11 ms·

The idea of HOAs having any kind of say feels so undemocratic, but not in a standard way. We should not tolerate purely popular democracies. We allow represen

• giantg2 4y ago
  "that public contract is for our leaders to represent all those in their constituency, not just those who voted for them." That's the statement, but it's never worked that way. Of course minority groups have been steamrolled
• tomcam 4y ago
  > Those kinds of folk need representation the most. An understandable sentiment. How much are you willing to pay for it? If you have a $1.5 million mortgage and that loon shows up next door and paints their house purple, your house might lose $300,000 in value. Same with the other neighbors, who also pay mortgages but aren’t as compassionate as you. What happens when your spouse gets a sudden offer to relocate and you can’t make your money back on the house?
  • watwut 4y ago
    The root issue here is that you frame it as you paying something for him. What is actually happening is that you demand that everyone else pay for your mortgage by subjecting themselves to your restrictions.
  • whywhywhywhy 4y ago
    Shocking how quickly peoples opinions change on this stuff when an eccentric next door can lower the value of their own investments
    • netizen-936824 4y ago
      Maybe we shouldn't think about housing as an investment
      • adventured 4y ago
        Maybe we shouldn't try to control people, including what they think, in such an authoritarian manner.
        • netizen-936824 4y ago
          Who's being authoritarian? I'm suggesting changing how we think about housing
        • tomcam 4y ago
          There’s nothing authoritarian about entering a contractor voluntarily
      • tomcam 4y ago
        Agree completely
    • sokoloff 4y ago
      Since they paid their money to buy the property, they can paint their house whatever color they damn well please, IMO.
      • tomcam 4y ago
        If there’s an HOA, they probably agreed not to.
        • sokoloff 4y ago
          If they’re my neighbor, they’re probably not in an HOA. (Though that would be an amusing experience to live in the first property outside the HOA wire.)
  • quesera 4y ago
    > your house might lose $300,000 in value Dramatic license aside, I'd hate to live anywhere where property value (or residents' senses of well-being) was so fragile that it couldn't handle a purple house.
    • tomcam 4y ago
      I have literally seen that happen, although the house was electric blue and not purple. I did in fact put my money where my mouth is and moved to a farm without an HOA.
    • JetSetWilly 4y ago
      They would hate to live in Tobermory I suppose: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tobermory_Main_Street_2012-08-09.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tobermory_Main_Stree...
      • fader 4y ago
        Or indeed, Boston: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/victorian-houses-in-cambridge-boston-massachussets-usa-gm869368128-144695049 https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/victorian-houses-in-cambri... Tangentially, Victorian houses were frequently very colorful. The lack of color photography leads people to think of them as drab, depressing shades of gray. But nothing could be further from the truth. HOAs that restrict colors to a boring beige are doing a disservice to their neighborhoods.
      • harpersealtako 4y ago
        If I lived in one of those houses, would I be able to paint it whatever color I wanted (e.g. pink and yellow stripes)? Or is there some sort of coordination to make sure they all look appealing as a set?
        • JetSetWilly 4y ago
          You can choose whatever colour you want. It seems they used to me more sombre but around 50 years ago the owner of the hotel decided randomly to paint it bright yellow and neighbouring houses along the front thought it was a great idea and started choosing their own outlandish colours.
  • harshalizee 4y ago
    >What happens when your spouse gets a sudden offer to relocate and you can’t make your money back on the house? How is that someone else's problem? Ironically, in some areas around me properties without HOAs are priced and selling a couple of 100ks higher than ones within HOAs.
    • tomcam 4y ago
      Where did I say it is someone else’s problem?
  • mattnewton 4y ago
    I think the root of this is treating housing an asset, which justifies all kinds of arguments. My house would probably increase in value a lot if I bulldozed all the others and replaced them with public gardens. The sane place for me to draw the line is where the property ends.
