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Comment by db48x | Hacker News Reader

Someone always scoffs, but I think it is usually a sign that they don’t really understand freedom. In particular, the freedom of association. Many countries recognize it, so I don't need to get in to the exact legal justifications for it.

Put plainly, this is the freedom to form groups that govern the behavior of their members. A group could be a dinner party, a study group, a book club, a circle of friends. It can also be much more serious. It could be a corporation, a union, a church, a political party, or a religion. Or it could be an HOA, or a town, or a state. If you like one or more of those types of groups then it is important to protect the freedom of association, even if you don’t like any of the others.

Every group has rules, even the most informal. When you invite your friends out to dinner you probably don’t sit down and vote on the exact rules your dinner party will follow, but your party has rules regardless. And every group punishes violations of the rules somehow. If you get drunk and dance naked on top of a table, then you will suffer some form of sanction by the other members of the dinner party. At the very least you probably won’t be invited back. More formal groups like HOAs, corporations, and towns tend to have written rules and proscribed punishments for violations. They also have built–in ways of changing those rules.

Ultimately some HOAs are useful while others are petty and run by vindictive idiots. An HOA that was useful for 50 years and never created any drama could turn bad next year when they elect some new board members. An HOA that is bad today _could_ elect new board members and then become drama–free and stay that way for 50 years, even if it seems unlikely. People who end up in a petty HOA usually regret it, and come to see joining any HOA as a big mistake. People in a sane HOA often wonder what the fuss is about.

But here’s the truth: true freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes, even big mistakes.

The freedom of association allows us to join any group we want, but sometimes joining will be a mistake. You can’t prevent people from making those mistakes without limiting their freedom. You can’t even reliably predict which mistakes they’re going to make, so you would end up preventing them from doing things that wouldn’t be mistakes too.

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HOAs require more than (or a very specific extension of) freedom of association to exist: they require an ability to bind any future owners of a piece of land to join the HOA (regardless of how they acquired that land: via sale, inheritance, bankruptcy, ...). For property that's not real estate that's usually not possible (see e.g. inability of companies to provide binding promises on how the data they have are used after they go bankrupt). Given that this ability applies very inconsistently across types of property, it doesn't seem like an essential part of freedom of association.

> HOAs require more than […] freedom of association to exist: they require an ability to bind any future owners of a piece of land to join the HOA […].

You are often not buying a piece of land when you move to a HOA-linked residence, rather you can be buying a particular unit, but there are also 'common areas' that are the property of the legal entity of the HOA.

If you do not want to be part of an HOA then you have to purchase what is called (at least in Canada) freehold land.

> While most people hear the word “condo” and think of an apartment style unit, that’s not always the case. Some townhouses (and even certain detached homes) are considered condos too.

* https://teamkate.ca/difference-freehold-condo-home

* https://www.squareyards.ca/blog/freehold-vs-leasehold-regart...

* https://wowa.ca/freehold-meaning

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freehold_(law)

If you do not want to be part of an HOA tell your real estate broker that this is one of the criteria for where you want to live.

I have no idea about Canada, but in the US, there are lots of single-family home neighborhoods that have, "Home Owner's Associations".

the GP wasn't talking about the type of structure but the legal organization of the property ownership. Canadian provinces have a Condominium Property Act that defines the legislative framework. The implementation can vary by types of units (ranging from apartment-style to single family homes) and the ownership - typically "you own the inside; communal outside" or "you own the inside & dirt; communal outside and shared public spaces". You don't hear talk of "The HOA" but rather "The Condo Board"

Thanks for the clarification.

> If you do not want to be part of an HOA tell your real estate broker that this is one of the criteria for where you want to live.

Yes, tell your realtor "I don't want to look at any of the properties you have for sale, or any properties within the greater [insert city here] metro area, or for that matter any geographical location within 100 miles of here". He'd look at you less strangely, and might even chuckle instead of telling you to go fuck yourself and to not waste his time.

And the best part of all is that these two requests are essentially identical.

People talk to real estate agents? I thought things like Zillow completely eliminated that step...

All Zillow does is put you in touch with a real estate agent.

Where do you live? That sounds terrible.

I would never consider any house encumbered with an HOA, and I would fire any realtor who ignored my wishes by showing one - but it's never been an issue, here in Seattle.

At least where I live such a request would barely remove any houses from your search. Your response is very location dependent.

I for one would not only not by an HOA encumbered home but I’d not move to an area where that would be an issue

The local government in many areas is often requiring an HOA to be formed for new developments to manage stormwater and road maintenance that they don’t want to be responsible for.

In those situations the HOA could be seen as government imposed rather than purely “freedom of association”.

I own a 100 year old home so there is no HOA but it’s difficult for most people to afford such homes since there’s a limited supply and they’re often either in highly desirable or blighted city centers.

In all fairness, if the majority of the members of the HOA don't like them, surely they could vote to disband it?

It can be done, yes. If the HOA owns and maintains common property then it has to dispose of that somehow. For example, it might need to sell the pool, get the city’s parks department to maintain the playground, and the wastewater department to maintain the drainage pond first.

There are many countries in the world which don't measure their freedom in eagles per square burger yet are totally free to associate, and they do. I cannot do much in my neighborhood either (Switzerland here) but there is a respected process for raising cases and handling exceptions and all that. We call this the rule of law, by no means perfect either. This doesn't seem to be the case with the HOA where the system guarantees you living under the will of the leadership - be they idiots or geniuses. So if liberty is defined by randomness, yes, HOA defines the land of the free. Otherwise please allows us to scoff.

> So if liberty is defined by randomness, yes, HOA defines the land of the free

It’s the freedom to choose an HOA, or alternatively, anything else you like.

