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Comment by DougN7 | Hacker News Reader

I’m sorry but this kind of thinking is non-sense. There are surely a few cases where someone lets power go to their head, but that happens in every place where humans have any power.

I’m on an HOA board because no else wants to because it’s boring. We maintain a large green space with walking paths and a community pool, and garbage pickup. We have whites, blacks, asians, hispanics, etc and nobody cares. Sometimes there is shared land in a development that has to be managed and somebody has to do it.

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Most neighborhoods don't have these, and that's kind of the problem. The city should be constructing and maintaining parks and recreation, and they should take an egalitarian approach. Meaning, don't stuff all the nicest parts in the richest areas.

Also, the history of HOAs is explicitly racist. That doesn't mean all HOAs are racist now, although I think it would be naive to assume we've 100% eliminated all the racism. Sort of the same perspective on Voter ID. It was created for racism, only racism. Now, maybe it's not but... do we really think everyone forgot?

I can’t comment on HOAs being historically racist - I’ve not seen it. But how would that work? They don’t (at least now) get to vote on who is allowed to buy. So how would they keep out whoever they decided was undesirable? Were there bylaws about skin color?

> So how would they keep out whoever they decided was undesirable? Were there bylaws about skin color?

Originally? More than just HOA bylaws: HOA’s originally were implemented as part of a belt-and-suspenders approach along with racial covenants—particularly in building out suburban developments—in part in anticipation that the racial restrictions might later be struck down (as they were. In 1948); the HOAs would allow the white majority (guaranteed initially by the racial covenants, and even without active enforcement likely to be maintained by economic inequality for long after that) to drive out non-white residents through selective enforcement of facially race-neutral rules. And, while it is still not always easy to prove, for twenty years after explicit racial covenants attached to property were ruled illegal, other private discrimination related to housing was not, so there wasn't even a legal basis to challenge this.

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