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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.