals concerns, but if there is no noise and no leaking chemicals this ban makes no sense.

Piano/musical lessons certainly cause noise emissions even outdoors, if you are direct neighbor, I don't see difference why they should not be blanket banned same as car repair. As I said this whole ban doesn't make sense, they should ban reaching certain noise level (which we have here in Europe) and then you can call police to investigate and fine and ban neighbor from doing so individually, but not making blanket ban on something just under assumption it will be noisy.

> Gas-powered lawnmowers should be banned, and so should any form of leaf blowers, alone for environmental protection.

Are lawnmowers and leaf blowers banned in Sacramento same sa car repair in own garage? I don't care about shoulda coulda woulda. If those are allowed, but at same time there is general ban on car repair, this ban can't stand in court if challenged, if they produce same noise, it's either both or none.

Huh, I live in the heart of silicon valley on a postage-stamp sized plot of land worth a million dollars, and multiple nearby neighbors do car repairs; sometimes apparently flipping cars, sometimes for money on the side, sometimes for their own vehicles.

> can always go and rent a dirt cheap plot in an industrial zone

Huh? Where? I don't know of any industrial zones near me that would rent out land to amateur mechanics. Maybe there's one far away somewhere, but you would want your shop to be reasonably accessible to customers.

you pay for my house? my car? my bills? no? then shut up, I do whatever I want with my property that I paid for. Is not your business what I do here, if you think that lowers 'your property value' that's your problem not mine, pay me then for not lowering yours, entitled kid, or do stuff on your own backyard to increase it. Seriously the amount of power we have given others over our private property is maddening. HOAs and ordinances should be limited to common areas only. Private property is private, period.

The day they get me for repairing my own car is the day they fine or jail me for distilling alcohol, burning wood in my fire pit, smoking grass, paying people under the table, jaywalking, playing music a few decibels too loud, and all the other illegal shit I do. Laws matter only so much as they are enforced. Under the current legal system, everything might as well be illegal, therefore you might as well do all the illegal things anyway.

There are no laws that are actually fully enforced. The choice of when and where to enforce what rules falls to whoever is in charge of enforcement, and they use the rules only when it helps to enforce the unspoken and unwritten rules in society. The role of rule-enforcement in society is to punish whatever the individual agent perceives as deviance, not to enforce the law or to "serve and protect."

"Repairing Your Car in Your Own Garage Is Considered Illegal in Sacramento, CA"

Yep, and so are many basic home repairs in NYC.

It seems these restrictions are more common in areas with higher populations and also as fewer people do their own work. Some of this may be in the name of safety, the environment, etc. However, the actual law tends to be overkill since they don't tailor it to specific actions causing the potential harms.

is there an auto repair union in Sacramento? that's where i'd first look to the source of the law.

Out of curiosity what home repairs are illegal?

This law is intended to stop shady repair cap repair-people from working in residential areas. Fine. This begs the question as to why so many citizens are running repair shops from their own homes? Could it be that it is too hard to start a business in a legitimate manner?

How is such a business necessarily illegitimate? I don't think it's always illegal (except in Sacramento, apparently).

In your garage, or in your driveway? How would anyone know what you are doing in your garage unless you are using the universal repair tool, a mallet or leaving your garage door open?

I have a 1965 Mustang I recently did some work on that required some grinding and welding. Grinding is quite loud.

In a separate instance, I replaced a wheel hub bearing on a newer model Explorer, and I beat the old one with a four pound sledge for over an hour trying to get it out.

I suppose this might force some people to install sound-proofing in their garage. It's amazing what layers of plyboard can do. I knew someone that played a drum-set in their garage and I could not even hear it 2 feet outside. This probably won't work with roll-up doors though. And for Sacramento during the summer I guess this only helps for people with air conditioning vents in the garage because it can get hot there.

You know what else is loud and is run every week? Leaf blowers, lawn mowers. Vs some grinding that may happen once a year.

Lots of people want to ban those too. Or at least banning the small engine ones in favor of electric tools.

You must not be from the south. It's too damned hot most of the year to work in a closed garage, you gotta keep the garage door open so you don't die.

Also, have you seen any modern garages? Most of them are too cramped to do any work in.

