I’m glad every time I see a family win over an irrational and power-hungry HOA, and I’m doubly glad they get to keep their ecological garden.
The new law is a start, but I would love for further state laws to eviscerate HOAs completely. I don’t see this as very likely, unfortunately - the NIMBYs wield far too many levers of power to be dislodged from their petty fiefdoms any time soon.
I wonder if a collapse in house prices would postpone or hasten the fall of HOAs? On the one hand, it may weaken the power of landowners. On the other, it may make them all the more desperate to retain the control that HOAs do give them.
On the contrary, local governments typically require HOAs for new housing developments, at least here on the East Coast. Those cul-de-sacs & neighborhood streets need to be plowed and maintained, common areas need maintenance, and often large chunks of the infrastructure (e.g. storm sewers, shared propane tanks) are also the responsibility of the HOA. The local governments don't want those new maintenance costs on their books, so they make it a requirement for the builder (and later the homeowners) to cover that in perpetuity. Of course, there's no break on local taxes; so you pay the same local taxes as established, non-HOA developments, plus your HOA dues.
None of that requires the HOAs to establish draconian rules on paint colors or maximum-grass-blade heights, but the builder usually establishes some rules upfront (they want to sell all the lots quickly), and the residents inherit that structure. Personally, I hate them, but I'm always surprised to see how some people seem to defend their HOAs. It's like Stockholm syndrome: it's always the same, tired line about 'neighbors with junk cars in their front yard blah blah'.
HOAs are great and necessary for maintaining common property. For the building I live in, it would be awkward if everybody had to hire their own painters for the outside woodwork, for example. Parts of the building would be maintained poorly, and that ultimately affects everybody. If you want to change something structurally about your house (for example, we wanted to cut some windows in a blind wall), that could also influence the structural integrity of the building as a whole, so you need permission for the HOA for that (we did).
Our HOA does a lot more than that: organise the occasional party, drink, or movie, manage a street-side gallery that's part of the building, manage a commonly owned apartment that can be rented for guests or other purposes, etc.
But regulating people's gardens is just weird. Well, trimming the commonly owned greenery is also something the HOA members do together and we're always asked to help (and never do), and of course we discuss stuff that affects our neighbours with those neighbours, and we barely have gardens because we live in a city, but anything interesting garden-wise is generally welcomed. The idea of a HOA banning vegetable or eco-friendly gardens is nuts.
And this is in a single building. If you're talking US-style free-standing suburban houses, it quickly gets a lot more ridiculous.
We have the equivalent of HOAs in Norway, I think, for large buildings. You usually buy, not rent, an apartment, and the building has a board, or group of residents that manages the property, carries out infrastructure work (sewer and water plumbing, facade repairs, common area maintenance).
Usually when you buy the apartment you’re made aware of the outstanding balance on the building’s maintenance fund and everyone pays an equal share of this each month.
Sometimes they get a little picky on things but never to the craziness that I see in the US. Mostly it’s handled with common sense and the lives (and finances) of the residents in mind.
Most of these situations in the US are handled with common sense to the benefit of the residents. It's only the crazy overstepping situations you hear about because "community continues to exist peacefully" doesn't make the news.
It’s essentially the same in the US for a large, multi-tenant building. Though in the US an apartment typically refers to a unit in a building with a single owner that rents the units and a condominium is a building where all the units are individually owned. In the latter case most states and/or municipalities require a condo association, much as you described, to jointly maintain the common elements of the building. Whereas in the case of an apartment building it’s much simpler as the owner of the building is responsible for all maintenance.
When we lived in an HOA, owners were responsible for their own paint, and I guess for their own tree work. (The builders planted a lot of Bradford pears, which are showy in the spring, but are structurally weak once they reach a certain height. It was not unusual to see about 30' of pear tree across somebody's lawn.)
> HOAs are great and necessary for maintaining common property
There is a fundamental, qualitative difference between rules and obligations for maintaining common areas, versus private ones. That for some reason both fall under the "HOA" term only confuses the discussion - it's not "a communal organization calling itself a HOA" that's the issue, but its intrusion on private property.
The streets can be plowed and maintained by the city. That's how it works in my locale. If the city needs aesthetic standards, they can enact them city-wide. Good luck. In my neighborhood, front yards range from fully wooded, to manicured grass, and everything in between.
Completely ignoring the brokenness that is HOAs, it makes logical sense to have hyper-local taxes for infrastructure in places which vary in population density: dense neighborhoods will have lower per capita infrastructure maintainance costs, and it would be regressive to burden them with the costs of the (likely richer) sprawl.
A problem is: this functionally isn't how HOAs end up working. The opposite is true: higher density living areas (in order of decreasing density: apartments, condos, suburban subdivisions/cul-de-sacs) generally have HOAs. Lower density areas (rural) don't. In the US, in most cities and counties, the "sprawl" isn't rich; its poor.
At the high-end of the high density spectrum, it does make some logical sense that there are communal resources and structures which the local government has never traditionally paid for; roofing, plumbing inside the structure, pools, 24/7 security, whatever. Its the middle-point in that spectrum where things become less defensible. A road is a road; water is water; keeping these maintained is literally why we pay taxes.
Local governments have essentially figured out how to have their cake and eat it too: property developers come in and make the investment to develop some former farming land or whatever. Tons of new houses go up, which brings in people, who pay taxes to the local government. Then, the local government gets to wash their hands and say, we're not maintaining it (depending on the development; not all work like this), as if what happened is different in any way from how land development has traditionally happened, except that they got a private company to foot the upfront bill.
Power-hungry HOA rules are a really similar thread of reasoning. Traditionally, we had this thing called "a shitty neighbor"; and if they got really shitty, you'd call the police. HOAs move the goalpost on the definition of "shitty", then bypass the police in their enforcement mechanism; also saving the city money. The argument is, generally; that shitty neighbors depress property values; but the largest negative impact you'll ever see to property value is the HOA fee itself.
So, the final argument for HOAs: Just don't buy a house with one. The US housing situation is already at an absolutely critical point. There's little empty land left that is affordable for private individuals to develop. There are huge amounts of large plots; usually former farm-land or factory sites; which get purchased by development organizations, developed, and HOA'd. Removing HOA'd houses removes the vast majority of new constructions in most metro-adjacent counties; which turns the already-critical housing shortage into a nightmare.
