My husband Hank and I were still giddy at the amazing deal we’d gotten on
the house, but nowadays there are lots of great deals on the market.
And even though this is in a really posh neighborhood – DRiMland  - we
 still ended up having to run out to the hardware store before we’d
finished unpacking half a dozen boxes.
  
“Hi! You must be our new friends on Redstone Lane! I’m Jack! Anything you need from me, kids, you just let me know!”

“Thanks, Jack,” Hank said. “Actually, we were looking at getting some paint and
rollers and stuff to do the bedroom before we get settled in. We’d like
to brighten it up a little. The walls are weirdly shiny. We thought
that a nice creamy yellow –"

“Well, we  have paint,” Jack said.. “But I can’t sell you rollers or brushes.
The architect who designed your house put a special coating on the
walls so that they can’t be painted, and it’s illegal for me to sell
you the tools to paint over it.”

“What? Are you serious? Okay…how about light fixtures? We’d like to replace
the cheap brass ones ones with some nicer ones,” I said.
 
Jack shook his head. “Sure, I’ve got light fixtures, but you guys obviously
haven’t looked too carefully at your house. The special locking screws
holding the light fixtures to the ceilings need a specific tool to
remove them. I can’t sell you the tool, and if you try to remove them
yourself, the builder can take your house away,”

Hank and I stared at each other, incredulous.

“I suppose you could try to develop a tool on your own, but I’m warning
you - don’t loan it to any of your neighbors. You can get jail time for
that, and get your neighbors kicked out of their places!”

We went home dejected. We were sitting at the kitchen table when the doorbell gave out an unpleasant squawk.

“That’s gotta go,” Hank said as he got up to answer it. He came back into the kitchen leading a woman with a bundt cake.

“Hi!” she said. “I’m Allison, your next-door neighbor. Welcome to the neighborhood!”

“Tell me,” Hank asked her once we’d gotten settled with a slice of cake each. “Have you made any...improvements to your house?”

Allison’s face suddenly went blank, her smile frozen in place. “No, none!” she said, a little too quickly.

“Oh,” Hank said, hanging his head. “It’s just that, well, we were hoping to
paint and put on some nicer light fixtures, and the guy at the hardware
store was really weird about it. He said that we couldn’t do either one
because the house was made special.”

“Didn’t you guys look at all the CC&Rs that came in the papers you got when you bought your house?” Allison asked.

“Well, I mean, sure we looked at them, but there were so many of them and most
of it was just fine print that we didn’t really read. We owned our last
house, but it was nothing like this. If you wanted to paint or put on
new light fixtures or even take out a wall, you just went down to the
hardware store and got the stuff and did it yourself.”

“You must have been living in an older neighborhood. Nowadays, if you want
that kind of thing you have to buy a new house with the features you
want.”

“You’re saying that you can’t paint your own house? We’d have to BUY A WHOLE NEW ONE?” I said.

“That, or you can contract the builder to paint it FOR you, but they’ll charge
you for a whole new house. Technically, it’s not really your house,”
Allison said. “According to the CC&Rs, you’re really just licensing
it from the builder. It doesn't say that, but that's what it boils down to. Oh, speaking of which, I brought you a
housewarming gift!”

She pulled an extension cord out of her purse and handed it to me.

“Gee, thanks,” I said, examining it closely. It had six prongs, some longer
than others, all bent into complicated shapes, and the cord was about
twice as thick as normal. “This is weird looking!”

“You haven’t tried plugging anything in, have you?” Allison said with a smile.

Hank and I looked at the outlets and realized that they weren’t the standard three-holed little face we were used to.

“None of your existing electrical appliances will work without a special
adapter,”Allison said. “You can get these adapters from Jack, or you
can get special appliances direct from the builder. The adapters don’t
always work well, but they’re a lot cheaper than the appliances the
builder sells, and they’re not illegal.”

Over the next few weeks our neighbors came to us, one at a time, and only
after we’d turned out the lights for the night. Bruce from two doors
down helped us put in a garage door opener using an old lawn mower
motor and some gears he’d made himself. DeeDee
and Malcolm showed us how to strip off the special paint coating so
that we could paint any room in our house. They’d done every room in
their place a different color.

But one day, a moving van showed up at Allison’s house, escorted by a
police car. As the men in the van loaded up all of her possessions, the
police escorted a weeping Allison to their car.

“But it they were so beat up! You saw them! I wasn’t changing anything! I was trying to fix it!”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Ma’am, we’re taking your friend in for violating the CC&Rs of your community. She’s being relocated.”

“Wait, doesn’t she get a trial or something?”

“Your CC&Rs don’t provide for any kind of hearing. Violate them, and you’re out at the discretion of the builder.”

“But that’s just stupid! How can you not be allowed to touch up the paint in your own house? What if I don’t agree to that?”

“Well, lady,” the cop said, “you don’t have to live here, you know. You could move back to the slums.”

“Allison, what did you do?” Hank asked her.

“One of my dining room chairs left a ding in the baseboard, and I was just
trying to touch it up!” she wailed as the cop slammed the car door on
her.

“It was Jack,” Bruce muttered as he walked up. “He ratted out the folks who
used to live in your house. They tried to put another outlet in their
spare room. He sold them the parts, then reported them to the builder.
She must have made the mistake of buying the paint from him.”

And with that, it hit us. In moving to DRiMland, we’d moved into a nightmare.