HOAs: Not Just for Micromanaging

I promised way back in July to start a series on homeowner associations (HOAs). Well, here's my first crack at it.

An HOA in the Houston area (Oak Park Trails) is fighting to keep a scourge out of its neighborhood. What is this blight, a meth lab? A landfill? Nope, it's Aldi [note: not "Aldi's"], the awesome grocery store chain. What's wrong with Aldi, you ask?

 “It’s a very low-end type of store. They don’t really shelve anything. They just have open pallets of products — it’s kind of like a 99-cent store for groceries.”

HOA residents only shop at Byerly's or Whole Foods, apparently.

“One of our other concerns is they’re going to sell beer and wine. There’s a Montessori school just across the street from this, but it’s just outside the 300-foot rule for not selling alcohol near churches and schools,” Balkanli said.

Apparently HOA residents only shop at [insert name of high-end liquor store here]. So the legislature or city council or whatever decided that 300 feet is a sufficient distance between a liquor store and a school, but Oak Park Trails thinks it should be 305, I guess.

“We’re not opposed the Aldi food store business model at all. We feel that it’s a free enterprise system, and we feel there’s certainly a need for a low-cost, value-oriented grocery store in other areas,” Balkanli said. “The only thing we’re opposed to is it happens to be in front of our subdivision.”

The real concern in regards to Aldi is quite clear under the surface of this article: poor people might shop in our neighborhood! 


I would cheer for a new Aldi to open in any situation. They have low prices and good products. But more than any regular Aldi, I want this one to succeed.

Update: Here's a video by the anti-Aldi yahoos. "We're generally a middle- to upper-class neighborhood, whereas Aldi does not serve that demographic element." Ha!