I think its reasonable to assert that HOA fees can exist toward the maintenance of either a shared structure, or generally, shared resources which don't fall under the responsibility of the county's municipal functions (e.g. pools). Everything beyond that is extremely difficult to defend, and literally needs to be made illegal. I understand that this isn't as easy as signing a bill, if only because overnight many counties would see their burden of responsibility increase dramatically; but it needs to be done.
> In the US, in most cities and counties, the "sprawl" isn't rich; its poor.
This isn't exactly true. Sprawl generally refers to low density properties on the urban periphery, which isn't enough detail to generalize either way.
There are both and poor and rich neighborhoods of all densities. High density rich is your Manhattans, wealthy urban environments for well-to-do yuppies.
High density poor is your classic "inner city" which usually gained a reputation for crime during the white flight / redlining era, which continues to plague the area to today. Common systemic issues include poorly performing school systems, food deserts, and noise pollution (particularly from highways that were built in the middle of residential neighborhoods during the redlining era; these also cause air quality issues)
Low density rich can be either a commuter "sprawl" neighborhood, often gated, with large expensive properties, in an area with a well funded school system; as well as "rural" escapes like Martha's Vineyard, Long Island, and such.
Low density poor can be rural (as in farming) areas, plus many exurbs of major cities where the poor can afford to live but in exchange need hour plus commutes to get to work.
This is very much a tangent, but that article seems to state that per mile, a sidewalk costs about twice as much as a road. Does anyone know why that is?
That's interesting. Pure speculation but I can imagine they have a higher material and labour cost per sq meter. The Installation of curbs and curb cuts must make a difference. Also, in the UK at least, while low traffic pavements (sidewalks) are generally tarmac, in high traffic areas they're often paving stones, brick or even concrete. These must be more expensive. I'd guess you're also more likely to hit utilities. Whenever I see workmen installing or fixing water pipes, sewers, fiber atc they're usually doing it along the side of the road or under the pavement as this means you only have to close one half of the road.
Society should look after everyone. This means regardless of where people live. You shouldn't be directly on the hook for communal services that you use. You solve inequality with taxation.
This usually means looking after less fortunate, and not by choice. Here we are taking money from those who are living constrained, and giving it to people loving in greater luxury.
You tax at a more macro level. The more you localise the tax take, the more you disadvantage people somehow. It works both ways. Saying that HOAs should pay for their fancy lawns in rich neighborhoods also means poor people have to foot the bill in their poor neighborhoods. Instead, you tax at a national level and clean all the streets. That way everyone gets the shared benefit and everyone pays proportionally to what they can afford.
Your sarcastically make a good point - we couls have globally accessible sanitation and basic education for pennies, and lift like a billion people out of poverty.
Could we, though? I suspect some residents of the world don't care about clean streets and don't want to pay for them. Some other maladjusted individuals might even prefer dirty streets.
It seems like if we could build a global utopia where everyone agrees to the same homogeneous rules and values that we'd have done this already.
Also, I think pennies is the wrong unit of currency to use when budgeting for this harmonious future.
Why not? Isn't it fairest way? That is everyone pays for up keep of services they receive, like water, electricity and sewers. If it is desired to support certain groups, they should just receive money which they then can pay for these services.
For sewer & road infrastructure this is good. The cost of providing infrastructure should be clear to homeowners and residents so smart long term financial planning can be done. It's too easy for people to kick the can down the road for future generations to deal with.
Having seen what happens when the HOA members not affected by infrastructure problems vote for the health of their wallets rather than their neighbors, I cannot agree that this is an unequivocal good.
You're right, it is too easy for people to kick the can down the road. Making it even easier for them to do so will not help.
This may be naive, but shifting the cost towards families doesn't immediately mean that it must be privatized. Can you not achieve the same goal, making it clear that if your house in a specific area requires higher sewer and infrastructure costs, through something like property taxes? This way you don't get the problems of a HOA?
Many states have limitations on property taxes. That’s the lesser told reason why there has been such a push to privatization. It’s a direct consequence of the “tax revolt” that started in the 1970s.
> Well for instance in California this is literally impossible since the law mandates that property taxes fall in real dollars in perpetuity.
No, this is not true.
You're thinking of Prop 13 which limits the increase in the assessed value of the home to 2% per year. That is true.
However, property taxes are the sum of the taxes resulting from that assessment, plus, additional local fees for all kinds of reasons. Shared maintenance of local areas is one such fee.
Where I live (in California) there is no HOA (thankfully), but the parks and trails within the neighborhood are maintained by the city from funds collected in our property taxes as a distinct line item. These fees can and do go up, they are not constrained by Prop 13 limitations since they have nothing to do with the assessed value of the home.
It's a wonderful system and completely debunks the arguments for needing a HOA.
I’ve seen this done with Mello-Roos taxes, which usually have an expiration date and have to be set when the neighborhood is built. Otherwise I’m not aware of how it can be done.
They can tack on fees for specific purposes to the property tax. I haven't looked into the specific procedure the county & city uses to add them.
For example here we used to pay for sewer maintenance as part of the water bill. Then they decided to move sewer taxes to be part of the property tax and so it became.
(Cynically, they did it to raise water rates without attracting too much attention. The sewer fee was moved to property taxes but the water rates rose so that the water bill was about the same even though sewer was no longer in the monthly bill.)
A poor assertion. Making individual neighborhoods manage infrastructure inflates the cost of it due to low economies of scale. Should neighborhoods have their own water treatment and power generation plants too?
I know the cost of providing infrastructure, it's called taxes. I get an itemized tax bill from my township every year explaining all major expenditures and proposed tax changes for next year.
> neighborhood streets need to be plowed and maintained...large chunks of the infrastructure (e.g. storm sewers, shared propane tanks) are also the responsibility of the HOA.
the city should be doing these things, not the brother of the HOA president.
> it's always the same, tired line about 'neighbors with junk cars in their front yard blah blah'.
As a new homeowner I think it's just a mindset thing. I have a few eccentric neighbors, including one that commits just about every HOA sin imaginable. I don't consider this negative but rather adding flavor to the neighborhood. Life should have variety.
But then, I live in a major city (albeit a bedroom community near the edge of the city). In my view, having a few eccentric neighbors is vastly preferable to having a lifeless neighborhood (aside from some joggers and dog walkers) with manicured lawns and pristine fences.