Also, while HOAs might make decisions stupidly, I don’t think they do it randomly.

they are doing it to exclude those that don't fit into their style of life. it's discrimination, plain and simple.

to compare with europe: as far as i know germany or austria don't have the equivalent of a HOA, but what is allowed and what isn't is defined by local law. the closest example i could find are rules a landlord is allowed to impose on their tenants. for example, if i rent a house with garden, then the landlord can demand that i take care of the garden, but they can not specify how often i am supposed to mow the lawn or how high i let it grow.

if not even a landlord can make such rules for their own property, then a HOA would have even less chance to make such rules for homeowners.

that said, local laws can be quite far reaching, especially when it comes to aspects that affect the character of a neighborhood which includes rules on the outside design of the house and the front yard. not something i am happy about myself. beyond that these rules are mostly about things directly affect and cause problems for the neighbors. otherwise a homeowner has the right to do whatever they want on their property.

as for the freedom to choose an HOA. no such freedom exists. because my choice of where i live is not defined by the HOA but by other considerations like location and cost and most importantly, availability. the argument that i could have moved somewhere else if i didn't like this HOA is not really reasonable given the housing shortage in most places.

the right to live somewhere trumps the freedom of association

In Germany there is the in some - but not all - aspects similar concept of WEG (Wohneigentumsgemeinschaft).

ah, right, but those are only in apartment buildings. it's a good place to research though what responsibilities and powers those have.

In buildings with differently owned apartments it's required but in theory (and in some places in practice) you could also setup multiple buildings on a common plot of land with one.

> they are doing it to exclude those that don't fit into their style of life. it's discrimination, plain and simple.

Freedom of association is the freedom to associate with whoever you choose and not to associate with anybody you choose not to. You can’t have feeedom of association without the freedom to discriminate against people you don’t want to associate with.

> the argument that i could have moved somewhere else if i didn't like this HOA is not really reasonable given the housing shortage in most places.

Less than a third of US households are a part of HOAs, with most of them being apartments (where that type of regulation is typical almost everywhere in the world). Your argument that HOAs are monopolising housing supply doesn’t stand up to the facts.

> You can’t have feeedom of association without the freedom to discriminate against people you don’t want to associate with.

So I should be free to leave an HOA? No wait, I can't without selling my house as well. Restricting the right to free association as a condition for purchasing housing seems onerous.

How could you end up in an HOA without choosing the be in one? You couldn’t…

Freedom of association isn’t a magic ability that means you can never regret entering a contract.

how? by not being able to find a house that is not governed by an HOA

Don't be ridiculous. Every metropolitan area has some homes for sale which aren't part of an HOA. If you don't like the price or location or school district or something then that's your problem, not an issue with the concept of HOAs.

But you can, so what are you even complaining about?

80% of homes on sale today come with an HOA (according to john oliver)

In the United States it would be discrimination if, for example, the rules were selectively enforced against people of a certain protected class such as race or religion.

HOA control is simply a covenant written into the deed of certain properties by the original developer that is then inherited in perpetuity by future deed holders.

The deeds of all properties on certain blocks in my neighborhood have a similar covenant saying that your building must be set back 14 feet from the curb in order to create a luxury boulevard-width sidewalk.

A homeowner can’t sell me the right to build up to the curb or the right to ignore the HOA because they can’t sell a right they never owned in the first place.

Freedom of association is not relevant here.

it is also discrimination if a rule applies to everyone, but only a certain group is actually affected by the rule. for example forbidding to build a ramp would be discriminating against wheelchair users, whereas others don't even need a ramp.

> In the United States it would be discrimination if, for example, the rules were selectively enforced against people of a certain protected class such as race or religion.

To modernize an old sawhorse, those don't-lie-down-here spikes on flat surfaces make it impossible for millionaires and the homeless alike to sleep in many places. That's not so much of a problem for the millionaires.

You do not have the freedom to choose an HOA, only the freedom to move somewhere else. Unless you define "freedom" as "not held captive", I don't think that really counts.

A fun John Oliver video on how corrupt HOA's are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os

I think HOAs are dumb, but who had ever been forced to buy a home that’s part of an HOA?

according to the video, that would be 80% of those buying a home today.

It's not a force, it's a choice. When we bought our home every home built in the area in the last 40 years had an HOA. The only non-HOA choices are basically taking a giant gamble on how terribly the previous owners updated it to modern standards, instead of buying something built with modern plumbing and electrics. So sure, the HOA was a choice. But it was forced.

Freedom? You usually have to live somewhere near your work or where other family lives, and most HOAs have very similar cookie-cutter rules with the differences determined by something akin to mob rule.

Most housing in the US is not part of an HOA. In fact, around half is apartments, and apartment dwellers are subject to rules made by their landlords. In an HOA (or condo association), at least you can vote on the rules or join the board.

Switzerland is an "ultra-localist" country according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb and I'd agree. The Kantons have more power than the federal government. So in essence, Switzerland and the USA are much alike. It's just that the USA has a flavor of this localism so extreme and chaotic that the resident in a way is supposed to relocate to a better place if they don't like it (see residents fleeing California for better places). Switzerland seems to have a more orderly form of localism where instead of the resident, the representative moves.

Most people in the US don't live in an HOA. You may join one and enjoy its benefits, or not. Nobody is forced to. Many people want to join an HOA to enjoy its benefits but not obey its rules. These are the type of people who believe they are the center of the universe yet are in such a unique position that the laws of the rest of the universe don't apply to them.

Its worth noting that its common, at least in my experience, for HOA membership to be part of a real estate purchase contract. Meaning, if you want to buy a house and it happens to be in a neighborhood with an HOA, you don't have the option to buy that house and not join the HOA.

I've never understood why we allow that to be legal, just like neighborhoods or complexes that are age restricted, but we allow it none the less.

We allow it to be legal because:

1. Most homes aren’t in an HOA, so you have plenty of options if you don’t like it.

2. It prevents all sorts of tragedies of the commons.

3. HOAs would have no power at all if you could opt out. It has to be part of the contract. They can be dissolved entirely, but that’s the only mechanism for getting out.

