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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?
I think I wouldn't mind an HOA if the dues they collected were used to fund things like maintenance and upkeep of houses to the standards they set, but as far as I can tell all they really do is take your money to tell you your lawn's too weedy and your fence is the wrong color.
They only exist because everyone in this fucked up country treats housing as an investment vehicle first and a shelter second.
That was basically their original intention until they got perverted to only care about protecting their property values like you said. There are still some "good" HOAs that are basically just that, but you don't hear much about them. Still, any good HOA can become a bad one at any time, so I just avoid them like the plague.