Despite people's intuition, I think home prices are more or less detached from these details. Atleast around here, home values are mostly dictated by pay and job growth in biotech and similar.
> Those cul-de-sacs & neighborhood streets need to be plowed and maintained, common areas need maintenance, and often large chunks of the infrastructure (e.g. storm sewers, shared propane tanks) are also the responsibility of the HOA.
None of that requires HOA with power to dictate what you do on your property. As in, the fact that it is possible for them to make those rules is result of legal framework that should change.
This Americanization is another feature the UK has adopted over the last decade or so, it's called "Fleecehold", although often in the UK the residents don't even get to vote for a management company.
In my experience new homes in the UK are well built, but the outsourcing of public space to unregulated uncontrolled private maintenance companies means I won't buy anything post c. 2005 again.
> The local governments don't want those new maintenance costs on their books
I also want things without having to pay for them. These governments should reconsider if they should be issuing building permits for new houses if they can't afford the maintenance of the public infrastructure required. What are they spending those taxes on?
I think by now we have plenty of experience with what happens when you don't build enough housing for a rising population.
Typically, from my understanding, cities collect way more taxes than are needed to maintain the infrastructure in urban areas, and way less than is needed to maintain the infrastructure in the suburbs. And nobody wants to pay more taxes.
I agree that it would be better if we just stopped issuing building permits, but a lot of people are more into "progress" and vote accordingly.
Also, in argument of fairness, many places have laws on the books guaranteeing that you can develop private property to a level commensurate with neighboring properties.
> Also, in argument of fairness, many places have laws on the books guaranteeing that you can develop private property to a level commensurate with neighboring properties.
That seems silly. That's basically a loop with no termination condition, ie. buy property at the edge of a city, now I can build it up same as next-to-last property, repeat.
As I said, I don't personally agree. It is what it is.
Edit: Also, you keep editing comments I've already replied to, which is making this conversation a little disjointed, but usually undeveloped property "on the edge of the city" is not, in fact, incorporated into the city at all. Cities tend to incorporate these areas after they experience some development.
I think you're confusing me with someone else, I only edited the last comment once to add that "ie." addendum, so I'm not sure what's getting disjointed.
Yeah I thought it was obvious that the government issues permits instead of doing the actual building, but felt the need to clarify that after your nitpick.
I've lived with and without an HOA and, besides common area maintenance, which I think could easily become a nightmare if you're going it alone, I appreciate how now there's someone to complain to if my neighbor strews garbage everywhere and it starts blowing to my front door. The world is full of horror stories because an HOA just doing its job is boring stuff and there are things that make sense to take out of their hands but I don't think it'd be a net-positive to just eliminate them all.
You can complain but they won't do anything about it more often than not. You need small local government to care about those things. I live in a country without HOAs and it's a nightmare. Everyone does how they pleases: noise, polluting junk cars, garbage in common areas, illegal parking on pedestrian paths etc.
I am lucky enough to be able to afford a large land area to put my future home on and fence the rest. If I ever wanted to allow others to build their houses there I would certainly want a set of rules - that is HOA.
GP's point was that HOAs are often more responsive to "nuisance crimes" than the local police. Why not address that with your response? Are the police more responsive where you live? Why do you think that's the case? Obviously HOAs aren't the only way to solve a problem, but they do work for some things.
Okay, but all I learned from your two anecdotes is that there are places where more local government is required to keep the peace and other places where it isn't. I still have no insight into why this is the case or whether or not HOAs are the best solution to the problem.
It won't be hell in some places but it will be in many. Your argument is akin to: "my neighbours are well behaved so clearly polluting/noisy neighbours are not a problem".
It is a problem and if you don't have mechanism to deal with it is sheer luck if you manage to avoid it.
Is calling the cops on your neighbor supposed to be a kinder gentler alternative solution? My HOA also provides services like landscaping that are just plain not the cops’ job.
Agreed. We have lived in an HOA neighborhood for +20 yrs and very much enjoy the "insurance" the HOA rules provide. We don't have broken/junk cars on the street or yard, neighbors with a large collection of hunting dogs, or houses that have been encased with shrubbery because the owner cannot/will not do lawn maintenance. Also, our HOA dues provide for a neighborhood pool, pond, walking trails, etc. All cleaned and maintained by our HOA funds.
Take a trip 15mins away to a non-HOA neighborhood and you will quickly see all the above (other than the pool, pond, etc). It is my belief most people will take the least path of resistance, and without some sort of community rules in place, nice neighborhoods will end up like the wild-wild-west.
The madness ends when you have to sell your home and can't because:
* The neighbor to the left has 4 broken down cars in the front yard and a backhoe/excavator in their back yard
* The neighbor to the right has essentially a dog pound (er: "rescue") with animals barking all day/night
* The neighbor across the street has not done any lawn maintenance in over a year. The grass is so high you can find wild animals living on the property.
* The assessed value of your home has plummeted because the entire neighborhood is in similar disarray.
But, yeah, they have "freedom" to do whatever they want.
My city handled all that, without needing an unaccountable HOA. Lawns that got overgrown would be mowed and the bill sent to the homeowner. There was a limit on the number of pets you could have, and broken down cars weren't allowed on front lawns.
So if we swing back around to the topic of the article, cities have also had these "you must have a grass lawn" codes that are being decried, so not having HOAs wouldn't seem to fix the issue either.
Cities are more accountable (the same city had a rule against vegetable gardens in front lawns and a citizen got it overturned without having to get themselves elected IIRC) and are much less likely to overstep their bounds into arbitrary aethetic rules. No need for an extra layer of bureaucracy at least.
Believe it or not this kind of neighbor tends to not respond well to requests if you can even get a hold of them. But that’s your prerogative and I’m not telling you to live in an HOA neighborhood if you don’t want.
What other mechanism do you propose for communally-owned goals? A special assessment every time you want your private road plowed?
No one wants to pay to maintain anything, but having an organization to do the maintenance on time is far cheaper than paying to repair neglected issues.
Ensuring that common areas and infrastructure are maintained does not need to lead to scope-creep around allowed paint colors, window treatments, yard maintenance requirements, etc. HOAs in neighborhoods of single-family homes should be restricted to only collecting dues to support maintenance of shared infrastructure, and nothing more.
I'm a little more sympathetic toward HOAs that govern multi-unit dwellings, but even then, many of them go way too far. I think it's fair to set reasonable nighttime quiet hours, and prohibit people from turning their unit into a short-term rental, but I've seen HOAs where they require everyone in the building to have window curtains of certain colors, and that's just ridiculous.
