3 ms·

I think HOAs are horrible and I’d never participate in one. However I find the multiple comments connecting HOAs with a lack of freedom wrong. It’s a contract y

I think HOAs are horrible and I’d never participate in one. However I find the multiple comments connecting HOAs with a lack of freedom wrong. It’s a contract you’re freely entering into. There is a lack of freedom in the US, but it’s not from HOAs. Interestingly the most freedom I’ve ever felt was in Congo. The government there simply doesn’t have the resources to be pervasively and consistently present in its citizens lives. Of course you trade that for enslavement to crushing economic circumstances, so maybe this is one for Plato to solve.

zamadatix 2y ago
I somewhat agree but think "freely entering into" oversells it a bit. On one hand in a very literal sense sure, nobody is going to send you to jail for buying a home without an HOA... but it's also not something you really get to pick yourself, the house's history does and you're "free" to pick a different house not anything about the HOA itself. That doesn't inherently mean HOAs are wrong in my book but I can also see why folks don't like to say you're free to pick in that there are certain useful forms of the meaning of free that aren't present. The trouble in terminology is that might not align with everyone's default interpretation of what free means when they talk about it. It reminds me of topics of "free speech" where you have some literal absolutist that mean any speech should be allowed and the more typical approach which means more or less "mildly restricted speech" where what is restricted is often assumed to be the same but is often subtly different.