4. We believe in individual freedom, which includes the ability to chose to trade freedom for certain benefits. I trade my freedom to leave a rusty old boat in my driveway for the benefit of not having my neighbors do that. Most of us don’t have or want the sorts of things that bring down property values and don’t want to suddenly find ourselves living next to people who do.

This is perhaps a symptom of a larger problem: homes are very expensive. If homes were cheap and moving were easy, perhaps HOAs would never have been invented. But for most Americans who own one a home is a substantial portion of their net worth. We want to protect it.

People who complain about HOAs existing are the same as the people who complain about EVs. If you don’t want one, don’t buy it.

==If homes were cheap and moving were easy, perhaps HOAs would never have been invented. But for most Americans who own one a home is a substantial portion of their net worth. We want to protect it.==

It may not have been the reason for their invention (I can't find information on that), but they certainly exploded in popularity in an effort to restrict people from selling their homes to non-white people (see: Racially Restrictive Covenants). It's kind of ironic to see people laud them as a form of "freedom" while their history as a tool of blatant racial discrimination is available for all to read.

==People who complain about HOAs existing are the same as the people who complain about EVs. If you don’t want one, don’t buy it.==

Doesn't this act as a type of restriction on housing supply thus increasing the upward pressure on housing costs by limiting options? Not to mention the actual costs of funding the HOA, which directly increases housing prices.

I would not be surprised if it once served a racist function, a lot of things did, and I’m glad that’s now illegal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it still happens sometimes but I’m sure it’s the exception rather than the rule.

Most HOAs don’t even have the right to screen tenants, if you can purchase the house and will sign the contract you’re in and have the same voting rights and responsibilities as the other residents.

==I would not be surprised if it once served a racist function==

It is a verifiable fact found across the country [0]. Many of the covenants still exist today, although they are legally unenforceable. That said, I have read many comments on this site about how non-competes have long been considered legally unenforceable, but can still have a chilling effect on those impacted (Thankfully, this has recently changed).

I think the more interesting aspect, in regards to today's world, is how HOAs lead to even higher housing costs during a housing affordability crisis. This happens through both explicit expenses (monthly HOA dues) and implicit expenses (lawn maintenance, regulation of architectural changes/additions, rental restrictions, etc.) on homeowners.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2021/11/17/1049052531/racial-covenants-h...

> 1. Most homes aren’t in an HOA, so you have plenty of options if you don’t like it.

That'd be an interesting stat to see, I assume it varies greatly by location.

> 2. It prevents all sorts of tragedies of the commons.

How so? Collective power can make tragedy of the commons problems worse. While a single family likely wouldn't buy up an adjacent piece of woods to clear for a neighborhood park, an HOA may be able to do that before someone else buys and develops the woods.

> 3. HOAs would have no power at all if you could opt out. It has to be part of the contract. They can be dissolved entirely, but that’s the only mechanism for getting out.

HOAs have whatever power the community gives them, there's nothing saying an HOA couldn't be optional. I actually lived in a neighborhood outside of Seattle with an optional HOA, it worked just fine.

> 4. We believe in individual freedom, which includes the ability to chose to trade freedom for certain benefits. I trade my freedom to leave a rusty old boat in my driveway for the benefit of not having my neighbors do that. Most of us don’t have or want the sorts of things that bring down property values and don’t want to suddenly find ourselves living next to people who do.

And that's totally reasonable. My point wasn't that there aren't incentives for homeowners to make that choice for themselves, only that it has always felt like an infringement of rights to legally bind a property to HOA governance.

> People who complain about HOAs existing are the same as the people who complain about EVs. If you don’t want one, don’t buy it.

I'm not sure where you're getting this anecdote, but here I am complaining about HOAs and I own an EV. This analogy really doesn't fit, one person's decision to buy an EV has no impact on other's right to choose what to buy where as an HOA does.

I suppose the commons issue depends on how you define the commons. HOAs often have communal areas like a pool. A communal pool with many owners no HOA would quickly become a disaster and probably form something like an HOA really fast.

An optional HOA would just be opted out of by the worst offenders. If the whole goal is to keep your neighbors from ruining your property value, the ones who do would just opt out. The guy with the car on blocks can just sell himself his own house to get out of it.

How is anything you get into willingly an infringement on your rights? Nobody ever had to buy a house that had to remain inside an HOA. They chose to and can choose not to.

That’s what I meant by the EV thing. You’re complaining about a choice other people made willingly. Why not just not make the choice and let others do it?

That's interesting, I'm not actually sure how a community pool would really exist without an entity that's responsible for it (either an HOA, the city/county, or a private club).

> How is anything you get into willingly an infringement on your rights?

Sure, once you sign the contract you've agreed to it. My point is just that it seems unreasonable for an HOA to effectively claim authority or ownership over a piece of property. I once lived in an HOA neighborhood that was in legal proceedings with a neighbor who refused to play along, the neighborhood was pretty damn close to foreclosing on the property before the owner finally sold and left.

The EV example is still very different though. Buyers can choose to but any vehicle they want, there is no higher authority attempting to claim authority over some vehicles and requiring you submit to their rules and pay a membership fee. Buy an EV or don't, its totally up to the buyer. Additionally, when an EV owner wants to sell they aren't limited to the pool of buyers willing to join a private club, you just sell the car.

Well again, the person who the HOA was in legal proceedings against signed a document saying they would do “x” then did not do “x”. The document also outlined what happens if they didn’t do it, including, at the very end, taking the house. I believe every state has laws that make it very hard for an HOA to foreclose, they do not just do it on a whim. It’s simple contract enforcement, just as you’d get your house taken if you didn’t pay your mortgage or city property taxes. I don’t see what the issue is. I’m sure there are some egregious corner cases, there always are, but as a rule I see no problem with someone who signs a contract being bound by the terms of the contract, in fact I’d see a problem if they weren’t.

