The GP's neighbor sounds like they have their panties in a bunch but going out of your way not to offend/annoy those kind of people is just the reality in those kind of places. If you want to live somewhere "nice" but not the middle of nowhere you need to conform. Unfortunately things like having a large garden, having parties, having a project boat, or collecting late 80s vintage cars do not fit within the scope of "conforming" for the purposes of the upper middle class suburban neighborhoods that most HNers will settle down in. The GP didn't conform so his neighbor complained and someone sent him a letter on official letterhead. It doesn't really matter who's letterhead it's on.
Only well off suburban/urban communities the resources to justify mediating disputes to the tune of "my neighbor's hobbies look/sound/smell offensive". If you want freedom to do what you want on your own property you need your neighbors to either have bigger problems or be far enough away to not care. Those places don't generally have good schools or aren't within commuting distance of lots of good jobs. There's tradeoffs to every approach.
This is something I have never really understood. If your neighbors can hear or smell your hobby, then you are not really staying contained on your own property and neighbors who complain are not trampling your liberties, just asserting their own.
Not whining over the slightest inconvenience is part of existing in civil society. Complaining about your neighbor using an air hammer on steel at 11pm, ok. Complaining about your neighbor using an air hammer on steel at normal hours = not ok.
It all comes down to being reasonable and in middle upper class suburbia the Overton window of what is reasonable has moved to favor the complainers over the people who want to go about their lives to the point where those places have seen fit to legislate (or enforce via HOA) what is "reasonable" and that inevitably turns into a race to the bottom.
Conversely, having some consideration for your neighbors is part of existing in civil society.
I live in a neighborhood that very closely fits the definition of upper middle class suburbia, and the power balance is most assuredly not in favor of complainers. Quite the opposite in fact.
I also think you do a disservice to this discussion by suggesting it is just innocent people going about their lives that are being held back by the evil complainers. From my perspective it is the assholes driving their damn two-cycle quads up and down the street for hours every morning where there's more than half an inch of snow on the ground. These folks are not going about their lives, they are entertaining themselves at the neighborhood's expense.
I detest HOAs but a well-run community benefits from a collective agreement on what constitutes 'reasonable'.
You haven't lived next to retired people with nothing but free time on their hands.
A large part of us moving out of the suburbs and somewhere rural was the adjacent retired neighbors always being in our business. I'm all for being a considerate neighbor but there's little substitute for a lot of space between you and your neighbor.
HOAs make what's on your side of your fence potentially someone else's business again.
(And they frequently ban chain-link fences, even when they are a cheap, effective, and durable way to put up a fence that won't be popping rusty deck screws out of the slats in three years (or less!) and letting the dogs escape.)
Well, my next-door neighbors are retired, but they're not jerks.
I agree that more space is better. Once my kids are out of school (which is within walking distance currently) we will move farther out of town. Mostly because I get tired of listening to my neighbors' hobbies ;-)
Got a kick out of your air hammer example because I happen to be working on a project that involves me using an air hammer (among other loud pneumatic tools) on many weeknights. The key was I actually took the time before starting to gasp sit down and talk to my neighbors and agree on things like noise level, hours I’d be working, keeping the garage door shut, etc. Lucked out by having reasonable neighbors, but you can usually head off trouble by talking with people as if they were grown adults. Ended up costing me nothing but a new quieter air compressor, and no visits from the city yet.
Giving them something works a treat. I assume my bees will
misbehave one day and irritate neighbours so I have preemptively handed over many kgs of honey. Some have been keen and had a look in the hives too.
The neighbours haven’t complained yet tho SOs have, as once I had a beemageddon when I had a bit of a honey extraction disaster had everyone in the house had to leave home for the day until I sorted it out.
Bees were coming in keyholes, extractor fans and gaps in closed windows.
Hearing or smelling something from a neighbouring property is just something you have to live with. Just like leaves that fall off a neighbour's trees into your property, may be a pain to tidy up, but that's just life. Sound and smell travel, should I have pave over my garden because you have allergies or don't like the smell of my roses or the manure that I feed them?
In a number of states including Massachusetts, there are towns that have right-to-farm ordinances. They're not just anything goes obviously but the basic intent is to tell people that they really shouldn't move to a fairly rural old farm town and then complain that their neighbor is planting corn, raising goats, or generally doesn't have a neatly manicured lawn.
Having lived in MA and every New England state north of it MA is highly, highly variable when it comes to what happens on your property being your business and nobody else's.
Basically anywhere that was incorporated back when they were still burning witches is going to be downright terrible. Of the areas that were developed later some were not blind to the mistakes of the past and these tend to be pretty good. My own town's bylaws are pretty libertarian. They even enumerate the right of the self employed to run a business out of their own home (so long as you don't park too many commercial vehicles over 26k in a residential zone) and are sprinkled with all sorts of great language that limits the government's ability to control the individual. It's almost as good as not living in MA.
That said, while the legal and procedural side of things may be ok, the cultural side is not that great. MA (in my anecdotal experience) is light years behind northern New England when it comes to cultural respect for property rights. Being that busybody who calls the cops because the neighbor's kid won't stop yelling or reports your neighbor's non-permitted driveway repaving to the town is far more tolerated in MA. That kind of stuff is not considered socially acceptable in northern New England for the most part.
Only well off suburban/urban communities the resources to justify mediating disputes to the tune of "my neighbor's hobbies look/sound/smell offensive". If you want freedom to do what you want on your own property you need your neighbors to either have bigger problems or be far enough away to not care. Those places don't generally have good schools or aren't within commuting distance of lots of good jobs. There's tradeoffs to every approach.