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.

Do you think unrelated tax payers and voters on the other side of the city will act differently?

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.

> 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.)

Eh?!

You want basic utilities controlled by an HOA and not a elected, audited and accountable organisation?

Doesn't need to be an HOA, but some organization or company where there is pressure to ensure that unsustainable properties aren't built

This is explicitly the role of city planning boards - and almost every city has at least one

I sat on the Cheverly, MD planning board for two years

If you want to provide that pressure then you should join the city planning board

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?

Individual neighborhoods wouldn't need to manage infrastructure, just pay for it specifically

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.

Does that tax bill include the amount of cost paid by federal/state subsidies or debt?