I have. I’ve lived in HOAs where utilities, gardening/lawn care, parking lot upkeep, trash/recycling, community center, were taken care of by the HOA.
You only hear about bad HOAs because people in those HOAs only care about property values from aesthetics. In reality, a good HOA is like a properly run union - taking care of its members by providing cheaper, common services via collective bargaining.
I think that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
People who live in an area should be empowered to push back against outside interests coming in and changing things to the detriment of the residents, like the HOA posted earlier that protected their forest and watershed.
The problem is that this power is often turned back onto the residents. This sounds to me like hyper-local politics - and so the answer is to get involved and vote out the assholes in power, not ban the existence of the political body!
(Edit) I didn’t realize this, but some HOAs are controlled by outside developers, rather than local residents? That I can get behind banning!
We don’t live in a black and white world. All or nothing mentality doesn’t bring good results, because you discard imperfect things in favor of worse things.
I have. I’ve lived in HOAs where utilities, gardening/lawn care, parking lot upkeep, trash/recycling, community center, were taken care of by the HOA.
You only hear about bad HOAs because people in those HOAs only care about property values from aesthetics. In reality, a good HOA is like a properly run union - taking care of its members by providing cheaper, common services via collective bargaining.
Aside from gardening, aren’t those all things a city would be taking care of?
SIR, THIS IS AMERICA.
If we live in a system where the bad ones are allowed to exist, maybe we shouldn’t have them at all.
I think that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
People who live in an area should be empowered to push back against outside interests coming in and changing things to the detriment of the residents, like the HOA posted earlier that protected their forest and watershed.
The problem is that this power is often turned back onto the residents. This sounds to me like hyper-local politics - and so the answer is to get involved and vote out the assholes in power, not ban the existence of the political body!
(Edit) I didn’t realize this, but some HOAs are controlled by outside developers, rather than local residents? That I can get behind banning!
We don’t live in a black and white world. All or nothing mentality doesn’t bring good results, because you discard imperfect things in favor of worse things.