Was this HOA up to no good, or was it tricked by a greedy logging company?
One homeowner felt something fishy was going on after their HOA suddenly removed tons of trees from community land. The suspicious Redditor asked r/TreeLaw if this behavior was typical.
They provided a bit of backstory, writing, "Our rural HOA voted without any notice to level 4.5 acres of conifers because they deemed the trees had root rot. … However, what strikes me as odd — they did this without any formal written contract. … This is all apparently on a handshake agreement. Is this common? It seems like a complete conflict of interest to have an arborist's potentially massive payday hanging over his verdict on a huge amount of timber."
Something was definitely going on, and the Redditor had plans to figure out what. To double-check, the Redditor also reviewed "all the bylaws … and they seem to have violated a bunch of them."
Regardless of why they were removed, the loss of a large number of conifer trees here is tragic, and the negative impact of their absence will be keenly felt.
Here's what the community is missing out on, according to 8 Billion Trees' tree value calculator:
- 183,000 pounds of oxygen, which allows nearly 90,000 people to breathe for a day.
- 68,000 pounds of carbon absorbed, which is the equivalent of traveling nearly 200 miles in a commercial plane.
- 18,000 gallons of water evaporated, which "has the cooling effect of 5 air conditioners working for 125 days."
Commenters agreed that the HOA's behavior was suspicious and suggested a course of action for the Redditor.
🗣️ Should HOAs be able to force homeowners to change their yards?
🔘 Absolutely not 💯
🔘 Yes — it's part of the deal 🤝
🔘 Only in extreme circumstances 🏚️
🔘 We should ban HOAs 🚫
🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind
"Ask to see the three bids to make sure the HOA got the best value for selling one of its assets," one user suggested. "Wouldn't be surprised if there's a link between parties here stealing from the HOA."
"So the root rot trees just happened to be in a strip of quality merchantable timber? As an arborist myself I'd question the ethics of the folks involved here too," another commenter said.
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