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Comment by logfromblammo | Hacker News Reader

I have no sympathy for those who turn one-sided adhesion contracts into nigh-ubiquitous property covenants, just to support their petty-authoritarian model.

I have seen far too many petits Napoleons terrorizing their neighbors under an HOA aegis to defend even the HOAs that act honorably to fulfill their original intents. They should all be voided. If you can't "preserve neighborhood character" on voluntary contributions and conduct alone, your HOA doesn't deserve to exist.

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HOAs also enforce environmental requirements, legal requirements, etc. These are not voluntary payments and require payments to the HOA. Otherwise what happens it that it gets dumped on the city and everyone's taxes go up, another involuntary payment. There's a subdivision they are attempting to install next to my house by bypassing numerous requirements which are going to make HOA payments sky high. The developer is trying to do everything as cheap as possible and leave the homeowners holding the bill.

Dumping the entire burden of enforcing community conduct on the nominally democratic-republic municipal government is exactly why those governments exist. That's what they're for. City ordinances can be changed if people don't like them, or struck down by the courts if they are outright illegal.

HOAs are all about making little insular villages with none of the actual infrastructure necessary to support one, such as schools and parks and fire trucks and businesses that generate noise and traffic (and money). That is itself cutting corners to make everything as cheap as possible, and leaving the buyers holding the bag. Do you want to be part of the city that actually provides those things, or do you want to be continually subject to nasty letters for having a dandelion in your yard, just because the home building company stuck that clause in there as a marketing gimmick for the bermudagrass-monoculture lawn snobs?

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