One woman in Virginia is discovering that her homeowners association is the hardest part about making the switch to an electric vehicle.
A Redditor shared the woman's story in a subreddit about HOAs and their issues.
🗣️ Should an HOA be able to decide what your home looks like?
🔘 YES 👍
🔘 NO 👎
🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind
"Charging ahead…or not. What's reasonable?" the OP wrote, posting a report from News4 Washington detailing how the woman is having trouble installing a charging station for an EV.
"The resolution is so restrictive that I actually cannot have a charging station," Michaela Hamiary Janotova, who lives in Herndon, told News4.
"The law says that HOAs can make or can establish reasonable restrictions. … What's reasonable to you doesn't have to be reasonable to me," she added, noting her designated parking spot is a common space and that building a charging station on her property would cause a cable to run across a public sidewalk.
According to Forbes, a 2018 study by the University of Michigan found that EVs "cost less than half as much to operate as their gasoline-powered counterparts," whose tailpipes — unlike those of EVs — produce carbon pollution linked to health issues and the overheating of our planet.
HOAs are meant to protect the investments of their members, but it is not uncommon to hear complaints about the associations' enforcement of regulations, with the health of the environment ultimately at stake, along with homeowners' bank accounts.
The money-saving installation of solar panels and the planting of pollinator-friendly native gardens are among the adjustments ruled not up to snuff, though some residents have found creative workarounds or have begun conversations to change bylaws.
Hamiary Janotova has reportedly reached out to lawyers and elected officials in hopes of getting an amendment to the current restrictions.
"I shouldn't be required to pay so much to have an EV," she told News4, referencing how she would probably have to shell out extra money for insurance if she ran a cable across the sidewalk.
"This is a huge problem that Reston Association (RA) is actively trying to deal with," another Redditor wrote in a different repost of the story. "I'm able to get Level 2 Charging for my EV in my garage, but my neighbor with no garage cannot."
"If the HOA isn't allowing her to put a charging station next to a deeded parking space for 'reasons,' I get the complaint," another person said in the comments section of the original post.
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