My point about the EVs is people who hate EVs and do ridiculous stuff like block chargers are simply getting mad about other people’s decisions that don’t effect them. I don’t want an EV so I don’t own one, but I’m in no way angry that they exist or that you do.

Hating your own HOA I totally understand, there are days I hate mine, but hating the idea that someone else is in an HOA willingly I do not.

> Most homes aren’t in an HOA, so you have plenty of options if you don’t like it.

If we are talking about suburban/urban homes, some large percentage are in an HOA. Most people who own instead of renting do have to contend with HOAs. There are not plenty of options. In many cases, there are no other options at all.

> It prevents all sorts of tragedies of the commons.

What sort of "tragedy of the commons" does it prevent, exactly? That because I was laid off and had to take a lower-paying, higher-houred job, my house goes unpainted a little too long, and now the paint's peeling and chipping? That because of weather, I had to wait 3 extra weekends to mow the lawn (can't do it when I go home after work, not allowed to do it after 6pm or whatever) and now it's too tall?

These aren't tragedies.

> HOAs would have no power at all if you could opt out.

Exactly. But you never bothered to ask why they should ever have power at all. The people who have these powers are people who should never have power under any conceivable circumstances. If there were a way to somehow discover people who craved to be on HOA boards, I would support a constitutional amendment to rescind their voting rights.

> We believe in individual freedom, which includes the ability to chose

Spoken by the sort of person who cheers on as the non-HOA choices dwindle to nothing.

I have a compromise that just occurred to me. If, for instance, only 1.2% of homes within a given region (perhaps legislative districts) could be included within an HOA, and if the HOAs had to bid on an HOA license, such that they're competing with each other to be included in the HOA... then the true cost of HOA apologism could be factored into the market. If you want to live in one, and if that HOA has to pay for a $12 million annual license (they could easily be bid up this high, and if you're honest with yourself you know I'm right), then who am I to tell you HOAs are bad? You're paying a premium for it and it's restricted to a tiny fraction of all available homes.

> If homes were cheap and moving were easy, perhaps HOAs would never have been invented.

Not even close to how this works. The people who favor HOAs are emotionally invested in how others manage their own households. They're not the kind of people who are easily chased away. Quite the contrary, they want to chase others away. You know, the wrong kind of people.

> People who complain about HOAs existing are the same as the people who complain about EVs. If you don’t want one, don’t buy it.

Funny that example, you belong to a political constituency that is doing whatever they can to make it illegal to sell any non-EV.

I thought you were an idiot until the last sentence and now I know it. "Eighty-nine percent of homeowners who live under an HOA say the HOA's rules protect and enhance property values". You can't tell someone's political constituency when they belong to the same group as 90% of people. You're certainly wrong about mine, and nearly everything else you said, to the point where there's nothing here worth responding to. This drivel belongs on Reddit.

Let's say I sell you a basketball with some restrictions. For instance, you are never allowed to kick the ball. If you ever kick the ball, some pre-defined penalty is imposed.

You might say that I didn't sell the ball. I sold a bundle of rights regarding the ball, but I retained some other bundle of rights.

Your gym membership accords you some rights, but not all rights to the gym equipment. Do you think that should be illegal?

As long as a contract clearly delineates which rights are included and excluded I don't understand why you would want this to be illegal.

You might question why somebody would buy a car that contains a radio but the purchase of the car doesn't include the radio and the new owner is not allowed to manipulate the radio. It may not make sense to you. But that doesn't make the arrangement illegal.

Illegality and immorality are too often at odds.

Laws that the majority view as immoral should just be abolished. We don't do that nearly enough, but that'd be a part of any functional legal system that's actually designed by and for the people.

I don't understand it myself, but some people like the forced conformity and the legal requirement to fund and maintain certain amenities, including streets, etc. Maybe it's an (over)reaction to "to much freedom" in some sense of the phrase. It's probably also a way to bypass greater government and keep infrastructure funds more hyper-local, which can have social consequences.

That being said I live in a condominium, but it's an apartment-style one. It's the only way I can afford to live in the central city. In that case there needs to be some setup to maintain the elevators, overall structure, and other common elements. But if I owned a house with actual land, the only restrictions I'd want are on actual nuisances (mostly continuous noise - a party once in awhile is fine) or safety.

That is not how HOAs work. They have a very defined set of rules, and a very defined process for changing and enforcing those rules. You are not at the mercy of anyone.

Local laws supersede HOA rules where they conflict and often cause “grandfathering” when HOA rules change. For instance, my condo board tried to get me to remove my grill. I pointed out that nowhere in the condo bylaws was a grill mentioned. They said something about city fire codes, so I got a note from the fire department. They were unable to force me to do anything.

HOAs in my city have passed rules saying owners may not use their condos for short term rental. But my city law says that changes do not apply to people who owned their rentals before the rules changed. So new owners may not but old ones still can.

Rule of law still applies, and everything is agreed to when you buy the property. You could simply buy a home outside of an HOA, so this is, squarely, freedom of association.

Nobody was implying that other countries do not have this freedom, in fact, he said the fact that they do is why he did not need to justify it.

> You are not at the mercy of anyone.

In many jurisdictions within the United States, an HOA can assess fines for exceedingly trivial violations, then after the fines remain unpaid for a time period as short as 6 weeks, file to sell your home at auction to pay the fees. They can take your home from you, evict you from it, and this is deemed perfectly legal. Do they have to provide proof, for instance, that your grass was actually one half inch too tall? No, there is no adversarial process where they would have to prove that were the case.

> I pointed out that nowhere in the condo bylaws was a grill mentioned. They said something about city fire codes, so I got a note from the fire department. They were unable to force me to do anything.

It must be very thrilling to be able to be an amateur lawyer and win a case. Have fun, because those people tend to hold grudges. My experience is that you'll never have a week of peace for as long as you live there again.

