Some people truly work on projects which progress and are ultimately completed.

Others are basically hoarders, and the junk simply accumulates.

It's hard to tell the difference from a single snapshot.

Imagine being the kid at school whose dad kept 5-10 and a HALF cars in the front yard... when he dies I'll have hundreds of engines/manifolds/headers to recycle ("some of this stuff is expensive, son!" — then why not sell it while still breathing?).

My current city doesn't allow you to have any non-functional vehicles anywhere on your property, unless garaged.

As someone who was that friend at one point when I was much younger I never got the fuss about it. Rented a house in a neighborhood that was none too happy about it and constantly got snide or passive aggressive remarks about it from neighbors both in passing and at several points them coming to my door about it demanding I get rid of them up until I moved out a few years later.

Never understood it. Being older now and owning my own house, there's a house on the same street as mine with kids getting up to similar hijinks and it's honestly nice to see them getting into hands on hobbies. I stop by and chat with them about their ongoing projects every now and then. Crushing someone's passion hobby because of some perceived slight to neighborhood beauty just seems mean spirited.

Here are some rules which apply anywhere within Chattanooga's city limits:

•Grass must be <10"

•No indoor furniture on patios

•Address must be posted (near entrance) in 4" tall script

•All vehicles parked outside must be operable and registered ("projects" must be garaged)

•Cannot leave dropped branches on yard, nor piled up (except pile for pickup)

•Paint/roof must be watertight

Certain inspectors are eager for your disagreeableness, as they (in their minds) are god.

I used to rent in a non-HOA neighborhood.

I had a neighbor attempting to sell their run down hovel for double the market rate. It wouldn’t sell, for obvious reason.

His solution was to call in Code Enforcement on every single neighbor every single day. Which meant I had to send a weekly photo of my lawn to my landlord to be sent to the Code Enforcement Officer to prove I had an orderly property to avoid him a ticket to avoid him a court appearance.

Turns out many (most?) cities and suburbs have laws on the books that meet or exceed virtually any HOA. In that case, they can ruin your life far more than any Boomer on patrol could ever dream of.

Now?

Municipalities across America have been implementing laws like this for decades.

HOAs are just ultra-local government.

Land of the free

Free speech rights doesn't give you blanket protection to break the law. It just means a law can't specifically target your speech. So just as a law against theft still can be applied to someone that commits theft as part of a performance art piece, so also can a general law against an accumulation of inoperative vehicles be applied against an accumulation of a inoperative art cars.