> I've seen HOAs where they require everyone in the building to have window curtains of certain colors, and that's just ridiculous.
I would call it tyrany, but apparently you are only allowed to use that word if its the government. If its a private company or some other organisation, then its called freedom
It's only tyranny (in both cases) if there is no mechanism for you to join the board, run for office, or form a coalition with your neighbors to affect desired change.
> I've seen HOAs where they require everyone in the building to have window curtains of certain colors, and that's just ridiculous.
But if you're moving into a house with a HOA with a total of 8 houses; and it has a certain "look" in part because everyone has white frilly curtains in their windows; and most of the people in that area want to maintain that look... then, what's the problem? Surely not every HOA in a city will have people who all want white frilly window curtains, so you can find some other HOA?
Unless, of course, the problem is that the rules are set up so that a minority can impose their will on the majority; and in that case, the problem isn't so much the existence of the HOA itself, but the bylaws which let it happen.
Similar, in a lot of ways to the government: Either the government really does represent the will of the people, in which case people complaining about "the government" are really complaining about their fellow citizens; or, the government doesn't represent the will of the people, in which case the voting system &c needs to be fixed so that it does.
I do agree that there is a larger societal value to having limits on what kinds of rules there are; just as we have state laws which limit what a city council can do, and federal laws limiting what a state can do, and a constitution limiting what the federal government can do. "HOAs may not outlaw pollenator-friendly plants" seems like a good rule; "HOAs may not require frilly white window curtains" I'm not convinced of.
I think putting restrictions on what kinds of rules there are has potential to hamstring future generations in novel predicaments. Better, I think, to make all rules decay and require periodic re-affirmation to remain in effect. The temporal stickiness of laws is perhaps the greatest barrier to truly representative democracy.
This is like the "what about the children?" defense: it's taking an extreme case and using that as a general statement.
An HOA that only maintained common property would not inspire the level of vitriol that I see on Twitter daily. So let's leave that out. HOAs can maintain sidewalks and private roads and plow snow all they want, and no one will mind much.
It's the busybody Karen restrictions on what you can do with your house that set passions aflame: your window treatments, the color of your doors, the length of the pole holding up your flag. And, of course, your lawn. I heard about someone whose car was towed away by the HOA because the registration had expired. A state law limiting the jurisdiction of HOAs would go a long way to fixing all that.
Most HOAs where I live do no maintenance.[1] They don't even claim to. They exist purely to enforce rules (no window ACs showing, front yard maintained etc).
Oh, and also, the vast majority of houses under HOAs do not have private roads or communal property. The only useful thing I see in some HOAs in my area is snow ploughing because the city really sucks at that.
Here's one thing I don't understand: how did it get this way?
It seems like a generational thing, but I can't relate at all to people's petty concerns about neighbors' lawn maintenance and paint colors and AC units.
It's waning now but evidently there were several decades in American culture where these things were of paramount importance to a vast swath of the population. Why?
Has anyone read a good book about this phenomenon?
"The Color of Law" covers it a bit. HOAs became popular as a means to enforce racial covenants on property deeds after courts ruled that the only parties "harmed" (and therefore with standing to bring a suit) when a racial covenant was violated were the previous deed holders. Previous deed holders often were no longer around / didn't care if their house was now owned by someone with an incorrect amount of melanin in their skin.
HOAs were a legal entity that could be a party to the lawsuit that suffered harm from the breach of the racial covenants, occasionally succeeding in getting courts to evict the new owners. This is why you so often hear that their purpose is "protecting property values" - the concern was that property values would tank when black and brown people moved to the neighborhood. This was a valid concern, not solely because of any racial animus on the part of the neighbors (though there was plenty of that to go around). When any black and brown people moved in, the Federal Housing Administration might redline the neighborhood, and then nobody could get FHA loans to buy a house there.
Once the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned racial covenants and curbed the practice of redlining explicitly based on race, their usefulness in court rapidly declined. I assume dues were still collected and there were still meetings to attend, and so they started inventing new ways of harassing undesirable neighbors...
It's very simple. Imagine the people with the least amount going on in their lives, the pettiest most small people, the people whose children refuse to talk to them because they are narcissistic nutcases, the people who don't have any friends because people can't stand to be around them, the people who when they see you driving quickly purposefully slowdown and get this feeling of satisfaction and moral superiority. The people that in older days would've ended up getting punched in the face regularly.
Take those people and give them a legal mechanism to pass any rule they want, to inflict terror upon their neighbors and to control their lives at the threat of their homes.
It's pretty easy how it quickly becomes a situation in which "Reasonable men must sometimes do unreasonable things"[1]
I honestly don't know. I always assumed racism was a significant factor at some point (let's make rules that seem innocent but target a particular demographic).
From what I can find on the Internet, while they existed for over 100 years, they were rare. The main growth of HOAs has been since the 60's, as people moved to the suburbs.
Suburban development requires new infrastructure to serve a relatively small number of homes so it is logical that we'd see more of them if more people are living in suburbs.
Yes. Whether they wrote them or some previous tenants wrote them is moot. The point is where I live, few HOAs are responsible for any communal areas, because there aren't any. The city maintains the roads, sidewalks, etc. The HOA's existence in these neighborhoods has nothing to do with paying to maintain anything.
FWIW, I have two HOAs where I live. The first deals just with my cluster of homes, which is about 40 townhomes. The second deals with the larger community, which is effectively a midsize town.
Between both my annual fees add up to about $1000. For this I get plowed streets, garbage pick up, and community area maintenance (including ample tennis courts, sports fields, pools, walking paths).
I have my own small front yard to maintain. And pay for utilities and exterior maintenance.
Some of the rules for paint colors and such-like are a bit draconian, but for an outer suburb, property values are pretty darn high and it’s a pleasant place to live. And nobody moves here without knowing what their getting into.
Also, despite the paint color rules, many homes do have “English garden” or other non-turf gardens. But, they’re well kept, not wild meadow.
In my area there is a difference between a maintenance association and a homeowners association. The maintenance organization maintains community property but does not encumber the property with any Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs.) An HOA does.
My current neighborhood has a community maintenance organization, which frankly does a great job. They keep the landscaping very nice and have gotten a park constructed. I didn’t have to sign anything with them when I bought my house other then a single piece of paper acknowledging that I’d pay the annual dues. Beyond there aren’t any rules.
