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Comment by jp57 | Hacker News Reader

> Remove zones alone, and HOAs will get areas into legally binding covenants that are also just as tough as their current zoning regulation.

This. Houston has little or no zoning and is terribly sprawling and car-centric. Despite the lack of zoning, in most neighborhoods you can't just build whatever you want because of restrictive covenants. Developers build massive car-focused single-family-only developments and load them with covenants that prevent anything else from being built on the property after it is sold.

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You're right Houston doesn't call it zoning, but they basically have the same rules. This video sums it up well: https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k

Houston also had minimum parking requirements. Also, TXDOT literally built highways through the city. It's not JUST zoning, but zoning is a large part of it. Houston does have way lower housing costs than other places though.

Next up, get rid of HOAs.

HOAs are the most local form of democracy there is. Perhaps just reduce the overwhelming supermajority requirements to dissolve them, perhaps. In many places your only viable option if you don't like your HOA is get elected to the board yourself along with enough like-minded neighbors. You might not be able to dissolve it, but you could seriously neuter the policies if you wanted.

> HOAs are the most local form of democracy there is.

Yes, they're the most local demonstration of the fact that "democracy" is not an acceptable approach to decide what color I can paint my house, or what plants I can plant, or how soon after the 6am garbage pickup my garbage can has to be brought inside.

They're also, often, not even a democracy: they're a loudest-ocracy, because most people have better things to do with their time than dictate what their neighbors can do.

Destroy HOAs with fire.

To be clear, echoing a point from elsewhere in this thread: nobody should have to have an asphalt manufacturing plant next to their home. But that same premise doesn't extend to "nobody should have a house next to them with an Unapproved Paint Color".

Having democratic properties doesn't make a bad thing good.

But like I think states like Michigan should do things like get rid of townships (which end up being a redundant layer under counties given modern infrastructure and administrative capacity).

The dumbest meeting I ever went to was a township zoning discussion where one group disingenuously argued that wind towers were the worst thing that could ever happen, another group argued that they should be able to put a wind tower anywhere they want regardless of any impact on their neighbors, and a guy that liked his own voice talked about how natural gas is a conspiracy, or something like that.

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