This all happened 3 years ago. I’ve never heard a word from my HOA since. I think the HOA board actually believed it was against fire code, but it turns out that’s only true if you’re not on the ground floor. (My community is 4 stories so 3/4 of people cannot have grills). Other grills have appeared since.

They can only assess you fines for violations of rules you agreed to. And fines are usually small. For instance, in my last HOA, they fined me $15 for having A flag holder. I ignored the warning because it was there when I bought the place and I didn’t really want it anyway, and then when the fine came, I simply removed the flag holder and paid $15. Most of the cases were the end up confiscating somebody’s property is because they are simply egregiously not doing something they had already signed a contract saying they would do. I am sure there are cases, they always are, but it isn’t a legitimate problem.

> That is not how HOAs work. They have a very defined set of rules, and a very defined process for changing and enforcing those rules. You are not at the mercy of anyone.

This. I live in a drama-free HOA and appreciate it for what it is and does. I had to review and agree to the covenants of my HOA as a condition for closing. The rule most likely to be in violation here is something along the lines of “only operational automobiles in good condition are permitted to be parked in the driveway; any boats, recreational vehicles, broken down or unsightly vehicles must be behind a fence”. The whole point is to maintain a clean, safe, attractive, and ultimately desirable neighborhood so as to protect property values on behalf of the association’s members.

Although this homeowner’s actions are characteristic of malicious compliance, I believe the net effect is precisely in line with the stated purpose of the HOA: in compliance with the rules, an elegant mural depicting a pristine boat now adorns a new fence that restricts sight of and access to a boat of unknown condition. Anyone driving by looking to buy might come away with a chuckle and the sense that the neighborhood is committed to maintaining a safe and attractive environment for homeowners.

> That is not how HOAs work. They have a very defined set of rules, and a very defined process for changing and enforcing those rules. You are not at the mercy of anyone.

This is very idealistic, but not quite how it works. HOA boards can and do constantly violate with impunity the rules they are supposed to follow. Most often to embezzle funds but also to enforce their personal will.

You can contest this of course, you can go to court. It takes pretty deep pockets to pay for lawyers and years of persistence. I know multiple people in years-and-years-long legal battles with HOAs. Those who have enough money to see it through often usually win, but it takes a lot of patience and money. Most people don't have that kind of cash to blow on fighting corrupt HOAs.

As an American with a strong general preference for the metric system, "eagles per square burger" is my new favorite sarcastic unit.

I would add that this statement might equally apply to government - that is, if you disagree with the policies of a local government (property tax too high, school district underperforming, etc), move somewhere else. If you disagree with your state, move to another one. And if you disagree with national policies, immigrate to a country whose policies you agree with. But therein lies the pitfall of freedom of association - if you disagree with your HOA, or your local/state/federal government, you may not have the financial or legal means to change your situation.

I see a dichotomy of "associations with oversight" and the converse (associations with no oversight). If your HOA forces you to build a fence, there is no appeal process similar to if a government entity charges you with a crime (e.g. appeal to a state/federal circuit court and ultimately to a supreme court). Within each is an enforcement mechanism that may or may not work. In your dinner party example, which is an association with no oversight, a naked table dancer may simply crash the subsequent gatherings. In all levels of government, there are those who continue to hold their position regardless of the misdeeds and accusations levied against them.

Perhaps that is the essential trade-off of freedom, to be free to associate with any group of people despite the possibility of being victimized by them (now or in the future).

Yeah I'm having trouble understanding how /u/db48x's logic doesn't apply equally well to all political systems. Maybe the next time someone complains to me about Biden's policies, I should just respond that they don't understand freedom.

The USA believes so hard in the freedom of association that we are willing to let people leave whenever they want. You don’t need permission, just find somewhere better and go there. Compare that with the Soviet Union, or East Germany, or China, or North Korea. In those countries leaving may technically be allowed, but may require a lifetime of asking for permission. The Soviet Union didn’t even provide its own people with maps lest they find out where the borders were.

As an American "leaving" you may need to pay your taxes on the way out (giving up citizenship).

> Compare that with the Soviet Union, or East Germany, or China, or North Korea

Would it be better to compare current, non-totalitarian governments, such as EU, Australia, or the like? It kind of sounds disingenuous to use extreme examples. (No dig to you or your opinion, just don't see how using those examples helps.)

As I already said, many countries have freedom of association to one degree or another. You could spend a lot of effort to distinguish countries with a similar degree of freedom, but I chose to list a few obvious examples of countries that do not have that freedom. Or did not, as the case may be.

Not a dig on you, but I find it telling that in discussions about the freedom of upping up and leaving, money is always mentioned as a limiting factor, but never community. For many, moving means losing the social ties they have, and that can be devastating. I wonder if it's a HN or American oversight.

Does HN have a higher than average # of immigrants or first-generation citizens? That could explain it.

No, introverts.

What do you mean? Per the discussion, escaping social ties is the whole point of wanting to leave. If you fit into the community, what reason would there be to leave?

You can have a community in the neighbourhood who aren't ruling the HOA.

But then said community will overthrow the HOA, so, again, no reason to leave. The earlier suggestion of leaving was based on a situation where you don't find the community you need. Escaping the social ties was the sole reason for leaving. Why would escaping a community that you don't fit into be the same limiting factor that keeps you there? That doesn't make any sense.

Why would you think that is the case?

Because I do not believe that HOAs are magic. What makes you think that they are?

My grandparents immigrated to the USA and lost all their social ties. They were better off for it.

It's an interesting tradeoff of freedoms when you consider how free a person is to leave a HOA. Purely legally speaking, they are free to leave at any time if the HOA starts to enforce unjust restrictions - but practically speaking, moving house is onerous and many are not in a position to do it. This is essentially a contract where you enter freely, but the other party has the ability to vary the terms unilaterally, and your only recourse is to exit.

