> the affected neighborhoods would have HOAs by contract limiting building freedom
Then I wouldn't sign those contracts or I would not move into their properties. I'd move to the outskirts of their neighborhood and build there.
Governments have a perceives authority to enforce their regulations on everyone. No one perceives Joe-blow as having the same power. It is because of this that society can keep people in check when these situations arise but no one can control the government as they are presumed to have abilities ordained allowing them to (unfairly) arbitrate these situations.
>You have to choose to either rely on your neighbors being decent, or suffer through life under an HOA.
Local Governments traditionally played this role. Problem is that some people hate governments simply because they are governments so they make private governments. I guess that makes sense to them?
In my (non HOA) neighborhood leaving shingles on your lawn comes with a $100/day fine.
The people who were cleaning out the house next door to me (they inherited it) were leaving piles of garbage outside. I saw the blight officer leave a notice in their mailbox and the garbage was gone the next day. (I assume it was a warning rather than a fine, but idk.)
> The entire premise of government (at each level of granularity: federal, state, local, housing association) is that society must determine what is acceptable behavior and what is not. E.g., You cannot dump toxic waste on your land.
Not disputing that; however, it makes far more sense to regulate things that actually affect neighbors (noise, dumping, etc) rather than proxies for those (long-term versus short-term residency). It shouldn't matter whether the residents are short-term or long-term, as long as they're held to the same standard.
> You enter into an implicit (or explicit) contracts with your HOA or local government when it comes to zoning, and this introduces restrictions -- it's not NIMBY (necessarily), since you knowingly agreed to the restrictions when you purchased.
It's NIMBY when those restrictions are arbitrary (in particular when they restrict things that don't actually affect neighbors, other than their sense of moral outrage) and changeable in ways that affect existing residents who haven't agreed and only bought into the old restrictions.
> Just like you should have the freedom to be a part of one, you should have the freedom to not be a part of one. But right now HOA works over full neighborhoods, there is no opt-out.
You're looking at it too much from your personal perspective. If you buy a house in the sticks, you have the freedom to start an HOA with your neighbors and bind your house to the HOA. You then have the freedom to sell your house, and buyers have the freedom to buy the house or walk away because it has an HOA. Just like you have the freedom to permanently tear down your house and rebuild it, and future buyers aren't entitled to retroactively restrict what you can do with your property today.
> But it's still strange that a whole community can unite against one house within the gates (or whatever) and decide how things should be. Not what I would expect in a country that prides itself on its freedoms.
Again, you're looking at things too much from an individual perspective. Freedoms in the US include freedom of association, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech. Freedom means the freedom to start a club of like-minded people and kick them out. If you don't like club A, house A, or HOA A, you have the freedom to start a new club/HOA the way you want it, and so on in perpetuity. Not allowing HOAs would be suppressing community and thereby suppressing freedom. Not allowing houses to be sold with an HOA would be suppressing personal freedom in contracts. There's a difference between something being unpalatable (again, I wouldn't even consider an HOA house) and something being anti-freedom.
Easy: other people bought their property at a premium for the government guarantee that they would be able to live in quiet and peace. If you want to not abide by these rules, you have to go and buy a property in a zone that does not come with these rules.
> If I own property, I have a right to use that property as I see fit. I should be able to build a building on it, take the building down, build a business, this is a fundamental right of being a human.
Then buy a property that does not come with restrictions. You live as part of a society, so respect at least the basic rules of that society. You wanna know why so many HOAs turn out to be so "dictatorial"? Because they all had that one person too many who decided that they didn't care about their neighbors.
>> By joining a HOA, you've delegated away to the collective the right to dictate to your neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property....
> But outside of that structure, what gives someone the right to dictate to their neighbors what they can and can't do with their own property?
The fact that you live in close proximity to them so many of your activities can affect them, and that it's only by communal agreement that you even have "property" at all.
>This type of regulation should be the province of HOAs, which have covenants that home owners agree to when buying their homes.
