Apparently, it's not a gaggle.

And they have control because they don't have opposition from people who aren't like them... Welcome to politics, it's the same thing at all levels. Get involved or shut up. You don't vote? Then you agree with whatever the people who do decided.

That comment wasn't directed at you specifically.

Oh no, Doctor Toboggan, I'm not ready for 8 on-screen kids... yet.

They are wiser Karens. And with dementia.

There are typically city ordinances that cover blocking the sidewalk / abandoning vehicles.

Wait till leadership changes hands.

Not blocking sidewalks with cars? It's just illegal here.

And weeds kinda too, but only Sosnovsky Hogweed is enforced.

My dad lived in a great one. Had a community pool, event center, tennis court, and a well maintained park/playground.

The only time my parents heard from the HOA was when they put a bench in the front yard, but that was just a letter saying, "Hey, the bench is cool, but please let us know beforehand next time."

Yeah. The idea of what is bad for properties values is extremely subjective and some people take it to such extremes as to not let there ever be something they don't like.

Eg, houses can only be painted a very select few shades. Lawns have to be trimmed short and even a short vacation could get you a fine. Cars can't be parked on driveways overnight. You must have at least 3 flower beds of a minimum size. Trash bins can only be brought out in the morning and not the night before. Etc etc. Anything you can imagine a cranky neighborhood complaining about, some HOA probably has a rule for.

There's lots of common sense rules you could have. It's easy to picture a stereotypical crack den that you wouldn't want in your neighbourhood. But there's also a lot of people whose idea of a good neighborhood is cookie cutter white suburbia with no personality. If you try to have anything else, they'll fine you. If you try and fight the fines, you risk losing your house cause you can bet they'll try to make you pay any legal fees and they can probably get a lien on your house.

We have these things called laws which do that

...groups that are supposed to help prevent one person tanking everyone’s property value by...

By being black. Or otherwise a minority.

I'm not from CR, but I think you thought about wrong type of HOA. Closest thing to american HOAs in Europe I think Gardening Association or something like this. Google translate says it's Zahradní Komunita, yandex says Zahradní Kamarádství.

What? This is completely wrong. HOAs do not maintain your home for you, that's wild that you think that's the reason for HOAs. I live in an HOA and they don't do anything besides make sure everyone's house is presentable (like no missing fence pickets) and upkeep the HOA center + pool.

Some places are “unincorporated” and don’t even have a municipal government at all.

The way you phrased that sort of implies municipal-government things just don't get done in unincorporated places, but that's not the case. Instead, it's just that the county government handles everything directly. And of course, everywhere in the US is part of a county. (Except Louisiana, I guess, where they're called "parishes" instead. And maybe Native American reservations too, IDK?)

HOAs exist to serve a specific subset of the population who want to own a single family home but lack the ability or willingness to do major maintenance.

There are two major purposes of HOAs:

1. To handle maintenance of shared or collectively-owned property, such as exteriors and common areas of condominium buildings, neighborhood swimming pools, private streets, etc.
2. As the last tactic of segregation: once de-jure segregation was abolished (1917), property owners switched to using racist CC&Rs (deed restrictions) to keep out minorities. The first HOAs (at least for single-family house neighborhoods with little or no shared property) were created to enforce those restrictions. Even after those were ruled unenforceable (1948), HOAs remained popular as a means of creating ostensibly non-racist rules and then selectively enforcing them to harass non-white residents.

And I hate to break it to some of the folks in this thread who think their HOA is innocuous and is just there to make sure everybody's single-family house is presentable: if it isn't reason #1, then it is reason #2. You were just too innocent to realize it.

I own a home in an unincorporated area that also has an HOA, but ours is only for 3 things:

1. Yearly fire inspections (California)
2. Negotiating with the local trash company for service cost
3. Negotiating with the local propane company for lower cost

My super anti-government neighbors are still working to dissolve it, but it doesn't even have any rules that aren't "see county laws and fire code", they just don't like the $50/year fee

I'm aware my experience isn't the norm, though

K

American crime writer, Karin Slaughter, threw a cute little Easter Egg into one of her books. One of the busybody residents in an upscale neighborhood is named Alison Hendrickson.