A tech analogy comes to mind. We freely choose to host our workloads in a Server Owner's Association (sorry, cloud service provider), and we take on the risk that the provider may change the offering and impose restrictions that we don't like. They will tell us that we are free to leave at any time, but switching clouds can be non-trivial to say the least, leaving us feeling trapped and decidedly unfree.

The freedom to enter into private contracts is the freedom to bind oneself.

I would say that your first recourse is the ability to read all the financial documents. As a property owner in an HOA you have every right to read the contracts that your HOA has signed, to audit the books, and to otherwise verify that the HOA board is doing their job correctly. Second recourse is to vote in the elections. If you elect petty tyrants, you get petty tyranny. Third is to run for the board yourself to make sure things are being done correctly.

And if all that is too tiresome then yea, sell your property and buy a house that isn’t in an HOA. Most houses aren’t.

Most houses arent

I’m sure this is true nationally, but does it hold locally for areas with good employment prospects? And once you remove apartments (which don’t have HOAs but are subject to the tyranny of the landlord instead)?

Genuinely asking because I can’t think of too many areas in NoVA that don’t have HOAs.

Correction… There are areas of older housing without, but any subdivisions built since the 80s seems to have one. The areas without tend to be older “downtown” areas (Arlington - very expensive) or on the outskirts (Fairfax Station - very expensive).

I don't have any statistics ready to hand, but my recollection is that most households are not in an HOA, but that most newly–built houses are. It is my understanding that cities have started to rely on HOAs to own and maintain infrastructure that would once have been the domain of the city, and that cities are doing this to avoid raising taxes.

On the one hand that makes a lot of sense. If you want your neighborhood to have a park, but you also want the streets built so that they lengthen all trips in and out of the neighborhood, then the park is really only going to be usable by people who live there. It is therefore unfair for people on the other side of the city to pay for maintenance of that park.

On the other hand, HOAs can turn into drama factories. Too many people vehemently hate their HOA for being petty tyrants.

On the gripping hand, city governments can be pretty annoying too. San Francisco apparently takes an average of three years to approve building permits. A few years back my favorite restaurant (not located in SF) was being remodeled, and the owner took the opportunity to replace the front door. The original was 40 years old and wearing out, so she replaced it with a virtually identical steel and glass door, the kind you can find on commercial buildings from here to Vladivostok. The city spent an extra month hassling her about it, worried that she was destroying the historical character of the town. Madness.

Isn't this just the "if you don't like it, leave" argument?

Selling your house and buying a different one that isn't in an HOA isn't as trivial as you make it sound. And in some parts of the country, it's rather difficult to find a house that isn't part of an HOA - in Texas, many neighborhoods get built with an HOA built-in.

There's a disconnect in these comments that suggest a homeowner is forced into an HOA; for the vast (vast!) majority of cases, the HOA (and it's publicly available rules) are pre-existing to the home purchase. The rules can be annoying, but the primary purpose is the preserve the sale value of the properties.

I'm ambivalent about an HOA, but my father's neighbors probably wished they had one when they were selling their house (he had two broken cars and one broke down lawn mower in the driveway for years).

Well, that's true - nobody is forced to buy a house. (Though, sometimes, they inherit one that's hard to sell due to an HOA.)

But on the other hand, housing supply is limited. Sometimes your choices are "a decent house close to a decent school with an HOA" or "I guess we'll move seven hours away from everyone we've ever known" or "The neighbor's meth lab probably won't detonate this year, right?"

This is a great analogy. I can think of one area in which it might be different though. In smaller HOAs such as mine, the HOA almost never takes any action of its own volition. It's almost always the result of some neighbor making a complaint forcing the HOA's hand, then the neighbor hides behind whatever action they compel the HOA to make. The HOA becomes the boogeyman and goes on the news, while the actual complainant gets to remain safely anonymous.

I've seen corporate firms that run HOAs professionally where they run a much more proactive/activist HOA, but in the case of my neighborhood we didn't like the results so we fired them. It was too much hawkishness about rules and the fees were heading through the roof. The more leisurely neighbor-complaint model seems to work better unfortunately. It's more efficient, even though it's quite a cowardly system if you ask me. It's better than the alternatives such as having anarchy.

HOAs are not a story of free association. They are a story of privatization.

We used to have local government deal with local governance. But local governments decided they didn't want to do that anymore, so they started encouraging the creation of HOAs to deal with all of those pesky local governance issues.

If all thar mattered was free association, the fix would be very simple. Enshrine into the the right to leave an HOA. But states won't do that, because once people leave, they will except their local governments to start providing the same services the HOAs do, and all of those local governments are going to complain to the state government.

Felt this when I bought my first house and a week after the sale finalized, my situation changed dramatically and unexpectedly. I needed to move across the country, but the HOA had a strict No Renters clause.

So, I had to choose between 1) Spend 30 years paying the mortgage for a house no one can use. 2) Turn around and sell the house I just bought.

that's why i don't like to buy property. presumably you didn't want to just sell again because of the effort involved. if buying and selling was easier and guaranteed to never sell at a loss, then this would not be an issue. how did you resolve the problem?

I ate it. Turned around and sold at a small loss on price, bigger loss on all the costs associated with the process.

do you think you could have avoided a loss if you were not under pressure to sell, but say, had a few months of time before the move and find a good buyer?

I did have a couple months. Was still rough.

However, the market turned downward later and I think the buyer sold at a bigger loss after five years or so. So, could have been worse.

this is really the crux of the issue. HOAs should really be treated and organized like neighborhood level government councils.

> People who end up in a petty HOA usually regret it, and come to see joining any HOA as a big mistake.

I'm pretty sure that freedom of association is strongly tied to being able to quit the association freely. I don't think that the condition of having to change home to quit an association is a reasonable term.

The more a person is dependent on "associated or local governments" [1] relative to "national or supernational governments", the more freedom they enjoy.

