The frustrating part for me as a homeowner was that dues were assessed based on square footage, but out of 200+ homes, ours was one of the only 15 or so that were fully detached. We had use of a communal driveway we shared with 5 neighbors as well as a small private park 2/3rds of a mile down the road, but other than that, we were fully responsible for all of our unshared infrastructure. If our roof had a problem we had to fix it at our own expense, even though we paid in to the roof repair fund.
There were were many more homes (ie. a city or a country instead of a neighborhood) or if there was a greater variety of homes (ie. a larger percentage of detached homes) or if there was some obvious wealth disparity (ie. our detached home wasn't smaller than many of the attached homes) or some other mitigating factors, I'd have been happy to pay in on the assumption that "what goes around comes around" and "rising tide raises all ships", but in this case, my partner and I felt pretty cheated. That said, we didn't make a stink. We just paid the damn dues (...and then later moved somewhere without an HOA).