Want to plant a tree in your yard or put together a playhouse for your kids? How about a basketball hoop for your teen or a doghouse in your backyard?

Forget about it...unless you want to fill out a form describing the location, materials, size, height, planned start and expected completion date of the structure. Then you wait, if you're lucky, a month for the review board to let you know if they approve of, or deny, your intentions.

It doesn't matter to them that you paid for your home and land, and you should be able to put a doghouse or children's entertainment in your backyard without their permission. If they don't want you to have it, you can't get it.

So what is the benefit of these obsessive homeowner associations on a power trip?

According to the Certificate of Incorporation for The Trails of West Frisco Community Association in Texastheir purpose is "to provide for the maintenance and preservation of, and to promote the health, safety and welfare of the residents."

I don't have a problem with paying the association for the upkeep of the landscaping in the general areas, but I do have a problem paying the association to tell me what I can and can't do on my own property.

I can understand regulating cars on the street or pink flamingos in the front yard, but it has definitely gone too far when another party has the right to dictate what you can and can't do with your own home and backyard. I may have to deal with a corporation at work, but I shouldn't have to deal with it at my own home, on my own time.

They say they are here for our safety, but in my neighborhood I can't build a fence that prevents children or my five pound dog from escaping and falling into the large storm drain directly outside my yard.

The HOA tells me I can't replace the transparent iron fence because then people on the bike path can't see into my yard.

Why do they need or want to see into my yard? If they wanted to "promote the safety of the residents" then wouldn't that include a protective fence so my dog and children can be allowed to safely play in my backyard? It is puzzling how others in my same situation were allowed to build this type of fence in their yard. The iron fence in no way deters intruders, yet another reason a wooden fence would be safer and more practical.

It is interesting how the rules only apply to some.

They don't have a problem with the cars that line up in front of people's homes night and day, turning a two-way street into a one-way, but when a couple of weeds suddenly popped up in my neighbor's yard, he promptly received a threatening letter. It's not difficult to distinguish which of these events is a threat to the safety and welfare of residents. It is also quite inconsistent since the association doesn't mow or remove the weeds on their side of my property line nor will they fix the holes in the ground or their broken sprinkler.

There was a time when homeowner associations didn't exist, before the horror stories of people's homes being foreclosed over $350 in HOA dues.

I grew up in a beautiful neighborhood with no homeowner's association, and it was still sought-after. If a kid in my neighborhood wanted a tree house, his dad built it.

Now it's like passing a Supreme Court legislation to build a tree house in your own backyard.

How much farther can this go, when corporations are developed to take advantage of the American homeowner? And try to take back your rights, good luck.

When I spoke to Linda Stewart of The Trails of West Frisco Homeowners Association I was told "I don't have time for this."

And many of these homeowner corporations hire a management company to enforce ridiculous rules and collect fees, an even colder corporation that will do whatever it takes to get your money even if that means taking your house over a couple hundred dollars! If you call them they tell you to call someone else or that they will return your call, but no one ever calls you back or tries to help. I have attempted to communicate with Select Management Company for almost three months, and to no avail.

Granted, there may be a few associations out there that don't make petty regulations and change the rules when someone finds a way to get what they want.

If you don't agree with my views, fine, but you're the minority here; do your own research.

All over the world people are trying to find ways to escape the grip of the dictatorship known as the homeowner's association. It's an epidemic; people are choosing not to buy or to buy in non-association neighborhoods to avoid the corporate environment at home.

Soon the homeowner association will decrease the value of homes, contradicting why we pay them in the first place.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote

"If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can."