I see this whole thing rather differently.

I agree that any ham who wants to have a station at home should buy a
house without antenna restrictions. Same as someone who wants to have,
say, a vegetable garden should buy a house without vegetable-garden
restrictions. Etc.

But I think there's a growing mindset that, for a neighborhood to be
"nice", almost everything that someone might find unattractive must be
prohibited. And since there's almost nothing that *somebody* won't find
unattractive, almost *everything* is prohibited, or strictlyregulated.

I can see the point that a ninety-foot tower on a quarter-acre lot is
out of scale. Or when a homeowner lets a place fall to ruin, something
needs to be done.

But when a ham can't have a wire dipole in the back yard of a half-
acre wooded lot, something's wrong. When the satellite TV folks have to
go all the way to the Supreme Court to get preemption to have dishes
the size of a large pizza, something's wrong. When American citizens,
some of them decorated military veterans, are sued and threatened with
eviction for flying the American flag in their own front yards,
something's wrong.

Real estate isn't like other things in that it's not portable and the
supply is limited. For most people, their home is their biggest
investment, and moving is a major event. Many hams simply cannot afford
to move just so they can have an antenna. I suspect that antenna
restrictions are a major cause of low growth in Amateur Radio in the
USA, because why get a license if you can't have a decentstation?

It seems to me that if the rules allow a flagpole, birdhouse, plant
trellis, etc., but not antennas, then what's wrong if one of those
things has a dual function?

73 de Jim, N2EY