While we both agree with the problem this person is having, I'm the opposite of you with regards to your statement. HOAs can have a lot more power with a lot less oversight. If one is going to have these kinds of rules, they should be in the city/state rules or not at all.
The "agree to when buying their homes" is a faulty way of looking at it. You also agree to laws of the city/state you live in. No one is preventing you from leaving if you don't like it.
I like order, and I do not trust most people to behave responsibly. I am more than happy to be told when to cut my grass if it also comes with the guarantee that my next-door neighbor is not going to be throwing wild house parties after dark, or turning his driveway into a junkyard, or running a kennel in his backyard, etc. Some people might be willing to tolerate this kind of barbarism, but not me, so I will gladly consign myself to the restrictions of HOAs.
>>I would not buy a property next to a home that had cars parked on the front lawn. I would not want to live next to someone who thinks that's appropriate and most people would agree with me.
I never said it's approporiate. I wouldn't want to live next to such house either. But I find it unacceptable that you would like to regulate that away, just like I don't think it's acceptable to regulate whether someone can hang their laundry outside or not. It's a uniquely American fetishism with defining freedom as "freedom to tell others what they can or cannot do". There's a reason HOAs exist pretty much only there and hardly anywhere else. I might find the sight of my neighbour's car unappealing - but you're the one who wants to regulate what they can or cannot do with it.
> The HOA was here before I moved in. Why are you so angry? To be literal, the reason I think "I" (actually the HOA) have a say is because a bunch of legal paperwork says so. All the home owners signed it.
They were forced to sign it if they wanted to purchase property. If it was optional I wouldn't be angry. To me the entire reason for owning instead of renting would be to be able to modify the hell out of it to my house of my dreams. Yes I could avoid moving into an HOA neighborhood, but HOAs are spreading like viruses and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find a place that doesn't have one.
I would just ask that the law make HOAs optional when purchasing property. If you want the benefits HOAs give you (if any), you're welcome to join, but you shouldn't be forced to join one just because you want to move into a certain district.
> A year from now I won't have any say, because I won't be on the board.
So now the house you supposedly "own" will be governed by some people that you don't even know. If they don't like your yellow car they could make a fit of it. I'm angry because if I owned property in a free country they shouldn't even be legally allowed to make a fit of something that isn't impinging on their freedom.
> Generally, I like the HOA since they mow my lawn.
I'd rather save the HOA fees and pay for a lawnmowing service.
> Sounds more like, don't get deeply underwater with a house.
Right, I'll get right on controlling macro-economic systems.
> HOAs are agreements between the tenants and each other. As I bought my house, I made sure that I agreed with the HOA. I've even looked at some neighborhood's HOA and decided to shop elsewhere because of it. Some HOAs are bad, some are good.
Also, right. You have almost no control over the board of the HOA you join, and are at the mercy of others in your "community". At least with a local government, you have due process. You have none with an HOA.
Unless the HOA rules have a stipulation about your roof shingles exactly matching the other roofs in the neighborhood, which is common. And boring a shit to look at. I hate HOAs so much.
If all they did was protect property values by keeping people from doing outrageous things, I might be okay with them, but they go way beyond that to the point where it diminishes the value of buying property (since you can't adapt it as you see fit). Municipal codes usually take care of the worst behavior, anyhow. Which is why if I ever buy land and/or a house, it will be in a more rural area. Then I can put a damn Tesla solar roof on it, build a shed with a different roof and paint it all purple with green stripes if I feel like it.
>> I don't find the HOA oppressive our violating my rights at all.
But this is addressed in the article: HOAs may not feel oppressive... until they do. And if that happens, then you'll essentially be powerless because in most jurisdictions, the law heavily favors HOAs.
> 1. Most homes aren’t in an HOA, so you have plenty of options if you don’t like it.
That'd be an interesting stat to see, I assume it varies greatly by location.
> 2. It prevents all sorts of tragedies of the commons.
How so? Collective power can make tragedy of the commons problems worse. While a single family likely wouldn't buy up an adjacent piece of woods to clear for a neighborhood park, an HOA may be able to do that before someone else buys and develops the woods.