Not from the south but spent a bit of time there. I agree, one would have to put heat venting on the roof and air conditioning. Maybe swamp coolers. Not cheap for sure. Sacramento also gets really hot during the summer, though it's a dry heat.

Some of my favorite foods that I should not be eating are from the South.

What are general rules about front yards over there? Is it illegal to put up 2-3m high wall right at the sidewalk? Additionally you could add roof to extend rainproof area.

I wonder about this since I come from European country where front yards without fence are rarity, though at least it's not that bad as in China where you can't freely go in path/sidewalk between residential buildings because all are gated and fenced complexes so you are allowed to roam only official streets, it completely kills walkability.

The ugga dugga is pretty loud. So is the angle grinder.

Cool, this is where civil disobedience comes in and they can go through the hassle of enforcing this on me. Next thing they are going to make it illegal to work on my house myself.

The Sacramento municipal code the article links to is giving a 404: http://www.per.saccounty.net/LandUseRegulationDocuments/Docu...

Here's a snapshot from August: https://web.archive.org/web/20220815181411/https://www.code-...

This sounds bad but it's one of those laws that prevents trouble.

(As an aside, I once signed a lease in San Francisco that was eleven pages thick, small print, and for each clause you could easily imagine the lawsuit that led to its inclusion in the lease terms.)

I have a neighbor who has a cousin who does this. He gets old POS cars and then tries to get them running. It's not a bad hobby, but he does it in the street, and in other people's garage spots (the houses here have a small shared parking lot.) This is specifically called out as no-no in the lease. So when this dumbass tries to fix a car in my parking spot, I can call property management, and they can go talk to the guy and get him to understand that he has to move his POS lemon car right now or there's going to be a tow truck there in about twenty minutes.

That's why laws like this exist: one dumbass ruining things for everybody.

You described exactly why this law isn't necessary. Property rights already exist and can be enforced without infringing on another's.

I think you're raising a good point. FWIW, I don't think working on your car should be an actual crime. That's messed up.

I see this (the Sac law) as a sort of county-wide HOA rule. Sacramento is the seat of the state government, I bet there's some pressure to keep it looking nice, eh? Presumably folks voted for this law, yeah?

As I grow older I find my attitude towards HOA-type rules is changing. When I was young I could put up with a lot of chaos around me, but now that I'm pushing fifty I feel like the advantages of the stricter rules are becoming more obvious and the disadvantages less onerous.

I don't think that is comparable. It's very different to do something in someone else's spot than in a spot you own and in a way that doesn't impact other people.

The rule in your case is narrowly defined: the shared parking spaces are allocated to residents, and the rule makes sure that one person doesn't intrude on another person's allocated space.

The rule in the article is not: it would make it a crime for your neighborhood dumbass to use his own allocated space to repair his car.

In San Francisco, it is illegal to repair and test non-stationary motors in residential zone simply due to noise it generates.

I report every instance of a neighbor trying to repair a motorcycle next to my window on a sidewalk while I’m trying to work.

https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/ehsdocs/ehsnoise/guidelinesn...

https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s...

Right to repair nimbyism.

Plenty of warehouses and repair shops for rent in non-residential zones for $30/sq ft/year

Edit: something also worth considering is extremely high correlation of academic outcomes and noise pollution levels. It’s been widely documented to affect learning and brain performance. The evidence is so widely established that in NYC it is forbidden to idle engines in front of schools for more than 1 minute.

Now you have to weigh the benefits. Should the law be tilted to satisfy needs of an individual trying to fix their motor and negatively affect multiple other individuals, or should the interested party get to the designated repair zone in which case it only affects that single individual.

> Plenty of warehouses and repair shops for rent in non-residential zones for $30/sq ft/year

That's quite expensive compared to the cost already being paid for a home!

Sure. That’s why professional repair shops exist that can do things for you for cheaper.

It’s called comparative advantage in economics and leads to emergence of trade and economies. Compare with rural Nepal, where everyone can and does nearly everything on their own and you see it leads to a never ending cycle of poverty.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

> That’s why professional repair shops exist that can do things for you for cheaper.

"Cheaper" can still be more expensive than doing it on your own property that you're already paying for.

The only real expensive is your time. Some people value their time doing this far more than they would by sending it to someone else. There absolutely is value in doing things yourself when you can.