This is somewhat counter-intuitive because one might think that if e.g. every resident of a nation had to obey a singular and simple set of national rules, that would promote freedom more than having governments and rules differ between regions.

I wont go deeply into the underlying mechanisms of why the more chaotic choice promotes freedom while the more orderly choice reduces freedom but it has something to do with organisations competing for members and members being willing/free to move between those organisations.

[1] HOAs, school districts, unions, chapters, guilds, bars, insurances

I'm OK with national governments, if the nation in question is a city state.

All hail Singapore!

but there is no competition among HOAs. there isn't enough freedom to move around. there isn't even a chaotic choice because most HOAs are the same. and when 80% of homes sold today are governed by an HOA there is also no choice not to join one.

and i am not buying the whole argument. if we accept a hierarchy of governing structures, from the HOA at the bottom, and let's go all the way, the united nations at the top, each level has a a certain set of responsibilities and powers. the difference in the levels is determined by how centralized or distributed those are. but there is no escaping the levels.

the problem is that it is unclear who is responsible to deal with overreach. in the US HOAs are largely unregulated, and so there is no protection against overreach. and in particular, they are not government but private organizations.

i am of the opinion that mandatory membership in an organization makes that organization an extension of government, and thus it should be bound by the rules local governments must follow.

I anticipated this type of reply that states that for HOAs there is not enough freedom of movement and diversity of "HOA flavours" to reap the benefits of this localist/federalist system. And you are right. The situation seems dire and the question is how do we solve this problem?

Do we do so by smashing HOAs (and giving the responsibilities to someone else)? I believe this is the wrong approach because it will destroy any potential for this localist (and thus inherently good, imo) system to heal. You're basically passing the baton onto another entity that might do a better job off the start but will inevitably fail because it is even less capable of evolving.

I'd rather try to discourage rigidity/complacency and incentivise innovation in the HOA-space which is much more complex to implement but better than smashing HOAs.

Regarding your point about "not buying the whole argument": I think it would be foolish to organise a military or pandemic-prevention-force on a municipal level. The levels need to exist and some higher levels have responsibilities that the lower levels don't have. I absolutely believe that this is good.

In conclusion, somehow communities of a certain region need to be organised if they want to be organised, especially when the region is densely populated. I'd rather organise these communities through self-emergent associations than top-down mandated government. And yes, the self-emergent association-type HOA is broken. I'd rather fix it than replace it with a inherently worse alternative.

sorry for not expressing myself clearly. by not buying the argument i was referring to the idea that we can be more or less dependent on levels of government. i believe we are always 100% dependent on all levels. but in some ways we are always less dependent on local levels of government because we can move. but i have the impression we are applying different definitions to terms here, especially to what it means to be dependent.

for the most part i actually agree with you. i too favor a localist/federalist approach. and where i said you can't escape the levels, i might have added: nor should you want to. because as you say, the levels need to exist.

one of the problems i see in the US is that while the system is doing relatively well at the federalist approach, not enough is done to protect the weaker individuals from those with power over them. especially at the local level.

so while i agree that experimentation is good, certain basic rights need to be safeguarded.

another thing is fixing vs replacing HOAs. again that comes down to what fixing or replacing mean.

it is important to me that organizations that govern my life in a community are actually considered government.

an HOA currently only involves homeowners, but not those who rent there. that's the first thing i would fix. so HOAs become neighborhood councils. and beyond that it is just a matter of levels. so if you mean that replacing local HOAs with a community council covering a larger area is a bad idea, then i agree with you. i mean to replace it with a different democratic structure at the same level, with largely the same responsibilities but with more clear restrictions to protect individual rights and freedoms.

interestingly, i just came across this democracy index:

https://www.democracymatrix.com/online-analysis/matrix#/char...

and it shows that "guarantee of rights" is the weakest, which fits my feelings

Your position seems a bit ideological. Ultimate freedom doesn't exist, since pretty much all societies agree that they want to stop people from murdering one another for instance.

Any legal system always has to balance individual liberties and the tyranny of the majority (or a law-giving minority).

> An HOA that was useful for 50 years and never created any drama could turn bad next year when they elect some new board members.

That's why countries for instance have constitutions, so the system is hard to change even when someone new takes power.

> true freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes, even big mistakes.

That's pretty much the reason why we don't have "true freedom" and we want to stop people from making really terrible and easily avoidable mistakes, like eating food that kills them.

Limiting HOA against petty bullshit requirements (with more freedom for an initial set of bullshit requirements) at least is one of these limitations.

This is a good perspective, and a great case study in understanding how freedoms are always in tension.

The usual remedy to protect people from freely making the mistake of entering into associations that harm them is regulatory, of course.

Employment regulations place certain rules on what you can expect when you choose to throw yourself into association with a company as an employee, to prevent you accidentally finding yourself at the whim of an abusive employer.

Regulating what kinds of things HOAs can demand is a perfectly reasonable thing for governments to do to make it safer for people to purchase houses with confidence they won’t be subjected to egregious restrictions.

So we do end up limiting freedom of association. You can’t join up into an HOA with your neighbors that bans any of you from selling your house to a black family.

The problem with HOA vs other types of voluntary associations is that it’s very difficult to get out of an HOA — you have literally one recourse: sell and move. That’s a huge barrier because even if you wanted to you may not be able to afford to sell and move. And HOA rules change so the terms you now object to were perhaps not even in place when you agreed to join the HOA. It becomes coercive. When my wife and I last moved to another city and were looking to buy, our first requirement was that our house not be encumbered with an HOA.

There is no freedom of association if there is no freedom FROM association.

That is, if your only option is to buy a house within a HOA or not but that house, you're not really free...

Interesting details and case analysis from your side here. HOAs are subject to debate frequently.

Philosophically, freedom has, among other dimensions, the dimension of negative and positive freedom: being free from something and free to do something.

Freedom usually refers to individual rights against the state. Freedom to have private contracts is part of what distinguishes socialism from capitalism.

