How are HOAs any different than a city council, except on a smaller scale? In both cases they're democratically elected, and they enact restrictions that can't be opted out of.
HOAs also tend to be too small - it is hard to find someone qualified who wants to be in charge and so they are often forced to accept some busybody nobody really likes because at least that person wants the job. As you get larger you get a choice of qualified people for the job (but of course also large enough for corruption to take effect).
They live on a lake that attracts very aggressive Canadian geese. The geese do geese things like eat and poop lots of poop.
The HOA fined them before they moved into the house for having goose poop in their back yard.
For me, it's hilarious. I take handfuls of corn and stuff to throw around their backyard when I go visit.
She has started a genuine campaign to have the HOA removed. She's so salty all the time now. It is top 10 things that has happened in my life.
Source: I've stepped in goose poop many, many times up here in Canada and it's the least bad poop to step in.
Realtor looked at us. "You're probably not interested in this house, right?" Nope. She read us right. We would never live in a place under the thumb of an HOA.
The HOAification is likely a symptom of broader cultural changes (bad changes, IMO).
We've let residential property as an investment go waaaaay too far. And now we have little suburban dictators running around everywhere enforcing whatever the fuck they want, to protect their investment.
Spoiler: my property isn't a mess and the house is well kept. Because it's better for me that way. But I can also build a small shed if I feel like it without worrying about other people. And I can pee outside on a tree. That's a bonus as well.
It's not as dramatic as it sounds. the house was owned by _someone_ before they moved in. at _some_ point the guano was left and the HOA found it (whether that alleged violation cited done in a good-faith effort is irrelevant). The HOA applied their process, and at _some point_ ownership changed. Leaving your sister with the bill, which she is probably able to recover from the previous owners.
HOA's are agreed to by the owners and they preserve the value of everyone's property and enforce common decency. (no trash, overgrown yards, RVs parked). I own a house under HOA and I get a letter or two per year about leaving the garage door open or the trash cans out too late. It's not a big deal and the neighborhood stays beautiful and desirable.
That depends, really. If the unpaid HOA fine was disclosed during the buying process, and the buyer didn't make it a condition of sale that the seller had to cover it, then the buyer is responsible. If the seller didn't disclose it, then the buyer can of course sue the seller, but depending on the magnitude of the fine, it might be easier and less stressful to just pay it.
> HOA's are agreed to by the owners and they preserve the value of everyone's property and enforce common decency.
In theory, yes. In practice, many HOAs are full of busybodies who enjoy the power trip and love to meddle in how other people live their lives. Even in the absence of that, like any institution, the people who are a part of them and subject to them often disagree on the fine details. For example, I'm not convinced it's fair that an elected board of homeowners gets to decide things like what color the curtains on the inside of your windows facing the street are allowed to be. But many HOAs have restrictions on that. I suspect you might think that such a restriction is fine, but that's exactly the point I'm trying to make: people don't always agree, but everyone ends up being subject to whatever the board/majority decides. I don't think we should allow these mini-governments to be able to enact property restrictions that actual governments wouldn't be allowed to do.
My latest fun letter from our HOA was that the paint on some air vents on our roof had faded and no longer matched the color of the roof, and we'd be fined if I didn't have them repainted. What a huge waste of time and money, both for me and for whatever busybody was paid (yes, paid) to drive around the neighborhood looking for these things.
As an amusing aside: not long ago I read of a case where a homeowner had been parking his boat in his driveway for some very long time (like more than a decade), but suddenly the HOA decided to enforce a provision about that not being allowed. Boats had to be put behind some sort of opaque fence or partition, so they're not visible from the street. So he built the fence, parked his boat behind it, and had an artistic neighbor friend paint a mural... of his boat... on the outside of the fence. Loved that.
And yes, geese love to poop everywhere.
Technically, there are. Lack of an explicit termination clause doesn't mean an agreement can't be terminated. But the party that would object to that termination is the lender. If you had their sign off, you could dissolve the HOA today.
Wow, it's a wonder your sister hasn't stopped inviting you over.
Also I'm sneaky as all get out. I'm not sure she has figured it out yet.
Can you give some examples that are applicable today?
>HOAs also tend to be too small - it is hard to find someone qualified who wants to be in charge and so they are often forced to accept some busybody nobody really likes because at least that person wants the job. As you get larger you get a choice of qualified people for the job (but of course also large enough for corruption to take effect).
This might vary on a state by state basis, but there are some pretty "cities" in some states. In Florida, there are plenty with population in the hundreds. In some cases it's due to it being rural, but there's plenty of cases where the city is simply small. For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briny_Breezes,_Florida
more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_Flor...
