The quotes from the pro-HOA side in this article make me think even $100 is too much power to give these people.
> “You don’t have the leverage anymore to get people to change bad behavior,” Zepponi said. A neighbor who leaves their RV parked on the driveway in violation of association rules might just eat the $100 rather than pay for RV storage that is more expensive, he said.
Yes, god forbid someone have the legal right to park their vehicle at their own house. I'd prefer my neighbors not do that, but I'd also like to have that right for myself if I ever needed to.
And a friend had a ration of hassle when he replaced the back door on his house with one that wasn't an approved design. I'm certain he'd have been delighted to say "whatever, Karen, here's your $100 and STFU."
I'm convinced HOAs are a product of privileged brains so used to things going their way that they have to make some shit up to act annoyed about.
I’m a bit biased, I’ll admit, as I once served on such an HOA that was near the brink of insolvency and wrestling with owners who would dodge their share of funding basic maintenance for years at a time.
Most of the ire, perhaps, is really directed at single-family HOAs, however.
And then their are HOAs who have strong opinions about which species of grass your lawn can have. That's that craziest, power-trippingest thing I can imagine. I'm glad the state is telling them to get out of the law enforcement business.
They also have 7-8 vehicles, and to top it off the person who lives there is a mechanic that works out of his home garage so there's always all kinds of random cars parked there as well.
Communities should be empowered to self-regulate.
Any other way seems like absolute madness to me.
Depends on the HOA. My HOA board is an executive council. They don't have rulemaking authority.
This is a knock on effect of the wetlands protection act (or maybe it's the clean water act, I forget which). Someone developing >1ac of houses (or duplexes or apartments or whatever) has to do stormwater management permitting BS. This probably means they leave one lot at the end and do like a stormwater catch pond in it or something (there's technical terms for this stuff I'm not using. The owner(s) is obligated per federal law to maintain whatever this solution is in perpetuity. This likely means some sort of HOA to handle that. And if you're gonna do that then why not have the HOA do more.
And I think the evidence is generally that the prices are higher in well run HOAs.
It might help a bit to understand that their origins where to exclude blacks, asians and jews from owning homes in a neighborhood [0].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association#History
1. 90% of enforcement is a result of someone's complaint. HOAs can be sued by belligerent owners for not enforcing rules and it will cost everyone in the association a shitload of money.
2. Of those complaints probably at least 80% are totally legitimate grievances because the owner is doing something that's negatively affecting all of their neighbors like say park their RVs in the driveway and then 5 more cars in the shared parking spaces around the neighborhood so nobody else can park when having guests.
3. Every time we decided not to fine someone to force compliance we ended up regretting it - that just resulted in more complaints, sometimes escalations and serious damages, threats of lawsuits, and in the end we had to fine anyway.
4. These days when someone complains i just tell them there's nothing we can do because we really can't and just bug their state legislators, who seems to be living on a different fucking planet.
tl;dr - most people complaining about HOAs just have no fucking clue what they are talking about and they never served on the board. Well guess that also applies to every other issue discussed on the internet.
For #2, you can still fine them $100 per incident, which I'd imagine would include every new time a homeowner takes up all the parking, or dares to store their property on their property.
For #3, see #1. Now you're off the hook because the state said this is nonsense and you can't be responsibile for meeting their power-tripping demands anymore.
For #4, see? Perfect! You can tell them to get bent, because elected representatives said those complainers should mind their own freaking business on how people enjoy their own homes.
It is literally impossible to convince me that such things benefit anyone except the bored sociopaths who charged themselves with enforcement.
If an HOA wants to maintain the sidewalks, build a pool, and pick up trash, right on. If that's what the neighbors want, then go for it. But when they want to dictate the harmless ways people can live, I lose all interest.
And yes, I lived next door to a guy who liked to park his fishing boat next to his driveway. I wasn't thrilled about it, but that was his right. He bought and paid for a house with a driveway, and if he wants to use part of the pavement he owns to park his own personal boat, darned if I can imagine any right by which I can say he shouldn't be allowed to do so.
Your neighbors could buy a remote lot with no neighbors or even unincorporated land and just knock themselves out. Instead they (presumably) read the rules, put their signature on it but then decided that actually they are special and the rules dont apply to them
"Oh, no, the Torkelsens put in a bay window!"
> Your neighbors could [...]
Oh, come one. We both know that's not realistically possible. I think in most cases HOAs are tolerated as something nearly impossible to avoid, and buyers weigh how likely they are to run afoul of the dumb rules. And as I've said elsewhere, governments appropriately limit the kinds of onerous conditions a contract can inflict upon you. That's something we've elected them to do for us so that people with an unreasonable power advantage can't railroad everyone else into agreeing to their bad ideas.
The obvious solution is to make it illegal for HOAs to have any say whatsoever in individual private property.
Shared spaces, shared amenities, common areas, sure. That's what it's for.
On private property, no absolutely not, that needs to be illegal.
I know many who lived in HOAs - one of them got fined for having plants by their condo door, another for putting something on their patio, etc. Who makes up these dumb rules?
And it costs $500/mo easy. This is why most people hate HOAs.
People (most sane people anyway) don't randomly hate things they haven't experienced.
That so many people despise HOAs is because they have personally witnessed the horror show that is a HOA.
Let's be very clear that "cause problems" in the context of HOAs means things like planting flowers on their private property that the HOA psychopaths don't like, or painting their house the "wrong color" or parking "unapproved vehicles" on their very own private property.
HOAs are a cancer on society and need to be outlawed, except for the very limited case of maintaining common areas.
HOAs are usually clear in their rules, so if you want to live in a predictable neighborhood you can choose to live in one. IF you want more laisses faire neighborhoods you can pick one that does not have an HOA.
Less public spending => lower taxes => less money for public spending
Recalcitrant about what? About using their own private property in a way they want (that doesn't violate city/state law)? Well yes, they sure should be. It needs to be illegal for any HOA to have any say about that.