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Should HOAs be banned?
(discuss.online)
Banned is maybe too far, but why should we as a country allow people to have petty power over meaningless things their neighbors do? Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it's sold the new owners have to opt in?
For the most part, I'm wondering about this in the context of single family homes since for homes like condos, you could make the case that HOAs are useful for shared things like roofs and whatnot. Maybe limit mandatory HOA involvement to things like what's truly necessary and shared and not how tall your grass is?
Wouldn't things like street maintenance be handled by the city? If they aren't currently and HOAs got banned, it seems like cities could step in and take over without much fuss.
The maintenance costs are why cities make this deal with developers. The city will green light the development provided an HOA is present so their responsibility is kept at a minimum.
The HOA of today isn’t an idea born of people saying they want to govern themselves. It’s from government yelling “less regulation” and pushing their residents into an adrift situation where it’s the only option.
The ethos from the gated community is there, somehow, but that’s the grift. The HOA is only there, in most cases, to remove cost and responsibility from the municipality.
Yup. Even plowing is an HOA task in some places. It’s all a privatization scam and the HOA residents are the marks.
smew or field plowing?
Smew, but also snow.
This is why HOAs are allowed to exist in the first place.
They tell the city, "hey, you've got this huge plot of land that can be developed for residential housing, but it looks like you can't afford to develop it (roads, water pipes, power, etc). Instead of developing and selling it bit by bit, you can sell the land to us, and we'll take care of everything, and just cut you your check!"
HOAs pass the municipal buck from the government to the HOA. Since the HOA (in most cases) owns the infrastructure for the community, there isn't a good way to allow individuals to opt out.
In theory but they do a shit job of it.
Neighborhood associations also exist and are usually much better than HOAs. I would be happy if mine was in charge of the streets instead of the city. But not my HOA, they suck.
I was thinking like gated community type areas which are treated more like private property. And in that example, I meant more like if one house opted out of the HOA, but the HOA was still there, then they'd be using the roads without contributing to maintenance.
But yeah, assuming the HOA dissolved, I would imagine the city or county would take over.