To refine inetknght's point. Assuming people are perfect economically rational actors we can also assume they have made the comparative advantage computation and found that it is economically better for them to do their own repairs.

I also think you have the causal relationship backwards. Having an advance society of experts leads to less people doing everything on their own and doing their own repairs.

I'd take this argument more seriously if people cared about non poor/non 'trashy' noise. For some reason we rarely see people up in arms about lawn mowers/leaf blowers/parties/screaming children etc.

> For some reason we rarely see people up in arms about lawn mowers/leaf blowers/parties/screaming children etc.

Complaints about leaf blowers are extremely common, and parties are one of the most frequent targets of noise complaints to actual enforcement bodies.

And yet we don't prohibit the ownership or use of leaf blowers or police party noise. You can own the loudest sound systems known to man.

I just find the way we change arguments around hobby externalities depending on the hobby to be interesting.

> And yet we don't prohibit the ownership or use of leaf blowers or police party noise

We actually do police party noise, plus have the police use noise ordinance complaints as cause to probe for other citable/arrestable violations at private parties.

And we do regulate time, place, and manner of use of leaf blowers in many jurisdictions.

Here’s an article on gas powered leaf blower ban:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38004981/california-ban-g...

Here’s the actual law in CA:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

FWIW electric leaf blowers do make significantly less noise

The lawn care equipment noise complaints are so common, that for example in NYC you have a dedicated portal to filing just those complaints.

https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01101

Edit: just to illustrate how stringent the laws can be I’ll paste from the link:

“You are never allowed to use equipment that makes unreasonable noise.

If a park is 300 feet or more from any residential buildings, park staff are allowed to use equipment between 7 AM and 8 AM.“

I like this and it is very consistent.

Anecdotally, there is a correlation between being poor and working on your own car. There is likely an aspect of this law that is rich HoA members not wanting to live near poorer families, or at the very least be able to control what they do. Remember also that in this country race / ethnicity still correlates strongly with financial stability. So this law is basically "I don't want my Latino neighbors working on their cars".

In their defense, they'd probably get a stick up their ass over white neighbors wrenching on cars too.

Corporate America makes me chuckle, meanwhile in European countries they are pushing for the exact opposite, the right to repair for consumers:

https://repair.eu/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_repair

There's an easy solution if the law is truly intended just to prevent unlicensed pop-up repair shops - just ban unauthorized _commercial_ repair. In fact, that's almost certainly already prohibited by regular residential zoning. It's obvious this law is written as broadly as possible with the intention of allowing selective enforcement.

I visited LA this year and in fancy neighborhoods you still park on the street but you are not allowed to leave your car in the same spot for more than 72 hours or they ticket and tow. BUT if you are living in your vehicle the rule doesn’t apply. Gotta love those CA regulations!

Original article by Jalopnik that this one is a re-heat of:

https://jalopnik.com/sacramento-county-says-its-illegal-to-w...

It would not surprise me to see this sort of law popping up as a way of protecting particular businesses — home repairs, computer repairs, and the like could be made to fall under similarly vague regulations.

Blasted bugger, I must have saved over $9,000 repairing my 3 old cars with my drive-up ramps.

Nothing like cherry-picking engines, dropping transmissions, and bleeding the lines.

Such a shame, Sacramento.

So glad I moved out sometime ago.

What if I fix my John Deere tractor in my drive way?

And I use iPhone parts to do it?

Another unrelated thing that I discovered while buying my Audi in California is that I have to have to purchase the services from the same dealer as well.

This is so depressing.

It's interstate commerce for sure.

War against the self reliant.

Close the garage door?

Land of the free*

This is fascism

This... is... Sacramento!

Two hilariously terrible takes in the span of 10 minutes. Keep going - this is just the entertainment I was looking for.

I love to read HN because it reminds me that Carlin's law of averages [1] applies equally to the tech sector as everywhere else.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43852-think-of-how-stupid-t...

I was being sarcastic. But I'd say this scary policy is more closely aligned with crony capitalism or a technocracy.

You have to put a /s these days, because any sufficiently advanced sarcasm or parody is indistinguishable from sincerity.

"This is fascism" should automatically qualify for "advanced sarcasm", right?!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com