We are not in a court, so even if there was a legal definition of "public", which does not appear to exist, it would not matter. The question is why HN "urbansi

We are not in a court, so even if there was a legal definition of "public", which does not appear to exist, it would not matter. The question is why HN "urbansits" are so livid about HOAs and want to replace them with municipalities. The reasons I see are pretty bizarre: while not having both makes some sense (in case you optimize for the absolute minimum regulations over everything else), this thread is specifically about replacing HOA with a municipality in case when only the former is present, which means more regulation. Your democracy argument makes no sense to me: the vote is always restricted, in HOA to owners (or rather to properties themselves, a husband and wife co-owning a home don't get two votes), in a city - to residents (and on some matters, to property owners only). In neither everyone can vote. HOAs are already treated as government entities - their bylaws are not different from the city ordinances, their fees are as same as city taxes and they are hard to get rid of. I imagine you mean something else since in your country the government is descending from feudal lords and your municipalities have started as fiefs. But in the US only similar government is at the state level, the states have constitutions and laws, everything else is what you would call "private" - townships, PTAs, school districts etc are essentially corporations.