"The Color of Law" covers it a bit. HOAs became popular as a means to enforce racial covenants on property deeds after courts ruled that the only parties "harme

"The Color of Law" covers it a bit. HOAs became popular as a means to enforce racial covenants on property deeds after courts ruled that the only parties "harmed" (and therefore with standing to bring a suit) when a racial covenant was violated were the previous deed holders. Previous deed holders often were no longer around / didn't care if their house was now owned by someone with an incorrect amount of melanin in their skin. HOAs were a legal entity that could be a party to the lawsuit that suffered harm from the breach of the racial covenants, occasionally succeeding in getting courts to evict the new owners. This is why you so often hear that their purpose is "protecting property values" - the concern was that property values would tank when black and brown people moved to the neighborhood. This was a valid concern, not solely because of any racial animus on the part of the neighbors (though there was plenty of that to go around). When any black and brown people moved in, the Federal Housing Administration might redline the neighborhood, and then nobody could get FHA loans to buy a house there. Once the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned racial covenants and curbed the practice of redlining explicitly based on race, their usefulness in court rapidly declined. I assume dues were still collected and there were still meetings to attend, and so they started inventing new ways of harassing undesirable neighbors...