There Goes The Neighborhood

We have a neighborhood association where we live. This means there is a package of CC&R's (Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions, or some such) that supposedly govern the use and upkeep of the houses here. We moved here because we wanted a neighborhood with sidewalks, swimming pools and schools within walking distance. We also didn't want to pay the $40,000 (in 1995) premium to live in Beaverton.

For the most part, it's worked out okay. You have to keep your yard mowed and your house painted, which is kind of annoying, but I can hire it out. Writing the checks is much less painful than having to do the actual work.

A place like this you might expect would be full of homeowners, but in the last few years (five? ten?) three of the nearby houses have become rentals. At first I thought they would be renting to Intel employees. Intel shuffles people around, and they pay pretty well, so that would have made sense. This year though we seem to be getting more people from the real world.

One rental seemed to be turning their garage into a kind of a nightclub on Friday nights. It never bothered me, I spend all my time in the back of the house, and the few times I was out front on Friday nights there was never any noise to speak of. That seems to have stopped now.

Another house sold at the peak just before the crash. The owners moved out this year and rented the house to some folks who are running a day care center. This has got their immediate neighbors up in arms. Traffic morning and night, screaming kids all day long, not to mention numerous violations of the CC&R's. I suspect lawyers, guns and money are not far off. Well, maybe not guns.