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I signed up, and invited all the neighbors I knew, in large part because I have an out-of-control HOA. They purposely schedule meetings on short notice, typically when they know everyone's at work (2pm on a Tuesday, for example). Then they pass all sorts of pet projects, spending resolutions, "house rules" (don't even get me started on that nonsense), and so forth. Time will tell if peer pressure and transparency are effective antidotes to the petty tyranny of my HOA. But I'm all for anything that can theoretically check their influence.

So far my neighborhood is pretty quiet. About 50-odd users. It's entertaining, though. There's this one guy who posts weird survivalist rants and doomsday scenarios about The Big One, and how we're not sufficiently prepared for it. (Probably true, I hate to say.) There's a woman breeding puppies in her apartment and offering them for sale. There's a guy using the site to promote his political blog. There's a guy playing True Detective, tracking all of the car break-ins in the neighborhood, and looking for a "pattern" and "the perp's signature" in the items left on the scenes. I kind of dig it all. Seeing the eccentricity on display adds a smidgeon of big-city atmosphere that I've always felt SF was lacking in comparison to other cities I've lived in.

I hope the network comes into its own, and that we get more people in my neighborhood on board. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the strangeness of my early adopter cohort.

Can I ask what a HOA is for and what it does? I don't think they exist in my country. We have body corporate entities for strata title blocks, but freestanding houses pay rates to local government directly for services.

Does a HOA provide garbage removal, street maintenance, etc?

Homeowner association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association

The nominal answer is that HOAs are membership associations to which owners in a condo building or neighborhood are sometimes obligated to join. The homeowners pool dues every month to cover things like garbage collection, building maintenance, etc. The HOA also acts as a governing body over the building's residents, and is free to impose any number of rules and restrictions on usage, design, etc., in anything defined as a "common area" (chiefly, any part of the building that is outside the airspace of the condo interiors). Some HOAs set additional restrictions on what you can do inside your condo, provided that activity, construction, design, etc., affects the neighboring units in any way. Above and beyond their common-area jurisdictions, many HOAs are free to establish "house rules," which are arbitrary and binding restrictions on just about anything that the HOA board happens to dislike.

The cynical answer is that HOAs are legal fictions set up to shelter building developers from the financial burdens and liabilities of having to pay for, or be on the hook for, any of those services or maintenance needs. HOAs are the greatest invention in favor of real estate developers since the timeshare.

I'm not entirely sure if this is different in the US, however where I live (The Netherlands) the owners make up the HOA in the end. So if a majority of the owners doesn't want a specific rule or board member it's easy (and possible) to override that decision and put a new/better board member there.

Where I live the HOA board only gets to decide on the 'small stuff' (for big purchases like said Pool renewal above they still need a majority vote.) I try to 'activate' HOA members (everyone that contributes) and remember them that a HOA is made up of its members in the end. If you don't like anything about it you should either talk with your HOA representative / board member AND/OR contribute by opting to become a board member yourself.

Source: I'm one of the five HOA board members in our small (60apt) apartment building.

HOA systems vary pretty dramatically in the US, in terms of how they operate exactly.

Some HOAs operate by pretty weak by-laws, and can only decide trivial things. Others have obnoxious levels of control.

Typically an HOA board consists of community members or home owners (if that's the type of development), and sometimes a company that either developed (and owns) the neighborhood or one that manages it will have seats.

Some HOA boards are easy to toss out, others are not.

The vast potential variances make it important to try to get to know more about the HOA ahead of time if you're thinking about moving into a development with such.

So do you rent the buildings from the HOA? Or do you own them? And surely if you own them, they have no legal right to tell you want to do unless it breaks the law?

As I understand it, it can be either case. Not sure how they can screw you around if you own it, probably some obscure law, but it's obvious enough if you're renting from them.

> Not sure how they can screw you around if you own it

The sale of the residence includes (and requires) contracting with the HOA.

> probably some obscure law

No need for laws, you've signed a contract.

They can screw you around pretty easily and legally, even if you are an owner. They levy fines for noncompliance, and if you don't pay the fines and comply, they can put liens on your property -- even if you own the property outright. It's all part of the contract you enter into upon purchasing the property. Membership in the HOA is compulsory in many cases, and your purchase of the property comes with the obligation to join the HOA and be subject to its Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs).

So why in the hell would you sign that sort of deal in the first place? Well, if you don't have to, you shouldn't. But in some cities, such as SF, it's extremely hard to buy a condo that doesn't come with an HOA.