My previous house had 20+ pages of rules. I could get in trouble for painting my house the wrong color, changing my landscaping without permission, having more than 3 chickens (actual rule), or any such thing. Fortunately, sane people basically controlled the board and acted largely with benevolent neglect, but there were always a couple obnoxious people who made trouble for others. On top of that, they did a worse job at keeping community property and spent far more on administration, although admittedly both were pretty cheap.
All that’s to say you can have a sub-governmental community organization or tax unit without the onerous rules the HOAs generally carry.
I think this is what my parents have for their neighborhood. Unlike other developments in their neighborhood, they have no HOA, no security gatehouse, no amenities like a pool. But they do have common areas like the street median and street lighting that need attending to. And for that they pay $50/year.
> Fortunately, sane people basically controlled the board and acted largely with benevolent neglect, but there were always a couple obnoxious people who made trouble for others.
Did they ever have the (political and procedural) power to vote to remove the crazy rules?
Late reply, but the nature of the HOA is self perpetuating. It takes 75% of homeowners providing in writing that they want the HOA desolved, and it has to happen in a window that is only available every 5 years. That’s not 75% of votes, it’s 75% of all homeowners- if 74 homes vote to dissolve, and 26 forget to send in their wish to dissolve, legally the HOA sticks around.
It’s not that the people on the board generally want the HOA dissolved though, they will enforce the rules if the property is getting egregious (weeds all over the place, painting by your house bright orange, starting unapproved construction), but they mostly let small stuff slide.
By all means, create a voluntary association of people who want to share a common area and pay for its maintenance, or similar things.
Do not give that association 1) the ability to regulate people's private properties (paint color, plant choices, garbage-can handling, and other such matters), or 2) the ability to attach obligations to house deeds such that a new owner is stuck with them.
And if enough new owners don't want to pay for common area maintenance or similar, the neighborhood doesn't get to keep having a maintained common area.
My home sits in a weird zone in Maryland that has a somewhat antiquated voluntary HOA. Because I'm well aware that joining an HOA is effectively signing over legal rights, I am not a member and refuse to join. Roughly a third of the neighborhood is not a member, but most of the older neighbors are.
Occasionally the HOA will send out snarky letters, chiding those who maybe left their trash cans out for too long or had a tree removed but left a stump, that sort of thing. One of the neighbors at the entryway to the neighborhood, who is technically in the adjacent neighborhood, not subject to our HOA -- nor even eligible to join it, received a letter complaining about the somewhat scraggly looking trees on the edge of her property. She, a lady of few words, went out and ripped out the trees, prompting the HOA to send her another letter about the unattractiveness of the lot's now-barren edge.
She responded back with some variant of "I did what you asked. If you want to plant some trees there, go ahead." They responded back with some version of "Well, it has come to our attention that the property in question is not associated with the HOA, so we cannot allocate funds for this effort."
The neighbor across the street from her is friendly with all parties, but has the misfortune of having a property that looks out onto her lot, which is now significantly less attractive than it was when he moved in just a couple of years ago.
Because his and her homes bracket the entryway into the neighborhood, he went door to door, asking for donations of $20 in a flyer promising to "beautify the entryway" (but while making plain his actual stance in person to non-HOA members.) I donated $214 (which was how much money I might have paid to the HOA had I been a member for the years I'd lived here) and in exchange, he put me in touch with his arborist that he'd negotiated an extremely discounted rate on trees for, so we're now lining our lot with a couple of trees for the low price of $20.
Unrelated to the above story, the vacant lot across from mine is also across from the neighbor who sits caddy-corner from me. It's a green-space, effectively, but requires some occasional mowing and leaf-blowing, which he and I alternate taking turns to maintain. I have no idea if he's a member of the HOA or not, but that has never had any bearing on either of our willingness to keep the space that we look out onto looking attractive.
So, to the answer of the question "how do you achieve communally-owned goals without an HOA?" I posit that the answer might be to just work as a community, whether or not there is an HOA monetarily binding you into acting neighborly.
> What other mechanism do you propose for communally-owned goals? A special assessment every time you want your private road plowed?
This is exactly what happens where my parents live. They live in a subdivision in an unincorporated part of the county. The county doesn't maintains any of the roads in the subdivision of hundreds of homes and there is no HOA.
Every few years, some motivated neighbors get a quote to repave the street then convince everyone to pay their fair share. I can’t imagine that everyone complies, but overall it works and supposedly is less expensive than an HOA. The streets are not great quality but it’s also in the sunbelt where there’s no snow or freezing weather.
HOA's then need to reduce their scope. Creating Disneyland-like tracts of grass and groomed plants, and other things that don't have to do with the longevity of the common hard assets, should be reduced or eliminated as an HOA bailiwick.
And many people don't. What's your point? I generally think we should err on the side of fewer restrictions when there's disagreement around the existence of things like this.
You're not obligated to buy a home in such a community. Even in areas where it's not practical to find a home with no HOA, the vast majority of them are low maintenance and don't do or cost a ton. You just don't hear people complaining about those.
> the vast majority of them are low maintenance and don't do or cost a ton. You just don't hear people complaining about those.
I've lived in a country ruled by a dictator. I can assure you - in most such countries the majority of the folks are happy with the status quo. It's only a small percentage that is badly abused. Therefore we should all be OK surrendering our rights to the government, right?
And so it is with HOAs. The majority don't screw you, but I don't want them to have the power to screw me.
> Even in areas where it's not practical to find a home with no HOA
Which is quite a lot of them; there are cities where you're unlikely to find anything reasonable in city limits.
> the vast majority of them are low maintenance
Most HOAs can become worse on a moment's notice depending on who has power in them, because most people (reasonably) don't want to spend the energy fighting in bitter ridiculous politics.
Yeah, it seems like if you want to form an association of homes where everyone has agreed that the houses must be beige, you should be free to do that.
Some of those people chose to have a reasonable commute distance, and thus had literally no options that didn't have an HOA. In some cities, good luck getting anything in city limits that doesn't have an HOA.
Should you expect to impose yourself on these areas and go against the existing residents wishes? If you are living in an inner area, it’s a more communal thing than some rural farm.
If you want to control what happens on a property, either own the property, make a case to a court that you are substantially negatively affected in a way for which you have any basis for expecting otherwise, make a case to an actual government that something is a safety hazard to neighbors or similar, or get over it.
