To figure out how common it is for homeowners associations to have landscaping rules that involve lawns, I carried out an unscientific survey in which I looked at the covenants of 15 homeowners associations from five randomly chosen cities in the US. Of the 13 that had outdoor spaces under control of the members, six mentioned lawn requirements explicitly, one had mowing rules, one said yards had to be “weed-free,” one specified they had to be “neat,” one provided a list of plants that included lawns among other options. Some did not mention landscaping requirements at all. Only one, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, encouraged “natural” landscaping with regionally appropriate plants. 

Meanwhile, common-interest communities have also tried to ban electric vehicle charging stations, although there’s some state laws about that now. Michael Gerrard, law professor at Columbia Law School and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said his law group represented a man who wanted to put solar panels on his roof but was prevented by his homeowner’s association.

Those who resist the orders to cut their plants down can encounter a morass of fines and legal threats. Homeowners associations can gatekeep access to the shared facilities, like pools or golf courses, and ultimately put a lien on the home of the violator. If someone’s house is liened, they don’t control the title until the debt is cleared. This might affect their credit score and ability to sell the house, therefore tying together the homeowner and the association they are feuding with. In order to enforce these penalties, the homeowners association could go sue. 

As long as we live in a country where cities can’t afford to build streets and implement basic zoning regulations, homeowners associations are inevitable. But their opaque political structures are not covered in any high school or college government course. So homeowners are left to figure it out themselves. 

In dealing with these bureaucracies, as with most issues in life, overcommunication is probably a better option than silence. Though reaching out to your neighbors and changing the bylaws within the organization is time- and effort-consuming, it’s probably less so than fighting your homeowners association in court. And it will be less costly. One couple sued their homeowners association and changed the law in Maryland, so that homeowners associations in the state can no longer ban reasonable, environmentally friendly yards.  They spent $60,000 in the process, an admirable use of abundant resources which is obviously not feasible for most people.  

A common-interest community is more bite-sized than a city or state government, so there are fewer people to reach out to and (hopefully) fewer steps to changing the rules. Imagine you never read this article or knew anything about the benefits of having many different regionally appropriate plants instead of a grass monoculture. Your next-door neighbor starts removing their lawn suddenly. That would probably alarm you more than if they made a presentation at the homeowners association meeting teaching people about responsible yard stewardship and laying out a deliberate plan for a more environmentally friendly (but still neat) yard. From my experience, people will often agree to what you’re proposing so that they can move on with their day, with a minimum of goodwill lost. And about a quarter of people in a group need to initiate a social trend before it becomes a norm, according to a 2018 paper in the journal Science. In other words, you probably won’t need to convince your most aesthetically conservative neighbor to spark change.