Hacker News Reader

Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

The HOAification of America has gone too far. There are some places where it's hard to find a home not subject to a HOA. I don't think "well live somewhere else" is a reasonable answer to that complaint. That's definitely a "I got mine, so eff off" sort of response.

View on HN

>The HOAification of America has gone too far

The HOAification is likely a symptom of broader cultural changes (bad changes, IMO).

I imagine HOAs were formed to address the movement of "undesirables" into the American suburbs.

Only in newly built out places that didn't have preexisting and sufficiently expansive local governments that could be utilized for such tasks. Those municipalities simply passed local ordinances, many/most of which are still on the books and continue to be used for arbitrary enforcement exactly as envisioned the better part of a century ago.

Who wants to invest in a neighborhood that can be ruined by a few bad apples not maintaining their properties?

Why would people need to invest in a neighborhood? Houses are for living in.

Because it is and always was a large purchase and you want it to maintain its value.

Quality of your life depends not only on your house but also on houses around you. When I go out, I want to see nice, well maintained houses with no garbage outside. What happens without HOA in low middle class and poor areas are broken cars, garbage everywhere and unkempt lawn. In wealthy neighborhoods you generally do not need HOA as people maintain their property on their own.

We were house-shopping a bit ago, and at one place while the realtor was showing us around there was a knocking at the door. The realtor answered it, and it was an older man, a neighbor, saying that one of our cars was partly off the pavement and on the gravel in the driveway, and that it wasn't allowed. We needed to move our car, we were breaking the rules.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com