Or, you know, actually talk to your neighbors and ask nicely, and have reasonable requests like "please don't park your RV where I can't see to pull out of my driveway" instead of "don't paint your house purple".
I would like to see an equivalent of "right of first sale" for homes, that disallows attaching conditions to future sales (such as "must be a member of this HOA"), and disallows HOAs any ability to make liens or otherwise have any teeth whatsoever to enforcement more stringent than a passive-aggressive note.
HOAs are just a formulation of the pre-existing concepts of covenants and easements.
In my neighborhood there is no HOA, but due to a historical surveying error all of our lots have legal boundaries that are significantly shifted from where the as-built fences and landscaping would lead one to naively believe just by visual assessment. This situation is remedied by a bunch of bespoke agreements between neighboring properties and I can't imagine any way of it working if these agreements didn't go with the land.
In addition to that, the city sewer line runs underneath several of our properties and easements are in place with the sewer authority to allow for future maintenance of this public utility. Due to this there are restrictions about where and what I can legally build on my property.
Of course I was informed about all of this before I bought the property and the existence of these agreements did affect the price I was ultimately willing to pay.
Personally I am glad that our legal system is flexible enough to accommodate these edge cases and if a group of neighbors somewhere wants to leverage this system to ensure all the houses on their street remain beige I say more power to them. I will simply choose to live somewhere else where my tastes are more aligned. All of these agreements can easily be dissolved with the cooperation of the involved parties, so if you actually make an effort to get to know and get along with your neighbors you shouldn't have any issues building and living in the type of neighborhood you all appreciate.
Actual government is just more of this same thing anyway. I once lived somewhere without an HOA where the city fined me for not maintaining a large mowed lawn. YMMV.
> HOAs are just a formulation of the pre-existing concepts of covenants and easements.
I live in a _very_ progressive part of the country. In my county, 9 HOAs were found to still have race-related clauses in their bylaws (no longer enforceable, to be sure, but still in the bylaws). Understandably concerned by this state of affairs, the County went to those HOAs to have them remove the language.
Two did not want to. One said it was onerous to have to update their bylaws to remove the clauses (which only permitted "colored" people to live in servants quarters, or "guesthouses". Again, progressive part of the country...). One dug in even deeper and said that they felt it would be "untrue" to the historical "significance" (which existed only in their own mind) of the neighborhood.
Thankfully, the County was unimpressed, and told both HOAs to remove them, or that the County would begin legal efforts such that both HOAs would be forcibly dissolved (or something similar) should they be "uninterested" in doing so.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, or how your response relates to my quoted statement in any way. But of course I agree that racism is bad and enlightened and progressive people like you and I cannot support such evil concepts. Keep on fighting the good fight.
> Should you expect to impose yourself on these areas and go against the existing residents wishes?
This keeps coming up, and the answer is an unqualified Yes! It's surprising people don't understand this.
If an HOA has a rule that says I can't own a TV in my house, then yes, I intend to impose myself on them and go against their wishes. Is that hard to understand? Just because rules exist when you buy a place doesn't mean I should try to abide by them.
There are lots and lots of properties within and adjacent to every city that are not encumbered by an HOA. Many people hate HOAs though, so these properties are in high demand and might be hard to find on the open market. Last time I bought property it took me three years to find a place that ticked all of my boxes and where I could afford to outbid my competition.
I always wanted to live in a decommissioned firehouse, but haven't run into that opportunity yet. I understand my tastes are rather counter to the mainstream and I don't feel entitled to the market providing bespoke products that fit my desires to a T. I just do what I can to acquire what I like.
In some municipalities, local governments have been requiring that new housing developments own and maintain more than you'd expect, like sidewalks, street lights, and even sometimes the roads.
Note that this is in places where -- for example -- a new road is built off of an existing main road, and the new road is relatively short and exists solely to provide access to the homes in the new development. We're not talking about people who live on main roads that the local or state governments assume responsibility for.
In many cases the municipality has done the developer a huge favor by incorporating the subdivision and hooking it up to public water and sewer. Homeowners can hardly complain that they still have to plow their own community driveway.
Hooking a new development up to new utilities is not paid for by the municipal government. The developer pays those costs. The utility companies will pay for maintenance using the income they receive from it's customers up to the property line but the initial cost is paid with private funds. The government may want to extend out utilities to land that developers plan to build on if there's sufficient reason to do so like if the government wants to turn a massive farmland into a new town.
Or, you know, let the individual organizations in charge of running local areas decide on their own rules for voting, collecting, and spending funds. Democracy tends to work best when decisions are kept as local as possible and not shoehorned into some generic framework pushed down from up on high.
> What other mechanism do you propose for communally-owned goals?
Ideally, line items in the property taxes to address those needs. That is how it works in my neighborhood. No HOA needed.
For something like a private road, you can also have a maintenance fund which has a sole purpose of maintaining that road. It can be set up so it has the authority to collect those fees and nothing more than the authority to maintain the road, full stop. A friend lives in a remote area where a private road is shared among a handful of homes and that's how they have it set up. Again, no need for an all-intrusive HOA when all that is really needed is a common pool of road maintenance funds.
Back in 2007/8 during the financial crisis they jacked up the rate the max 10% because people weren’t paying their dues so I figured what if we all stopped paying housing prices would collapse and the hoa board would be in for a world of hurt. We eventually moved to the country where hoas are a no no
The only time HOAs really make sense is with condos. We have twelve units over 2 in my HOA, and the dues all go to water, garbage, and a little set aside for future maintenance of the building. It wouldn't name sense to manage this individually, and the whole thing is pretty light touch
Some collective organization is unavoidable, but perhaps HOAs could be encouraged to evolve in more homeowner-representative directions, balancing intrinsic motivations of board members. At a minimum, positive precedents and case studies could be amplified.
How about open-source reference contracts/clauses for HOA best practices and their most debated requirements, tested in multiple jurisdictions over time?
These kind of HOA are unheard of where I am outside the US.
The roads and common properties are maintained by the city/town/village and are paid for from the general budget and (sometimes) mandatory fees for concerned properties.
Some laws on appareance are enacted through the usual legislative process and are (usually) not that crazy.
At least I've never encountered a US style cookie cutter suburb.