What you describe regarding group associations is correct. Others are correct, too, when they appeal to freedom as the right to be spared from something.

Freedom to form groups does not mean being forced to join them. That's the point here. HOAs are partly like cartels, in my view.

Unfortunately, in practice most people don’t choose HOAs, they simply can’t afford to live anywhere without one.

I’d love to see numbers on that (not asking you to find them) — it seems logical for me that a home in an HOA would sell for more than a home outside an HOA.

Most HOAs are in low cost and high density multi-family housing: condos, townhouses, etc. In those cases many of the people living there are renters, but subject to following the rules through their landlords.

When you have an HOA with regular single family homes, it generally has to have been setup by the contractor, who build the entire planned community. These mass produced planned communities are also typically cheaper and lower value than individual one-off single family homes, as they are built to a price point for a profit.

I agree. You can be free without having total anarchy. Some (but not too many) laws/rules/restrictions ironically make us more free.

But when those groups are tied to real estate ownership they aren't free associations, they are serfdoms.

Freedom of association is missing the point when it comes to HOAs.

There's some very significant differences between freedom to associate in a book club and freedom to associate in an HOA. If you don't like a book club, there is no scenario in which you are contractually obligated to join it and pay membership fees indefinitely. And the bookclub doesn't have broad legal authority, backed by the courts, to dictate how you maintain, use, and sell your personal property or even aspects of your lifestyle.

I never said that all groups were equivalent, only that they are similar. Book clubs have rules, and if you violate them they will punish you. Very likely the punishment will be limited to not inviting you back, but that is because book clubs are very informal. HOAs are formal, and are formed for the specific purpose of regulating the use of property, particularly common property. Thus it should be no surprise that they do so.

> regulating the use of property, particularly common property

I don’t think anyone would argue with their regulation of common property; it’s their petty interference in private property that’s the rub.

Remember that everyone disagrees about what is petty and what is not. Take the current article: some would argue that requiring a vehicle (such as the boat) to be parked in a place where it cannot be seen from the street is petty, and that the HOA is petty for having such a rule. Yet many many cities and towns across America have similar parking rules. They were put in place by a reasonably democratic process, so it must be that there is a fair amount of disagreement over whether they are petty or not. You have the same recourse in both cases: vote, join the local government, or move somewhere less petty.

Book clubs aside, the ability to join a HOA is a freedom. Contrarily, if the Supreme Court forces New York City to allow guns in its Walmarts, that would be a restriction of freedom.

Freedom isn’t the same as lawlessness.

NYC banning guns in Walmart is a restriction of freedom, per Bruen.

The SCOTUS doesn’t define the concept of freedom.

Businesses can't discriminate against different races either, you give up some freedoms when you hold yourself open to the public.

You’re right, disallowing race-based discrimination is also a restriction of freedom. I’m not arguing that all freedoms are good.

It would be a freedom if you could own a house in that area and not join the HOA.

Is there a freedom to not join a HOA? Freedom to not associate?

Of course there is; just don't buy a house that is part of an HOA. Most houses in the US are not part of any HOA. Apartments are also not part of HOAs (but of course anyone living there has to follow the rules put down by the owners, and it’s not like the residents get to vote on those). Condos are always part of a condo association, but those are a fraction of the housing in the US.

Also, if your neighbor asks you to vote to create an HOA, vote against it.

Covenants are separate from the deed and title searches fail to uncover them all the time. That's part of the problem, you buy a deed and some boomer crawls out from 6 feet under to unilaterally impose his will. It's infuriating as this crept up constantly when I was looking for land to build a tiny house and many sellers didn't even know some dead boomer made it illegal to not build a mcmansion in some ancient document the title clerk digs up.

That some dead previous owner can unilaterally say 'none of that' and it be binding on subsequent transfers and heirs is opposite the freedom of association.

HOAs are often tied to a piece of land, with it being mandatory to join if you buy the land.

You are free to not buy the land of course.

> HOAs are often tied to a piece of land, with it being mandatory to join if you buy the land.

Legally speaking one is often not buying the land but rather buying the unit. The land on which the unit sits is owned by a corporation (HOA), and as a condition of the lease you must abide by the corporation's rules.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leasehold_estate

If you don't want to live by an HOA's rules then don't live on the HOA's land, but rather your own land:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freehold_(law)

> Someone always scoffs, but I think it is usually a sign that they don’t really understand freedom.

Others understand freedom from the perspective of the individual. Americans understand freedom from the perspective of the state.

In the first case, you're free if you can practically do something. In the second case you're free if the government doesn't ban it, regardless of whether you can actually do it.

Take for example the issue of ads on Smart TVs. There's no law that says you have to have ads on them, but in practice it's impossible to buy a TV which doesn't flood you with ads.

People in the first case consider that if a law is passed to ban embedding ads on TVs, then that increases the freedom in the world. Americans consider that banning such ads is a horrible government overreach which hurts the feelings of poor billionaires, and that if people want, they can always buy TVs with no ads, even though no such TVs exist.

They prefer an imaginary freedom to a practical one.

This is some extreme mental gymnastics where restrictions are actually freedoms.

By the same logic, how about a freedom for the government to limit your speech? Now censorship is freedom and free speech is a restriction.

The ability to do censorship would be a freedom for the government, yes. It's also a restriction on you.

I don't like HOAs, but the ability to form or join a HOA is definitely a part of individual freedom.

Just like the ability to eg enter into a non-disclosure agreement or any other kind of contract.

Traffic signs are limits on freedom, but they increase the net freedom to travel. Some things have a higher second derivative of freedom.

Yeah, mortgage debt slaves are forced to associate among themselves and pay money to the most insufferable local busybodies available. That’s the “freedom” we’re talking about here. I’m generally against big govt, but in this case I would gladly pay the same amount to the municipal government instead so that they’d maintain the road and public greenery, and otherwise get out of my hair.

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