HOAs are pretty famously restrictive of free speech (house color restrictions, yard sign restrictions, political activism restrictions), and free association (visitor restrictions).
Their are some speech restrictions that governments apply to historic structures, but you would have a hard time as a government trying to register the name of every visitor to a residence, or restricting hours that visitors can come, or how long they can stay, but those are all things that HOAs try to control.
And have courts ruled that cities (or other governments) can't impose color restrictions?
>yard sign restrictions, political activism restrictions
Not sure what's meant by "political activism restrictions", but cities most definitely have restrictions on signs. You can't put a brightly flashing LED sign next to a busy intersection, or plant a billboard to make some money on the side.
>and free association (visitor restrictions).
???
I've literally never encountered this, unless you count having to register to use the visitor parking.
Rules that literally say, "You cannot put up election-related signs."
==I've literally never encountered this, unless you count having to register to use the visitor parking.==
Rules that say how many people you can have at your house, how long they can stay, etc., etc.
Here, the visitor restrictions are aimed at commercial visitors. You're not supposed to run a business like a massage parlor or barbershop out of your home.
A friend of mine is a member of a little HOA that consists only of himself and his downstairs neighbor.
So much pointless overhead...
Here's a community that requires all owners to be 55+ and to register guests. https://warwickgrovehoa.org/wp-content/uploads/HOA_Guest-Pol...
Here's a community that allows political yard signs, but limits their total aggregate area and how soon they must be removed after the election. http://caminovillage.com/pdfs/hoa-ccrs.pdf (bonus: you have to comply with the HOA rules when it comes to any window treatement that is visible from the front. They literally have rules about what they can see through your windows.)
Here's a legal case about a town that tried to get a couple to repaint their home: https://pacificlegal.org/victory-in-starry-night-mural-case-...
HOAs cannot enforce rules that conflict with State or Federal law or the Constitution.
The Federal government could not pass a law prohibiting me from painting my front door purple (that would be an infringement on my 1A rights).
As I understand it, an HOA can enforce such a prohibition as a private entity (and use the courts to back them, ultimately).
Uh, D.C. has plenty of aesthetic restrictions.
Purple door disputes wouldn’t be a Federal issue, but one of the D.C. superior court. The Feds have only intervened four times, and it was over much bigger features than HOAs. And the Supreme Court has actively closed loopholes where local issues relevant to any other state could become Federally interesting.
The first amendment, however, only protects against government censorship, not private organization censorship so an HOA can force you to paint over the mural on your garage whereas a city government could not*.
Some of this depends on state of course. California, for instance, recognizes HOAs as quasigovernments which imposes some restrictions on an HOAs power to censor speech, but many other states do not.
* Case law on this is actually quite minimal. Local governments do try to ban free speech of course and almost certainly overstep their bounds, but no one has gotten a case to the Supreme Court.
Otherwise someone could just shout down any meeting the association decides to have.
So the pertinent question would be, are HOAs legitimate associations in that sense?
HOAs seem to have withstood legal scrutiny…
Zoning ordinances (which are the closest analogy to HOA CC&Rs) restrict all sorts of expression but have been held lawful as long as they can be characterized as a time/place/manner restriction. See https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/zoning-laws/ for a pretty good case law overview.
If money is speech, then me giving a million dollars to a Senator should be analogous to me with a megaphone shouting down anyone who disagrees with me until their eardrums bleed.
[0] The Supreme Court case that invalidated campaign contribution limits and foisted SuperPACs upon us.
Also, core political speech (and its financing, subject to concerns over corruption) such as electoral or issue advocacy is considered sacrosanct by the American legal system and so government prohibitions on it will receive significantly stricter scrutiny.
HOA's can (and regularly do) enforce rules that governmental entities are constitutionally prohibited from enforcing.
Yes, technically not a violation because the HOA isn't technically government.
55-AND-OVER COMMUNITY WANTS TO EVICT FAMILY WITH 6-YEAR-OLD
And we not just make lawful but even encourage the creation of housing intended for aging adults: https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/f...
HOAs are a creature of state law and only have power to the extent state law confers it. They are not voluntary associations of the sort contemplated by the First Amendment. You can't choose to join an HOA unless you own land that belongs to it, and you can't choose not to be a member when you acquire a property.
If you were to draw a comparison, HOAs are far more consensual.
If you think avoiding an HOA is hard, do you really think it's easier to avoid a city government?