A significant thing that separates the US from many other countries is that some land (which sometimes is the vacant land where new developments are built) are not within the confines of a city/town/village.
My parents used to live in a cookie cutter suburb neighborhood with single family homes. The roads were all maintained by the county so they would be plowed for free but the sidewalks were all maintained by the HOA. Common areas were owned by the HOA (pool, basketball and tennis courts, a big multi-purpose field, playgrounds) so those were paid for with dues and with the case of the pool, seasonal pool passes. I live in an HOA neighborhood too but we have much smaller common areas and fewer amenities. Our roads are maintained by the HOA as they are much smaller and have parking spots alongside them. The nice part is that our roads get plowed almost immediately by contractors whereas the county maintained roads have levels of priority with neighborhoods not having the highest priority.
There's always a new dystopia. Decentralized rental homes owned by private equity, where all interactions between the legal owner and renter are done by "AI" self-service computer portals and IoT sensors. Policy uniformly applied by computer, few paths for escalation to human management.
For renters to organize collectively for negotiation with management? That's one reason for remote owners to buy standalone homes, since the "AI landlord" doesn't require local clusters of homes, as they can contract local maintenance on demand.
We live in an older suburb that has never had HOAs in a state (Massachusetts) that rarely has them (condo boards are a different story). One thing I see, however, are new people from other parts of the country who used to live in HOAs trying to impose voluntary codes of conduct on everyone in the neighborhood as if it were an HOA. The most recent one: don’t put your trash barrel out for pickup until after 4 pm the previous day.
Related: Are HOAs and condo associations basically the same idea?
The point is usually they don't want bins outside all week long. So then you have to codify that with a "When is ok?"
Generally you might go for some time the day before and some time the evening after collection. It's not that 4pm is a magic number that someone obsesses about, it's just a reasonable number given the goal of wanting the area to look pretty and you gotta pick one.
I don't see any problem with bin outside all the time. Then again the house I used to live in had fence that was about high as it. So it was hidden from the road.
In a condo you have communal property you all have to maintain (the elevator, the roof etc, if they break you're all screwed).
HOAs usually don't have that (maybe some roads that should be adopted by the local government...). Instead their rules are specifically about lifestyle and appearances.
Sorry I wasn't very clear. In a condo, you have shared assets like a roof and stairs and a front door and elevators. If they fail is a huge problem for everyone. In an HoA, you don't really share any VITAL components. You might all contribute to the upkeep of a park or a pool. But if the park or the pool are neglected, you can still live in you're home. You're actual home is self contained and yours alone.
> Are HOAs and condo associations basically the same idea?
They are the exact same thing, but the fact that one is for single-family homes and the other for condos makes them behave in different ways. Generally speaking, the higher the density of people, the more they are accepting of regulations on their behavior.
I much prefer to be left alone in a “trashy neighborhood” (which is quite a claim based on some plastic cans being outside a few hours early) than be micromanaged by my neighbors.
I know what you mean, but I've been in some actually trashy neighborhoods that could have used a higher floor on the public-facing conduct of its residents. Of course, as other commenters are pointing out, it is a slippery slope that often leads to micromanagement.
Yes. Exactly. If you want to live in a manicured cul-de-sac that's your business. If you live somewhere that isn't already a manicured cul-de-sac then you shouldn't be trying to make it into one.
It almost always starts benign: keep the bins out of sight except for trash days. But sooner or later some power-hungry busybody takes over and the next thing you know, citations are flying left and right.
It's absolutely a slippery slope. Once you've established the mechanism to harass people over trash cans, next it's the color of their house, the shape of their windows, where they park their cars on their own property, if they have a scrap wood pile, and on-and-on. And then before you know it, you have the Nextdoor-powered housing gestapo.
Slippery slope is only a fallacy when there's little to no evidence that you'll fall down the slope. When there is evidence or logic showing that it truly is slippery, it's not a fallacy anymore. Even from the article you linked:
> The strength of such an argument depends on whether the small step really is likely to lead to the effect
Some would say it is very likely for power-tripping HOA members to continue sliding down the slope.
I hate HOAs and would never, ever buy a house that existed within a HOA-mandated community. (This, however, is difficult to do. Many localities mandate that new developments have HOAs.)
However, I also think the government shouldn't step in and invalidate legal contracts that two parties entered in to. When you buy real estate, both sides have representation, and both are fully informed. There's a formal closing process and everyone has ample time to read everything. If someone is foolish enough to enter into a contract that isn't in their best interest, the Government shouldn't invalidate it.
I lived in Florida (outside of an HOA) when the State invalidated CC&Rs and HOA contracts to explicitly allow a person to fly an American Flag, and to permit solar panels. I happen to like both of these things, but I'd rather the market make these restricted properties worth less money because of these restrictions and let the market fix the problem.
I would have no problem if courts ruled or state government passed laws restricting what newly formed HOAs and CC&Rs could restrict. And I'd certainly love it if government mandates of HOAs for new construction was made illegal.
The government didn't invalidate a legal contract; the contract is simply no longer legal. If your position is that the government should never make laws that contravene existing practices, then I have to disagree. In practice, that would mean the government could never make any laws, or could only make laws that have no practical effect, because everyone was already obeying them of their own accord.
Also note that in this particular case, "in 2011 they’d been told there was no issue with their gardens, and also that before 2017, they’d received no violations for their yard despite regular inspections", and note that the legal dispute between the couple and the HOA was settled outside of court; that is to say the parties came to an agreement outside of the formal legal system.
HOAs are one of the weirdest things I've learnt about the USA.. Land of the free, hates tax, loves guns, because freedom.. But the freedom to decide what color your fence is ? Nah, that doesn't matter ?
HOAs aren't contrary to the American love of freedom--they are a result of it. The ability to create HOAs is the direct result of our broad freedom of association.
If you don't like HOAs... then don't move into a neighborhood with an HOA. If you have to live in a neighborhood with an HOA and you want to change the way it runs, then change the way it runs. Convince your neighbors to make a change. Run for a seat on the board. You'll be surprised how easy it is to get elected. If you can't convince your neighbors to make the change you want, then you'll just have to live with the crushing oppression of the democratic process.
What's the alternative? Banning neighborhoods from associating without giving HOA members a say in the matter? That wouldn't make us more free, it would just transfer control out of the neighborhood and up to the City/County/State, where your control over your own neighborhood is transferred to people who don't live in the neighborhood. Does that make us more democratic?