HOAs are as prevalent as they are because in most cases they are highly beneficial, both legally and financially, to building or subdivision developers. So more and more developers are using them.

> So do you rent the buildings from the HOA?

You buy from the developer or the previous owner.

> And surely if you own them, they have no legal right to tell you want to do unless it breaks the law?

Membership to the HOA is required by and included into the building sale, contracts are binding.

You own the property same as you would without an HOA. They are a form of real covenant [0], are tied to the property, and are enforceable against any owner of the property. In the US, the bundle of covenants used are also referred to as "deed restrictions". [1]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_%28law%29#Covenants_re...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_%28law%29#Covenants_in...

I mostly agree with you, my HOA is more of just a community group for our subdivision (or development if you're an east coaster). Members of the board live in the neighborhood and they encourage everyone in the neighborhood to hold a position at some point (2 year term). Our fees are only over 100 bucks a year and cover maintenance of the common areas and the like. We meet once a year, vote on a few things (like to have a spring cleaning event where we rent a dumpster for the community). That's about it. I was afraid of buying a house that had an HOA but I'm ok with the way ours is done, no company owns it just the community.

I've always assumed it was the equivalent of Australia's strata management fees and the resulting decisions you get with strata-titled properties.

Sadly, I think any time you have amateurs involved with administration and decision making, you cop the resulting amateur politics and it can quickly make the process miserable.

I wonder if somehow anonymising the process and removing personalities could even help? Leave it purely about the issues, funds and votes?

HOA's are generally required to maintain community storm drains. They also perform other functions like maintaining common areas such as pools and enforce conformity requirements as decided by the community. HOA members are exempt from certain taxes and pay assessment fees to the HOA to provide these services.

It's like a Body Corporate, but they tend to be a lot more intrusive, both in their reach and how much they wield their power. They do stupid shit like fine people for not having perfect grass, even during droughts, that sort of rubbish. They also tend to have more power to approve who lives in the building/complex, rather than just what you can and can't change on the property.

A collection of people in your building who have nothing fulfilling in their own lives, and thus relish the prospect of telling you how many flowers you can have in your front window or how heavy your dog can be. They manage the common property, services and insurance for a building where there is a tenancy-in-common situation, like a condominium. They are usually elected, although the people who would run for this kind of position tend to be the last people you want to have any kind of power.

They were largely meant for keeping black (or jewish) people from moving into neighborhoods (and called "white homeowners associations.") They also set up common standards for yard maintenance, how your house could be painted, parking, visitors etc. - and were a vehicle for cooperating to invest in shared neighborhood infrastructure. Everyone signed an agreement which gave the HOA legal claim against the homeowner for violations of those standards, and when you sold your house, the prospective homeowner would have to be approved by the HOA and would have to sign the same agreement.

Like many bureaucracies, they survived the obsolescence of their original purpose. They provide little beyond (sometimes) a way to arbitrate homeowner disputes.

Huh? What HOAs are you talking about? At least in Texas, every HOA I know of is just allowed to pass rules about upkeep of a persons property (they also manage community resources). They have zero say about who can and cannot live in a given area. Also, HOA rules can never supersede any local/state/federal law/ordinance.

> Huh? What HOAs are you talking about?

http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm

> They have zero say about who can and cannot live in a given area.

Because they've been barred to by the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Parent said "they were", not "they are".

My neighborhood is much less interesting than yours. We have someone stealing mail but no detectives yet.

If you need someone to investigate your mail theft, I'm happy to put in a word with our vigilante. I'm sure he'd love to take the case.

Fair warning: based on the tone of this guy's dispatches, I'd say there's an outside chance he is the car thief. The plot thickens.

This is something I've never understood about the US, that people collect their post from unlocked boxes by the roadside instead of a lockable box on the wall or a letterbox in the door. Is there any specific reason, or just tradition? I would never be comfortable leaving my post lying around for anyone to take; you might as well write your bank details, name and date of birth on your wall.

Where I grew up nobody would ever think about stealing postal mail. It would rate as approximately the lowest concern as a home owner. I never saw a single locked box, they were always simple fold down boxes by the road-side in front of the house. First it's a federal crime and fairly serious to steal postal mail, second most of the stuff in the postal mail would be bills or junk-mail, and third home owners get used to when the postal mail would arrive based on when the postal worker runs their route, so a mail thief would have to have good timing and risk getting caught by the home owner. Neighbors often watch out for each other as well, someone suspicious snooping around your neighbor's mailbox might warrant a call or stop by to point it out.

