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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

The streets can be plowed and maintained by the city. That's how it works in my locale. If the city needs aesthetic standards, they can enact them city-wide. Good luck. In my neighborhood, front yards range from fully wooded, to manicured grass, and everything in between.

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Completely ignoring the brokenness that is HOAs, it makes logical sense to have hyper-local taxes for infrastructure in places which vary in population density: dense neighborhoods will have lower per capita infrastructure maintainance costs, and it would be regressive to burden them with the costs of the (likely richer) sprawl.

That's fair. One issue is that the collection of city taxes is severely constrained by the state (at least where I'm at).

Maybe the richer sprawl is paying on a higher valuation, but I don't know if that's enough to even things out.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/10/i-did-the-math...

This is very much a tangent, but that article seems to state that per mile, a sidewalk costs about twice as much as a road. Does anyone know why that is?

That's interesting. Pure speculation but I can imagine they have a higher material and labour cost per sq meter. The Installation of curbs and curb cuts must make a difference. Also, in the UK at least, while low traffic pavements (sidewalks) are generally tarmac, in high traffic areas they're often paving stones, brick or even concrete. These must be more expensive. I'd guess you're also more likely to hit utilities. Whenever I see workmen installing or fixing water pipes, sewers, fiber atc they're usually doing it along the side of the road or under the pavement as this means you only have to close one half of the road.

From looking at repairs around me, the road stuff is mostly done with large machines, whereas sidewalks are very much a manual hands on process.

A problem is: this functionally isn't how HOAs end up working. The opposite is true: higher density living areas (in order of decreasing density: apartments, condos, suburban subdivisions/cul-de-sacs) generally have HOAs. Lower density areas (rural) don't. In the US, in most cities and counties, the "sprawl" isn't rich; its poor.

At the high-end of the high density spectrum, it does make some logical sense that there are communal resources and structures which the local government has never traditionally paid for; roofing, plumbing inside the structure, pools, 24/7 security, whatever. Its the middle-point in that spectrum where things become less defensible. A road is a road; water is water; keeping these maintained is literally why we pay taxes.

Local governments have essentially figured out how to have their cake and eat it too: property developers come in and make the investment to develop some former farming land or whatever. Tons of new houses go up, which brings in people, who pay taxes to the local government. Then, the local government gets to wash their hands and say, we're not maintaining it (depending on the development; not all work like this), as if what happened is different in any way from how land development has traditionally happened, except that they got a private company to foot the upfront bill.

Power-hungry HOA rules are a really similar thread of reasoning. Traditionally, we had this thing called "a shitty neighbor"; and if they got really shitty, you'd call the police. HOAs move the goalpost on the definition of "shitty", then bypass the police in their enforcement mechanism; also saving the city money. The argument is, generally; that shitty neighbors depress property values; but the largest negative impact you'll ever see to property value is the HOA fee itself.

So, the final argument for HOAs: Just don't buy a house with one. The US housing situation is already at an absolutely critical point. There's little empty land left that is affordable for private individuals to develop. There are huge amounts of large plots; usually former farm-land or factory sites; which get purchased by development organizations, developed, and HOA'd. Removing HOA'd houses removes the vast majority of new constructions in most metro-adjacent counties; which turns the already-critical housing shortage into a nightmare.

I think its reasonable to assert that HOA fees can exist toward the maintenance of either a shared structure, or generally, shared resources which don't fall under the responsibility of the county's municipal functions (e.g. pools). Everything beyond that is extremely difficult to defend, and literally needs to be made illegal. I understand that this isn't as easy as signing a bill, if only because overnight many counties would see their burden of responsibility increase dramatically; but it needs to be done.

> In the US, in most cities and counties, the "sprawl" isn't rich; its poor.

This isn't exactly true. Sprawl generally refers to low density properties on the urban periphery, which isn't enough detail to generalize either way.

There are both and poor and rich neighborhoods of all densities. High density rich is your Manhattans, wealthy urban environments for well-to-do yuppies.

High density poor is your classic "inner city" which usually gained a reputation for crime during the white flight / redlining era, which continues to plague the area to today. Common systemic issues include poorly performing school systems, food deserts, and noise pollution (particularly from highways that were built in the middle of residential neighborhoods during the redlining era; these also cause air quality issues)

Low density rich can be either a commuter "sprawl" neighborhood, often gated, with large expensive properties, in an area with a well funded school system; as well as "rural" escapes like Martha's Vineyard, Long Island, and such.

Low density poor can be rural (as in farming) areas, plus many exurbs of major cities where the poor can afford to live but in exchange need hour plus commutes to get to work.

Society should look after everyone. This means regardless of where people live. You shouldn't be directly on the hook for communal services that you use. You solve inequality with taxation.

This usually means looking after less fortunate, and not by choice. Here we are taking money from those who are living constrained, and giving it to people loving in greater luxury.

This does not make sence.

