this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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We don't have them in Australia that I'm aware of, but they do sound atrocious. What happened to that land of the free?
TL;DR: racism and segregation.
https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/homeowners-associations-black-americans-discriminaiton-2020-9?op=1
https://www.homestratosphere.com/homeowners-associations-ugly-history/
My HOA only has rules for weeds and not blocking sidewalks with cars. I thought I was going to hate it, but honestly it keeps things nice. In my last neighborhood so many assholes would have boats and RVs literally parked on the sidewalk.
There are typically city ordinances that cover blocking the sidewalk / abandoning vehicles.
Unenforced City ordinances in my experience. That being said I've never had a HOA so I can't speak to their efficacy.
I'd imagine it's hand in hand with NIMBY's which can just fuck right the hell off.
Wait till leadership changes hands.
Not blocking sidewalks with cars? It's just illegal here.
And weeds kinda too, but only Sosnovsky Hogweed is enforced.
My dad lived in a great one. Had a community pool, event center, tennis court, and a well maintained park/playground.
The only time my parents heard from the HOA was when they put a bench in the front yard, but that was just a letter saying, "Hey, the bench is cool, but please let us know beforehand next time."
They're basically just groups that are supposed to help prevent one person tanking everyone's property value by letting their home go to shit.
The problem is that typically the only people who get involved in them are retired busy bodies who want to assert what little power they have. Good ones too exist, though.
Yeah. The idea of what is bad for properties values is extremely subjective and some people take it to such extremes as to not let there ever be something they don't like.
Eg, houses can only be painted a very select few shades. Lawns have to be trimmed short and even a short vacation could get you a fine. Cars can't be parked on driveways overnight. You must have at least 3 flower beds of a minimum size. Trash bins can only be brought out in the morning and not the night before. Etc etc. Anything you can imagine a cranky neighborhood complaining about, some HOA probably has a rule for.
There's lots of common sense rules you could have. It's easy to picture a stereotypical crack den that you wouldn't want in your neighbourhood. But there's also a lot of people whose idea of a good neighborhood is cookie cutter white suburbia with no personality. If you try to have anything else, they'll fine you. If you try and fight the fines, you risk losing your house cause you can bet they'll try to make you pay any legal fees and they can probably get a lien on your house.
We have these things called laws which do that
If a law isn't enforced, then it's not illegal. Most cities don't have the budget to hire enough people to enforce the municipal code, which is where HOAs step in.
It works fine where I live. There's just a number you can call to report violations.
By being black. Or otherwise a minority.
No, a redneck with a car on cinder blocks in their front yard will tank property values way more than a black person living in the neighborhood.
We do have them in the Czech Republic but only in blocks of flats, not neighborhoods.
I'm not from CR, but I think you thought about wrong type of HOA. Closest thing to american HOAs in Europe I think Gardening Association or something like this. Google translate says it's Zahradní Komunita, yandex says Zahradní Kamarádství.
I speak English perfectly, no need for terrible translators (Yandex literally wrote “Garden Friendship” – the correct one is zahrádkářský spolek, DeepL is pretty close).
I think we used to have these “gardeners’ clubs”, the writer Bohumil Hrabal (look up some Menzel films based on his books) referenced his, called Zahrádkáři Kersku (Gardeners of Kersko) in Slavnosti sněženek. However, it was voluntary and more of a cooperation club where members shared produce, seeds and experience, rather than having to follow aesthetic rules (besides peer pressure). I don't think we have those anymore, the culture is way more individualistic; also, Kersko is a village of recreational homes. We don't really have suburbs: single family homes have fences around their gardens and nobody cares what you have behind one.
On the other hand, most blocks of flats have a bytové družstvo (Flat Collective) with mandatory membership. These are quite strict, usually run by old women that have lived there for decades and they operate like HOAs: they dictate where you can park your car or bike and what you can hang on your door, you must go through them to change a doorbell nameplate, they facilitate repairs of shared equipment, collect fees if you rent the flat to someome else etc.
Kek. Yandex was shitty, yandex keeps being shitty.
They’re basically stratas and body corporations in Australia, except the laws basically make them not as powerful as HOAs
Turns out the rights of private property supersede the quaint concept of "freedom".
They are far from ubiquitous here. You'll typically find HOAs in new housing developments.
Most (single family) homes in the US leave the owner beholden only to governments. Some places are "unincorporated" and don't even have a municipal government at all.
HOAs exist to serve a specific subset of the population who want to own a single family home but lack the ability or willingness to do major maintenance.
My best friend just bought an HOA home against my advice, but he's terrified of doing anything with tools despite my offers to teach him. Of the dozen or so friends and family members I know who bought a home in the past decade he is the only one who was not actively repulsed by the idea of buying a home with an HOA.
What? This is completely wrong. HOAs do not maintain your home for you, that's wild that you think that's the reason for HOAs. I live in an HOA and they don't do anything besides make sure everyone's house is presentable (like no missing fence pickets) and upkeep the HOA center + pool.
It’s for the opposite of what that person said. It’s for the people who also want their neighbors to maintain their property. Whether that’s through hiring contractors or doing it themselves.
many towns pretty much require builders to make them so they don't have to pay for the local infrastructure like roads and fire hydrants and they can require flood management and such.
The way you phrased that sort of implies municipal-government things just don't get done in unincorporated places, but that's not the case. Instead, it's just that the county government handles everything directly. And of course, everywhere in the US is part of a county. (Except Louisiana, I guess, where they're called "parishes" instead. And maybe Native American reservations too, IDK?)
There are two major purposes of HOAs:
To handle maintenance of shared or collectively-owned property, such as exteriors and common areas of condominium buildings, neighborhood swimming pools, private streets, etc.
As the last tactic of segregation: once de-jure segregation was abolished (1917), property owners switched to using racist CC&Rs (deed restrictions) to keep out minorities. The first HOAs (at least for single-family house neighborhoods with little or no shared property) were created to enforce those restrictions. Even after those were ruled unenforceable (1948), HOAs remained popular as a means of creating ostensibly non-racist rules and then selectively enforcing them to harass non-white residents.
And I hate to break it to some of the folks in this thread who think their HOA is innocuous and is just there to make sure everybody's single-family house is presentable: if it isn't reason #1, then it is reason #2. You were just too innocent to realize it.
There's actually a #3 that has become common in the last ~20 years: provide the developer with a continuing revenue stream via HOA fees.
Local governments encouraging them in order to shirk their responsibilities (e.g. they don't have to maintain the street if it's private), as @HubertManne mentioned, is also recently a thing.
Still, those reasons are both very new, and thus don't apply to the vast majority of HOAs.
I own a home in an unincorporated area that also has an HOA, but ours is only for 3 things:
Yearly fire inspections (California)
Negotiating with the local trash company for service cost
Negotiating with the local propane company for lower cost
My super anti-government neighbors are still working to dissolve it, but it doesn't even have any rules that aren't "see county laws and fire code", they just don't like the $50/year fee
I'm aware my experience isn't the norm, though