    • xyzzyz 4y ago
      What a great answer to losing a great deal of money: just don’t treat it as an asset! Just ignore the loss, who cares! Sure it’s nice being wealthy, ain’t it.
      • mattnewton 4y ago
        I’m not saying to ignore the loss, I am saying to limit people’s ability to use the government to protect their asset value by mandating what others do with their property. In my view too many municipalities treat decrease in asset values like a kind of pollution that leaks from your property into the surrounding spaces, and use that logic to force certain uses of people’a property. But unlike physical pollutants that leave properties, the decrease in property value is often a nebulous and subjective force, and enforcement boils down to enforcing conformity with the majority. The harms are nebulously defined and the slope is so slippery that you have neighborhoods where they have slid all the way into mandating color pallets and lawn type and length. This kind of system doesn’t let people do something as simple as postpone repairs until they can get favorable financing, and ends up a tax on the poor or different to protect an asset for the majority landowners in my view.
  • seryoiupfurds 4y ago
    One of the most desirable neighbourhoods in my city has houses painted all sorts of different colours, including purple. Somehow the property values survive.
  • gwbas1c 4y ago
    > that loon shows up next door and paints their house purple HOAs started as a way to handle common infrastructure, like drainage. They allow a few homes to share drainage, without sticking all of the costs of maintenance to the homeowner who happens to have the pipe on their property. In my case, my HOA carries property insurance for undeveloped land, maintains a grassy cul-de-sac, and maintains a fire road. (I personally spend about 2 hours a year trimming growth on the fire road because so many people walk on it.) As far as saying that an HOA is to keep the loons out, we did have a hoarder live around the corner from the HOA. The people who lived across the street couldn't sell their home. (They had kids and wanted a larger house.) Could the HOA really do anything about the hoarder? I know the people who lived around the hoarder all put a lot of pressure on hee, the town condemned the house, and eventually it burnt to the ground. At least my with HOA, there isn't any good way to "evict" a loon who makes a mess.
    • rdtwo 4y ago
      Can’t you fine them to death then foreclosure for the ammount due when it’s not paid
      • gwbas1c 4y ago
        I believe it can work with liens, but those can effectively be ignored until the home is sold. In the case of the hoarder, she owned her home outright. The town put liens on the property to cover the cost of cleaning up the lot. But, she still owns the lot and hasn't put it on the market. (She also places things on it, too.)
• technothrasher 4y ago
  > We should not tolerate purely popular democracies. Open town meetings, which are pure democracies, have been working pretty well in New England for quite a long time now, with the biggest issues in modern times being low attendence and committee overstep.
• mmh0000 4y ago
  When I bought my first house, I purposefully avoided any neighborhood with an HOA because of all the internet scare mongering I had heard over the years. After ten years of one neighbor parking cars on their lawn, another growing more weeds than blades of grass, and another with 8 vehicles parked along the street I was done. When I bought my second house I specifically wanted an HOA. After another 6 years, I couldn’t be happier. Yes the HOA prevents me from doing a handful of things, things that aren’t really a big deal in the grand scheme of things. While the HOA keeps the entire neighborhood looking nice and slaps people on the wrist when they need it.
  • gorgoiler 4y ago
    Two factors are at play: HOA or not Good folks or not The balance between the two is nuanced and it sounds like you landed on a different side of the debate to me. I’m sorry to hear that, and I respect that, as a result, you have a different view of HOAs to me. Peace.
  • quesera 4y ago
    Keep in mind that some HOAs are cooperative organizations, and some are run by very damaged people. Also keep in mind that getting together to organize a set of common standards and restrictions is the basis for all exclusive communities. That's OK if you are on the casual compliance side of the rules, or if you get to write them to suit your preferences. But it is discriminatory. Similar covenants have been used to keep out ethnic minorities (because of the way they live, like animals!). Being for or against HOAs is like being for or against laws. It's meaningless without context. Some HOAs are traffic lights. Some HOAs are civil forfeiture. An HOA can morph from tolerable into unconscionable. Deny the HOA the right to exist in the first place, and it will never go bad. This is an appealing tradeoff for many.
