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Homeowner association regulations often make environmental responsibility impossible by outlawing clotheslines, solar panels — even gardens.
The house Heather and Joseph Sarachek were building in Scarsdale, N.Y., was to be a model of green efficiency, complete with geothermal heating and cooling. Even the electricity to run the system would be clean, coming from solar panels on their roof — but when the time came to install the panels last fall, construction came to an abrupt halt.
A local Board of Architectural Review refused to issue the Saracheks a permit for the solar apparatus, having received a letter from at least 15 neighbors — among them doctors, lawyers and other presumably well-educated people — arguing that the panels “would clearly be an eyesore in our lovely Quaker Ridge neighborhood.”
This March — four months, $20,000 in extra construction and legal costs, and 107 petition signatures later, and after agreeing to plant a screen of trees to hide their “eyesore” — the Saracheks finally got the board’s decision reversed. On a 4-3 vote, the victory was a squeaker. But it meant that the prosperous Village of Scarsdale, where the average house is valued at $834,000, would see its first solar panels ever.
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