> 3. HOAs would have no power at all if you could opt out. It has to be part of the contract. They can be dissolved entirely, but that’s the only mechanism for getting out.
HOAs have whatever power the community gives them, there's nothing saying an HOA couldn't be optional. I actually lived in a neighborhood outside of Seattle with an optional HOA, it worked just fine.
> 4. We believe in individual freedom, which includes the ability to chose to trade freedom for certain benefits. I trade my freedom to leave a rusty old boat in my driveway for the benefit of not having my neighbors do that. Most of us don’t have or want the sorts of things that bring down property values and don’t want to suddenly find ourselves living next to people who do.
And that's totally reasonable. My point wasn't that there aren't incentives for homeowners to make that choice for themselves, only that it has always felt like an infringement of rights to legally bind a property to HOA governance.
> People who complain about HOAs existing are the same as the people who complain about EVs. If you don’t want one, don’t buy it.
I'm not sure where you're getting this anecdote, but here I am complaining about HOAs and I own an EV. This analogy really doesn't fit, one person's decision to buy an EV has no impact on other's right to choose what to buy where as an HOA does.
>These rules are kinda dumb and often go way far because HoA members get a little drunk with power
I'm sure that's often true. And I know that I mostly give nature relatively free rein on my country property. That said, I can at least appreciate the point of view of why suburban neighbors on fairly small land plots who keep meticulously neat lawns, gardens, and homes are going to have an issue with the person whose house has peeling paint, an unmaintained lawn, and generally looks abandoned.
> Most homes aren’t in an HOA, so you have plenty of options if you don’t like it.
If we are talking about suburban/urban homes, some large percentage are in an HOA. Most people who own instead of renting do have to contend with HOAs. There are not plenty of options. In many cases, there are no other options at all.
> It prevents all sorts of tragedies of the commons.
What sort of "tragedy of the commons" does it prevent, exactly? That because I was laid off and had to take a lower-paying, higher-houred job, my house goes unpainted a little too long, and now the paint's peeling and chipping? That because of weather, I had to wait 3 extra weekends to mow the lawn (can't do it when I go home after work, not allowed to do it after 6pm or whatever) and now it's too tall?
These aren't tragedies.
> HOAs would have no power at all if you could opt out.
Exactly. But you never bothered to ask why they should ever have power at all. The people who have these powers are people who should never have power under any conceivable circumstances. If there were a way to somehow discover people who craved to be on HOA boards, I would support a constitutional amendment to rescind their voting rights.
> We believe in individual freedom, which includes the ability to chose
Spoken by the sort of person who cheers on as the non-HOA choices dwindle to nothing.
I have a compromise that just occurred to me. If, for instance, only 1.2% of homes within a given region (perhaps legislative districts) could be included within an HOA, and if the HOAs had to bid on an HOA license, such that they're competing with each other to be included in the HOA... then the true cost of HOA apologism could be factored into the market. If you want to live in one, and if that HOA has to pay for a $12 million annual license (they could easily be bid up this high, and if you're honest with yourself you know I'm right), then who am I to tell you HOAs are bad? You're paying a premium for it and it's restricted to a tiny fraction of all available homes.
> If homes were cheap and moving were easy, perhaps HOAs would never have been invented.
Not even close to how this works. The people who favor HOAs are emotionally invested in how others manage their own households. They're not the kind of people who are easily chased away. Quite the contrary, they want to chase others away. You know, the wrong kind of people.
> People who complain about HOAs existing are the same as the people who complain about EVs. If you don’t want one, don’t buy it.
Funny that example, you belong to a political constituency that is doing whatever they can to make it illegal to sell any non-EV.
Then I wouldn't sign those contracts or I would not move into their properties. I'd move to the outskirts of their neighborhood and build there.
Governments have a perceives authority to enforce their regulations on everyone. No one perceives Joe-blow as having the same power. It is because of this that society can keep people in check when these situations arise but no one can control the government as they are presumed to have abilities ordained allowing them to (unfairly) arbitrate these situations.
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