Good luck with this in your typical HOA, where they forbid you to do any kind of natural landscaping, and insist on things like green grass in the middle of the desert.
(Of course, the answer here is to make sure you don't buy a house with an HOA.)
(Of course, the answer here is to make sure you don't buy a house with an HOA.)
Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.
I live in a town with a bylaw which says if you have a shared driveway, you're required to have an HOA. So, my deed and my neighbors' deeds all have an HOA built into them. It doesn't do anything, it isn't funded, but it exists on paper. When we were discussing one year the snow plowing of the shared driveway, I suggested perhaps we could have the HOA buy a truck and a plow and we could share it. My neighbors just looked at me sideways and said, "You actually want to bring an HOA to life?" I said, "yeah, good point," and that was the end of that.
I would love to have this happen. Unfortunately, many HOAs have managed to get embedded in home titles, and they have the ability to put a lien on your house if they decide they're entitled to something.
The HOA dues at the time were about $115 (the previously mentioned media agreement and neighborhood package was a major amount of it) so it wasn't because a month was missed (no one enjoyed invoking the lien process anyway as it incurs cost to the HOA as well). But as soon as the lien happens (after three letters saying the next step is lien), those who became delinquent started paying HOA dues (at least temporarily).
Now that we got out of the agreement and were able to get the HOA dues down to $25 (common area maintenance and insurance), I got off the board. I will say I've heard of some outright predatory HOAs that seemingly have it out for some homeowners, but liens as far as I'm aware are (second to) last resorts when you can't engage a homeowner to come into compliance. I hated paying for the media package too (internet and TV was garbage with them the last couple of years), but at the end of the day, the builder instituted that before any of us came into the neighborhood and all of those agreements were known to us before moving in so as trash as it is, we had to pay it.
It's not uncommon for all the available homes within a broad area (e.g. all those within walking distance of an employer) to have an HOA, making "just don't get a house with an HOA" not a viable option.
I'd love to have a "buyout" option.
In our town, supposedly (second hand info so grain of salt), one of the neighborhoods that sprung up without a HOA was pretty bad from the onset with poor maintenance on various houses (to the point of cardboard over broken glass windows) and the town somehow passed a requirement that all new developments belong to a HOA. Not sure the veracity of that (though I can confirm the spottiness of the neighborhood in question because they're adjacent from ours), but unfortunately it seems things are going more towards everything HOA route (outside of maybe buy a bunch of land on the outskirts of town and build a house. Which good luck with high speed internet and the like unless you're willing to pay to get them to install in your area).
I see pros and cons to HOAs, though even while the one I'm in isn't bad, I still am not a fan of them generally.
It's difficult and risky to push your property into a tax auction just to clear the HOA though. :)
Or possibly introduce local laws that specifically prohibit HOAs from introducing rules that are detrimental to the environment.
This is not a smart strategy.
It's very hard to change major rules because they require majority votes but a quorum is usually impossible because most people don't care enough to change the status quo.
And, when I lived in California, the HOA was pretty amenable to the xeriscaping required by town ordinance, but that is probably pretty variable by location.
My suggestion: next year plant rows of sunflowers or corn just behind the fence line. They'll grow as tall as an elephant's eye.
It requires an absurd amount of resources to keep you living comfortably when you could just choose a more reasonable climate.