    • hamburglar 4y ago
      > An HOA can morph from tolerable into unconscionable. A friend of mine lived in an unconscionable one and managed to turn it tolerable by running for President on a platform of vowing not to enforce any rules. Stayed in “power” for quite a while.
• guerrilla 4y ago
  How is it undemocratic? They agreed to the terms of the HOA when they bought the place... They move to some place and then are upset when people don't like them doing certain things? This is a weirdly entitled view.
  • gorgoiler 4y ago
    Is there a standards body for HOAs? Are they regulated? If they have equivalent legal status to a government or a police department, are there constitutional rights which they cannot violate? Can two competing HOAs exist in the same geographic area, and home owners are free to setup additional ones if the incumbents don’t meet their needs?
    • harpersealtako 4y ago
      >Is there a standards body for HOAs? Are they regulated? Each state generally sets its own standards for HOAs. There are legal frameworks, insurance laws, etc. which are fairly similar across the country. >If they have equivalent legal status to a government or a police department, are there constitutional rights which they cannot violate? They do not have equivalent legal status to a government or police department. HOAs are limited in their powers by federal, state, and municipal guidelines. Every state has its own laws in this regard. There are also federal laws prohibiting certain bylaws, e.g. the Fair Housing Act prevent HOAs from enforcing racially discriminatory covenants. >Can two competing HOAs exist in the same geographic area, and home owners are free to setup additional ones if the incumbents don’t meet their needs? I don't know exactly what you're referring to, but generally speaking, nobody is forced to buy in an HOA neighborhood unless they want to, there are generally a multitude of HOA-managed (and non-HOA-managed) neighborhoods to choose from within a single town/school district/etc. The only exception might be things like specific lakes/small island communities, where the entire geographic feature is managed under a single association (e.g. for lakes they generally pay for the maintenance of the lake itself, stocking fish, removing trash, etc.)
    • guerrilla 4y ago
      Gish-gallop much? Looks like you were answered anyway though.
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• ajmurmann 4y ago
  I suspect HOAs are even less democratic than you describe. My wife was president of a small HOA for the last 5 years or so. Most of the community wasn't involved at all. My wife's main job was to work with the management company to keep things sane and the few other people who were involved in check and preventing overreach. At the same time it's hard to change the existing HOA rules. I don't even know where the HOA comes from. It predates almost everyone who still lives here. I suspect the developers put it in place. So likely none of the current residents had any input in the rules and bylaws. At one point someone pushed for dissolving the HOA. That was quickly abandoned one the management company laid out the legal process which was overwhelming and didn't seem worth it to anyone
• jltsiren 4y ago
  This is just the eternal conflict between people's freedoms. Negative liberties ("freedom from") are limited and relatively easy to regulate. If you ban people from killing each other and stealing their property, almost everyone agrees it's not a huge burden. While these liberties sometimes come into conflict, such situations tend to be rare. In practice, people care more about positive liberties ("freedom to"). In particular, they want the freedom to live a good life. Unfortunately people have different ideas of a good life, and those ideas usually require other people living their lives in a certain way and providing various services. If you try regulating this, you start quickly making choices who is allowed to live a good life. Because laws are insufficient for a good life, people make voluntary agreements to ensure it. If certain kinds of agreements (such as HOAs) become popular, they can effectively prevent some minorities from living their idea of a good life. But the agreements are only a symptom, not the cause. The real cause are other people. Without HOAs, the same people would try getting actual governments regulate the same behavior. And failing to do so, they would often feel that the society prevents them from living a good life.
• webmaven 4y ago
  I was an HOA board member in Las Vegas for a while. I was absolutely voted into the position and had to stand for reelection every year. The board voted on enforcement actions, and based on public requests and debate occasionally drew up amendments to the regulations (usually clarifications and closing loopholes) for popular ⅔ majority ratification.