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Seems to me that the HOA can adopt whatever guidelines it chooses. To be clear, albeit extreme, an HOA in Texas might want to incorporate New Orleans code it liked.
Let me add, I have HOA experience only from the outside, but have in the course of legal work seen some pretty strange things.
The OP is in Texas. The streets and roads are not common area, even on the subdivision plats. In the HOA I was on the board of, we ran into the exact scenario(s) the OP described.
City allows parking on the street - not a damn thing the HOA can do about it. City doesn't enforce basketball goals on the street as encroaching - nothing the HOA can do about it (except drag the goal into their driveway when they weren't home, snap a picture and cite them)
The OP is in an ETJ in Texas, which is a super-common phenomena here. There are always jurisdiction quirks when it comes to these. Essentially, they are annexed for their tax base, but have a hodgepodge of services between County, MUD, PUD, etc.
The above bold is not always true. Covenants can override the city as a HOA owner agreed to the Covenants when buying. Our streets are public but owners agreed to no overnight parking when they bought in thus they cannot park on the streets overnight. An owner street parking overnight in our HOA can be fined by the HOA. They agreed to it.
Actually it can as it's considered common property of the subdivision.
A public street is most certainly NOT "common property of the subdivision".
This whole "common property" nonsense is marketing by an industry that would prefer to blur the line between condos (pretty ugly for owners) and HOA-burdened housing (also pretty bad but not as bad as condo law).
Condo property is created in accordance with statute in every state. A property may be burdened with both condominium and HOA or multiple layers of HOAs. However, with condominium property the unit owners owns their own units 100%. They have an undivided % interest in the remainder of the property. Thus the remainder of the property is owned "in common" by the unit owners.
With HOA property, however, property owners do not own greenspace, amenities, etc. in common. Instead the HOA corporation owns the property. It is a misnomer to refer to such property as "common property".
Public roads are not owned by unit owners nor by an HOA corporation. They are public roads. They are not common property of any kind. CCRs are not "okayed" by any governmental authority with the exception that local government may try to impose restrictions through a developer agreement. So much for the myth these are "private agreements".
The above bold is not always true. Covenants can override the city as a HOA owner agreed to the Covenants when buying. Our streets are public but owners agreed to no overnight parking when they bought in thus they cannot park on the streets overnight. An owner street parking overnight in our HOA can be fined by the HOA. They agreed to it.
The "agreement" part is a legal fiction. The restrictions were not put there by the homeowners.
An HOA board usually proclaims itself all powerful and to have the ability to restrict people.
However, there is other law that tends to counter the board's "enforcer" mentality.
South Carolina has an interesting case going on right now challenging an HOA's purported authority to foreclose. Boards and industry hacks have been asserting these are "contracts" and that people agreed to them. But foreclosure is an equitable remedy not a legal remedy in South Carolina. Imagine how deflated boards, management companies, and HOA attorneys will be when they can't threaten homeowners with foreclosure to prevent them from parking on public streets or engaging in other activity board members take issue with. Can't wait to see how the case turns out.
The "agreement" part is a legal fiction. The restrictions were not put there by the homeowners.
An HOA board usually proclaims itself all powerful and to have the ability to restrict people.
However, there is other law that tends to counter the board's "enforcer" mentality.
South Carolina has an interesting case going on right now challenging an HOA's purported authority to foreclose. Boards and industry hacks have been asserting these are "contracts" and that people agreed to them. But foreclosure is an equitable remedy not a legal remedy in South Carolina. Imagine how deflated boards, management companies, and HOA attorneys will be when they can't threaten homeowners with foreclosure to prevent them from parking on public streets or engaging in other activity board members take issue with. Can't wait to see how the case turns out.
Our lawyer warned us that he saw no way to foreclose based on unpaid HOA fines and he doubted any judge in SC would allow such.
I know some HOA's have taken assessment/dues money and used it to pay fines thus creating a shortfall in the assessment payment. When asked, our attorney said he does not believe this would stand up in SC.
He also said an HOA can foreclose on unpaid assessments.
These street parking rules are common to HOAs in Texas. It seems like something the builders just stick in and I suppose hope people will comply just because it's in the rules. As a private entity the HOA has no jurisdiction over public streets. I think an argument can be made that the HOA is empowered to regulate the relationship between member properties and owners of member properties who cause vehicles to be parked in the street in a way that negatively affects other properties is maybe within the HOA's jurisdiction. I'm unaware of any Texas cases agreeing, however. I think the violation would have to be particularly severe (like blocking a neighbor's driveway intentionally and repeatedly) for an HOA to have a worthwhile position to pursue into court.
My HOA has a rule about not parking on the street in a manner that interferes with other homes. We take the position that we do not regulate the public streets and people need to contact the city or work it out with their neighbors. I can't recall a situation in which the HOA stepped in over a street parking issue--but our board is conservative with enforcement issues.
Seems to me I remember that some places in the west allow cities to annex neigboring areas. This COULD be intended to cover that contingency.
The HOA property manager has now came back and said this is the case. Just seems sloppy to me to have a legal document with language in it that doesn't apply, but may apply many years in the future. Why not just modify the CC&Rs to incorporate city ordinances if we get annexed in the future?
The HOA property manager has now came back and said this is the case. Just seems sloppy to me to have a legal document with language in it that doesn't apply, but may apply many years in the future. Why not just modify the CC&Rs to incorporate city ordinances if we get annexed in the future?
Because it usually takes a pretty large percentage of votes to get that done. Easier to put it in now.
So your HOA probably buys some utilities from the City of San Antonio or you do directly. One of the things Texas cities do is that if they allow someone to connect to utilities they mandate compliance with all local building and development codes and laws. This is mostly because of past experiences where annexed areas had massive amounts of work to conform to city building requirements. Particularly and spectacularly bad are places where water lines weren't looped or substandard drainage installed costing cities millions to bring a relatively low value neighborhood up to code.
So if you are a developer or homeowner showing up for a connection to the system they are going to make you sign something agreeing to such restrictions and if subdividing putting it in the docs.
Some of the responses here mistake the jurisdiction of a city for property taxes with it's area for utilities. Utility areas are much larger and utility revenue for Texas Cities is usually several times what the property tax is.
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