Most Americans, at least in the past, would be throwing out bank statements in their trash every month (now a lot of it would be digital of course). If you wanted to steal bank details, I suspect that would be the way to do it rather than trying to time the mail and risk getting caught that way.

Name and date of birth are mostly trivial to come by. You can look up modest details about almost anyone in the US for $20 or $50.

Most urban areas have doorstep mail delivery. My older house in Seattle has a mail slot, as do the houses of friends who live in Detroit and Dallas.

Suburban areas are typically classified as "rural routes" so they're required to have mailboxes on posts out by the curb. These days, a "rural route" is basically anything that isn't an older neighborhood inside a larger city.

One can rent a locked post office box at the post office and use that for sensitive mail. From what I've heard, getting a PO Box is one of the first recommendations a lawyer makes to anyone going through a divorce. :)

HOAs sound totally messed up. How do they have any legal power?

Plain and simple contracts.

Developers create residential subdivisions, incorporate a HOA, and ownership in the subdivision requires contracting with the HOA.

If you are in California, there are a lot of legal restrictions on HOA boards. I would recommend picking up this: http://condobook.com/ for more information. (Despite the name it has a lot of information general to common interest developments.

"There was namecalling, sarcasm, pedantry, even classic trolling (people taking positions that they clearly don't care about just to upset the original poster). Almost Youtube-comment level stuff. Even weirder, most of our neighbours are middle-aged or older. They didn't grow up with this kind of online behaviour and had trouble recognizing it."

I first got online in 1994 or so with local BBS, which turn out to be fantastic ways to put your toes in the online water... they're just gone now, and I'm actually sort of grateful. So I've had twenty years of posting with text to learn how to do it, and what to do, and what not to do.

One of the things that watching Facebook has reminded me of (even though only my wife has the account) is that knowing how to socially interact online is a skill, and it can be a brutal thing when certain personality types get exposed to it for the first time. My wife is skilled enough that she has not gotten caught in any crossfire, but we've seen friendships die. I'm sure others here could post stories of marriages ended on Facebook.

Don't be afraid to educate your non-online friends a bit, if they'll have it... you can save them a lot of grief.

And this sounds like a network even more likely to pick up network newbies than Facebook itself. That's going to be... interesting.

How would you educate them?

I suppose if there is no close community in an area, that still remains the case even if you give people the means of broadcasting to one another. If people had wide friendship links amongst the community, then youtube-level trolling would be out of the question, because it makes you look bad amongst your friends and acquaintances, but if you don't know anyone, there is no clear barrier to that kind of behaviour. You're still operating by the rules of an online forum, not a local community.

The other thing is that certain topics will enrage anyone in any forum, no matter the social connections. This includes neighborly chats, TV talk shows, dinner parties, classrooms, offices, pretty much anywhere you have humans talking about issues that are important to them and affect them personally, you'll get all kinds of behavior and language.

Unless you have a dedicated moderator of a debate, one who everyone agrees is the moderator, the floodgates are open and the tone of the discussion can go in any direction. This is especially true when the consequences of the debate can mean a new pool is or isn't built at whatever cost down the road from where we live. "Friendship" among the participants won't stop someone speaking out against such things if they feel strongly about it.

The thing that surprised me most is how publicly abrasive people can be when they're using their Real Names with real photos and real descriptions of their children and pets just a click away, talking to people who live just down the street.

When I signed up for Geni, a few unstable relatives (avoided IRL) started fights on the message boards and it put me off the entire social family tree concept (the copious amounts of spam that Geni sent out didn't help, since many people lacked the computer savvy to opt-out, and it made them even more hostile).

My guess is that something similar happens with Nextdoor: you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family, or your neighbors. In the case of LinkedIn, and Yammer, trolling is far less of a problem, because there can be consequences for misbehavior, and it is easy to unfriend someone on FB, or unfollow/block on Twitter.

Unless there was some way to control trolls and nutters, I wouldn't sign up for Nextdoor.

I find people have a pretty hard time controlling themselves online. If you're upset, screaming into a text box is a lot less real than screaming at a person in front of you. But many people do that too... the internet just exposes our lack of emotional intelligence.

More than screaming; folks will be more sarcastic, hurtful, smart-alec and generally unsocial in text than in person. Something about an emotional distance provided by the abstraction?

The town I live in has a Facebook group for neighborhood news, gossip, etc. From what I've heard, it's exactly the same story there.

Having lived in an MIT dorm with a mailing list, this does not surprise me.