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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?
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.