This story is making the rounds down here (North Texas) in the RE community, of course, as well. mho, overall a bit of an old tale. Everyone is more than used to this by now. Many HOAs (Home Owner's Associations) do not even allow Solar collectors to be placed on roofs, or even on property, in the "nice" parts of town.
The folks behind the no-variance stuff are truly "not gifted." The belief (fear based) is that any variance will cause the precious property values to drop, and since so much of their life savings are tied up in these silly "Prairie McMansions" it will some how harm them.
A few years back the fire and insurance folks had to force HOA morons to stop requiring Cedar Shake roofing (aka fire kindling). If one house had a minor fire, a whole neighbor was toast. With regular shingles (now) it is rare that even a single house burns. But gee, won't that hurt property values?
Texas House and Senate have been working on a bill this session to over-write all HOAs to force them to allow solar. But wind is a whole other story.
As far as this guy in Melissa, TX goes -- Anybody into wind down here really has to self-aware enough to figure out that they are somewhat a weirdo and head out of the suburbs -- nobody cares at all in the country side. Or if you want to live in town you can at least do what we do -- live on some acreage in a post industrial area -- in our case, a couple of 50 year old converted warehouses zoned "Heavy Industrial Research" and nobody cares. I can build and test solar, wind, and most any other thing we want. I think the Social Workers (Mrs. Phil is one) call the situation "Fit in Environment."