You tax at a more macro level. The more you localise the tax take, the more you disadvantage people somehow. It works both ways. Saying that HOAs should pay for their fancy lawns in rich neighborhoods also means poor people have to foot the bill in their poor neighborhoods. Instead, you tax at a national level and clean all the streets. That way everyone gets the shared benefit and everyone pays proportionally to what they can afford.

Why stop at the national level? Wouldn't it be better to tax globally and clean the streets everywhere?

Your sarcastically make a good point - we couls have globally accessible sanitation and basic education for pennies, and lift like a billion people out of poverty.

Could we, though? I suspect some residents of the world don't care about clean streets and don't want to pay for them. Some other maladjusted individuals might even prefer dirty streets.

It seems like if we could build a global utopia where everyone agrees to the same homogeneous rules and values that we'd have done this already.

Also, I think pennies is the wrong unit of currency to use when budgeting for this harmonious future.

> Some other maladjusted individuals might even prefer dirty streets.

There are mant problems in the world - poverty, corruption, ignorancr, violence. But I have neber heard of, well, whatever this is, love of dirt?

I have travelled quite a bit and have never encountered opposition to sanitation, running water and toilets.

I've worked janitorial jobs and building maintenance and I can assure you there are people whose actions bely their appreciation of these amenities.

Why not? Isn't it fairest way? That is everyone pays for up keep of services they receive, like water, electricity and sewers. If it is desired to support certain groups, they should just receive money which they then can pay for these services.

The trend since the 1970s has been to privatize everything that was once public, shifting the cost burden to the individual and family

This is bad

But it's the reality on the ground and it's going to take generations to unwind

For sewer & road infrastructure this is good. The cost of providing infrastructure should be clear to homeowners and residents so smart long term financial planning can be done. It's too easy for people to kick the can down the road for future generations to deal with.

Having seen what happens when the HOA members not affected by infrastructure problems vote for the health of their wallets rather than their neighbors, I cannot agree that this is an unequivocal good.

You're right, it is too easy for people to kick the can down the road. Making it even easier for them to do so will not help.

Do you think unrelated tax payers and voters on the other side of the city will act differently?

This may be naive, but shifting the cost towards families doesn't immediately mean that it must be privatized. Can you not achieve the same goal, making it clear that if your house in a specific area requires higher sewer and infrastructure costs, through something like property taxes? This way you don't get the problems of a HOA?

Many states have limitations on property taxes. That’s the lesser told reason why there has been such a push to privatization. It’s a direct consequence of the “tax revolt” that started in the 1970s.

Well for instance in California this is literally impossible since the law mandates that property taxes fall in real dollars in perpetuity.

> Well for instance in California this is literally impossible since the law mandates that property taxes fall in real dollars in perpetuity.

No, this is not true.

You're thinking of Prop 13 which limits the increase in the assessed value of the home to 2% per year. That is true.

However, property taxes are the sum of the taxes resulting from that assessment, plus, additional local fees for all kinds of reasons. Shared maintenance of local areas is one such fee.

Where I live (in California) there is no HOA (thankfully), but the parks and trails within the neighborhood are maintained by the city from funds collected in our property taxes as a distinct line item. These fees can and do go up, they are not constrained by Prop 13 limitations since they have nothing to do with the assessed value of the home.

It's a wonderful system and completely debunks the arguments for needing a HOA.

I’ve seen this done with Mello-Roos taxes, which usually have an expiration date and have to be set when the neighborhood is built. Otherwise I’m not aware of how it can be done.

They can tack on fees for specific purposes to the property tax. I haven't looked into the specific procedure the county & city uses to add them.

For example here we used to pay for sewer maintenance as part of the water bill. Then they decided to move sewer taxes to be part of the property tax and so it became.

(Cynically, they did it to raise water rates without attracting too much attention. The sewer fee was moved to property taxes but the water rates rose so that the water bill was about the same even though sewer was no longer in the monthly bill.)

Eh?!

You want basic utilities controlled by an HOA and not a elected, audited and accountable organisation?

Doesn't need to be an HOA, but some organization or company where there is pressure to ensure that unsustainable properties aren't built

This is explicitly the role of city planning boards - and almost every city has at least one

I sat on the Cheverly, MD planning board for two years

If you want to provide that pressure then you should join the city planning board

A poor assertion. Making individual neighborhoods manage infrastructure inflates the cost of it due to low economies of scale. Should neighborhoods have their own water treatment and power generation plants too?

Individual neighborhoods wouldn't need to manage infrastructure, just pay for it specifically

I know the cost of providing infrastructure, it's called taxes. I get an itemized tax bill from my township every year explaining all major expenditures and proposed tax changes for next year.

Does that tax bill include the amount of cost paid by federal/state subsidies or debt?

Columbia, MD is a "planned" community. They probably have more laws about aesthetics, than many towns. The town might not be much better than the HOA.

In California if the hoa gets too uppity the state declares it a town. And there are limits on what a town can do.

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