It is my sincere wish that each and every person who champions an HOA ban is rewarded with a neighbor who repairs roof leaks with tarps and tires, puts junk cars on cinderblocks in their un-mowed front yard, and keeps a rooster--enjoy your "freedom", brother!
> That wouldn't make us more free, it would just transfer control out of the neighborhood and up to the City/County/State, where your control over your own neighborhood is transferred to people who don't live in the neighborhood. Does that make us more democratic?
It can and we have decided this many times. As example - nationally it's why a neighborhood can't decide to be "whites only" anymore. "Just convince your neighbors" wasn't working out everywhere so people convinced enough it was better worth deciding once instead of by location.
Of course it leaves more nuance than "all powerful HOA or ban" when it comes to voting on how society should be allowed to work. E.g. people can want building codes to protect general health and safety, especially in context of needing to provide emergency services when things go wrong without wanting to specify how often you need to paint the garage door. An example more relevant to the useful portion of HOAs would be wanting to allow them for community pooling for better street cleaning/clearing or a community bus stop for the kids while not wanting to allow them for what color the fence is (coming back to the GP).
And even "conservative values" is a dogwhistle for a certain shard of radicalism.
Conservatism in the sense of just generally being resistant to change is a valuable social function. It slows down change, lessening the social shock and upheavals, and allows for the consequences of changes to be better predicted and understood as they happen. If you oppose everything you'll be right some of the time, and catch things others miss when making case-by-case decisions. And this is in tension with and balanced by others who try to make changes before they're fully understood, because if we wait until we know everything we'll never do anything.
The american conservative movement is mostly not conservative in that sense, and in some ways is one of the most radical ideologies extant right now. They are fine with and support swift, sweeping changes across large parts of american life: socially, politically, legally, towards certain ends.
To the extent they are motivated by the state of change it is to undo change we have already gone through, and already experienced the unknowns and social consequences of. Trying to walk back large-scale social change has other names: reactionary, revanchism.
The signalling and actual actions is always so weird for me. Like the stimulus checks. To me those sound exactly like socialism. Such that would not have really flown in one of these socialist European hellholes.
HOAs were created in the early 1900's as a way to maintain upscale communities. In addition to forcing community standards on residents, covenants were also used to restrict racial and religious minorities from participating in these communities. We in the USA seem to love freedom for some, but we have trouble with freedom for all. I suspect this is common world-wide.
This is my number one argument against HOAs: They are fundamentally un-American. Truly in every sense they are for collectivism over individual rights and it's insane.
I live in a neighborhood where if you want to cut down a tree more than 10" in diameter you have to get all of your neighbors' buy-in. It's my tree! And your trees are your trees!
Where I live the city mandates that I can't cut down trees over a certain diameter no matter how many of my neighbors I ask. Even if I planted the tree!
You can, of course, in actuality, but you'll face a fine for doing so. Though if none of the neighbors report it you might get off scot-free.
That IS the US approach to freedom in a nutshell through. Freedom means stopping government, it doesn't mean stopping any other crazy group/person. In fact those are to be embraced and empowered.
We've taken a crack at a more neutral headline. (Submitted headline was "Maryland couple fights home owners assoc. and wins ushering in new state law".) The submitter did have the right idea, because the NYT title was linkbait—Clash/Bobby Fuller references notwithstanding—and the HN guidelines ask submitters to rewrite those.
(Mind you, the linkbait headline is so good that we could probably just go with it. Borderline call.)
I’d already read the original “Fought the Lawn” article and clicked on the link for this post because I thought it meant there was a follow-up article. So I got clickbaited by un-clickbait.
And then I, rules nerd, rabbit-hole scrolled all the way down however-many comments to find out whether anyone noticed or cared. I believe I will go paint my house purple now.
I love this sort of news article! In a world with grand, sweeping historic moments - war, disease, love, triumph and tragedy, where humanity is preparing to build an interplanet colony, this one snake - and the fact that it took a drink - has been acknowledged by many humans around the globe. We've taken the time to marvel at this creature having a sip of water. And it's none the wiser, it's just going about its life.
There's no angle, no promo, no agenda, just here's a snake, it took a drink.
We had to have a big mostly dead tree in our backyard cut down a few years ago, I insisted they leave the debris. Some of the branches are re-establishing themselves, as well as the stump, and it looks like we'll get multiple trees out of it. The places in between the branches I let grow wild, and we're getting birds I've never seen coming to visit. It's great, and I have no regrets.
Posted 15 hours[0] ago too. There was a very similar story in the last year, although maybe not for Maryland... the .garden tld makes it impossible to find.
(The case for leaving the perfectly manicured lawn behind, 5pts)[1]
(So Long, Traditional Lawn. Conventional grass is costly, high-maintenance, 28pts, 11 comments[2c])[2]
(Replacing grass lawns with native plants, 159pts, 191 comments[3c])[3]
(Set Your Garden Free: Start By Rewilding One Half, Says ‘Reformed’ Landscape Designer Mary Reynolds, 3pts)[4]
(Blooming Essex garden points to future of horticulture in a heating UK, 1pt)[5]
Some neighbors of ours on the island have a creek behind them and a little pond and hundreds of NW native plants and a little coy pond. It is an absolute delight to visit any time of the year, it teems with bees in the summer and still does lovely things in the winter. Now mind you there is no HOA, just the city, but the city is so happy they are maintaining it so. I love seeing that, I'll take that any time over the desert of the flat green grass...
This 'yard' thing with cut grass covering VAST tracts of land around the houses in the US and that being enforced this strictly is literally crazy when seen from overseas. SO much space lost, doing nothing but having grass on it, with a lot of money, effort, water and energy being spent to keep it that way.
Eco-friendly yards look like a revolution compared to that delirium.
The direct victors in question--leaving aside that eco-friendly yards are a victory for all--live in Columbia MD. Back in the 00s I lived in a town not too far away, and went to Columbia regularly for shopping and restaurants and to visit friends.
I have never seen such a plastic-y repulsive town as Columbia, it's the Stepford of the mid-Atlantic, and god willing I'll never have to go there again.
I have to imagine a neighborhood full of lawns like this might have some downsides. Not to mention the property values. Plenty of rural places you can do this.
There's a great comment on the NYTimes article about a conservative, elderly,flag waving couple who are more than willing to let a local politburo tell them what they can and cannot do with their property.
