An HOA Cracks Down on a Family for the Crime of Displaying a Banner Remembering a Fallen Soldier. On Memorial Day.
Win McNamee. Getty Images.Every so often, Adam Carolla goes off on a rant that can be summed up with, "Minimum Wage, Gilded Cage." Essentially it's about people with entry level service type jobs, who go off on insane power trips because they think the job gives them authority over the rest of us. Security guards. Bouncers. TSA workers, and so on. How for a lot of them, the rules they enforce aren't about public safety as much as they're about control. The pure adrenaline rush they get from bossing other people around.
I think of that concept anytime I hear someone getting their balls unnecessarily broken by their Homeowner's Association. The members of which, if I'm not mistaken, don't even get paid.
Now let me preference this by saying I don't think HOAs exist for no reason. All you need to do is live near a shitty human and you can see why some people prefer to live in an area with some rules and regulations in place. I recently met someone who lives on a spectacular golf course in Florida and had stories about the new neighbor trying to rip down a majestic tree on the property line and replace it with some eyesore or other. And the Association was the only thing standing in his way. Which everyone is grateful for. And if you talk to someone who's a member of an HOA, they can tell you what a thankless task it can be. I get it.
But then every once in a while a story comes along that only draws a big red circle around the "Minimum Wage, Gilded Cage" power dynamic in a way that is so infuriating it makes your hair hurt. This is one:
Source - A new HOA management company is challenging a display of patriotism for Memorial Day at a woman’s home in Surprise.
Kendall Rasmusson has flags, banners and other decorations on her front lawn. On her garage door, she has a magnetic poster with the picture of her late brother.
”My brother really loved his country, and I’m very proud, and that’s really the point,” said Rasmusson.
Sgt. John Kyle Daggett was killed in action in May 2008 when he was 21 years old. Every year, this month becomes a month of mourning for Rasmusson.
”It’s been interesting navigating life without him,” she said.
According to a letter sent by an HOA management company on May 7th, her tribute, specifically the poster in the garage, is considered a “nuisance.”
“They put it in comparison with dead plants, dead trees and bushes, and it was kind of offensive to have it be in this comparison of what they’re calling a nuisance,” Rasmusson said.
She was told to take it down.
In a follow-up email sent to Rasmusson on Friday, the management company said their intention was “not to cause frustration or overlook the significance of the display” after Rasmusson posted about it on a neighborhood group page on social media.
The company also claimed they noticed the poster was up for several months and now consider it a permanent exterior feature instead of a decoration. The HOA says decorations can go up 30 days before a holiday and must be taken down 10 days after.
Rasmusson said she’s dealt with this before with the previous management company in 2018. It fined her $500 for the poster, but after an online petition, she was allowed to keep the display up for other holidays like Independence Day, Labor Day and Veterans Day.
OK, there's a lot to unpack here. And rather than just demagogue this and accuse the HOA of being heartless monsters who have no respect for Sgt. John Kyle Daggett or his family, we all need to step back and recognize there need to be limits. Just like no one should tell a family who lost a loved one in battle they can't display a Gold Star in their window, that family also shouldn't put a giant statue in their front yard. No matter how hard it's to navigate your life without your brother for the past 17 years.
And it seems to me that rule about 30 days before a holiday and 10 days after is totally acceptable. Perfect, in fact. Christmas decorations go up after Thanksgiving and come down in the week after New Years. Which is exactly what I do. Christmas is a season. It shouldn't be a lifestyle.
But the Rasmusson's aren't trying to display an inflatable Grinch or a plastic Santa's sleigh and reindeer that lights up from the inside. They're memorializing a fallen soldier on Memorial Day. Yes, the month of Memorial Day, but still. The Sgt. Daggetts didn't give the last full measure of their devotion just to have their families' tribute to them be put in the same category as a dead hydrangea. That banner isn't some old appliance they put out front the trash truck won't pick up or the rusting hull of a 1974 Pontiac GTO sitting on blocks waiting for the day they make it road worthy and give it a cherry paint job again. It's a banner honoring a man who sacrificed his life because his country ordered him into harm's way. And he went.
As much as beauty can be found in a plain, unadorned garage door, I fail to see how the aesthetics of Sgt. Daggett's flag-draped memorial are offending anybody's delicate sensibilities.
This whole situation is another example of what I'll call the Death of Reason. Of everyone hiding behind rules instead of sitting down, having a beer and talking. Of figuring out what works best for all involved. How long do you plan to put up the tribute? How much would you like to? What would you consider to be too long? And so on. Whatever else we all might think of the war in which the Sargeant made the ultimate sacrifice, the least we can do to honor him and the others who never returned - or who came back permanently scarred - is to figure out how to work out trivial matters like this without resorting to petty power plays. And most of all, to make Memorial Day a time when we're all united in the common cause of paying respects to the ones who earned our eternal devotion.
Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.
