A homeowner in Goodyear, Arizona is locked in a dispute with his homeowner’s association over his practice of distributing free cold water from his driveway.
A homeowner in Goodyear, Arizona is locked in a dispute with his homeowner’s association over his practice of distributing free cold water from his driveway.
HOAs seem like they should be illegal. Having a contract in perpetuity that is attached to the purchase of property seems like it shouldn’t be allowed. So it is not only bound to the person who originally signed, but to whoever purchases the relevant property afterwards, and that gives other people rights over you that can be changed afterwards and are only limited by their conscience.
I basically don’t think you should be able to create a government by using a contract.
The part that I hate about it is obliging future homeowners to participate.
I get that the obligation was the main reason why HOA types wanted to build HOAs, but I’ll never live under an HOA. As soon as I’m aware there’s an HOA involved, I’m out. Burn the paperwork. I’m not buying it.
… Not that I plan on moving ever again.
HOAs are the direct result of racists trying to work around de-jure segregation being abolished, so yeah.
It’s basically what Anarco-capitalism wants to do. Incidentally, HOAs form the best real world argument against Anarco-capitalism.
HOAs are elected and operated by the residents. Yeah they’re often shitty, but as residents you can change them.
Also, government creation contracts are called constitutions. Lots of countries have them.
If you squint a lot, HOAs could be a mechanism for bringing neighborhoods together. It allows them to self-govern over the shared resources for the neighborhood. Want to get a company to run fiber to everyone’s home, or build a solar/wind farm for fewer dollars per MW than rooftop solar could ever do? An HOA is a legal mechanism to setup the financing and agreements to make that work in an affordable way for the residents.
Most HOAs are not setup for anything like that. They’re for requiring what fencing contractor you have to use and banning natural lawns.
Or could like, be a. Actual city doing that?
Cities are often too big of an institution for this kind of mutual aid to work. It needs to be a social unit where you can know most of the people.
So why not form a tenant union at that point?
It’s basically that, for owners. But with stupid default rules that developers put in.
HOAs formed after a development is built tend to be very cool and much like what is described.
Collective bargaining for trash service, Halloween hay rides, July 4th bbq, etc.
Well, yeah, that’s what it should be.
You “can” change them, but don’t some/most HOAs have it so that the more properties you own in a HOA, the more voting power/votes you have? Like you own 5 properties, thus have 5 votes?
Probably, but are there people who own a bunch of properties in one neighborhood? If they own a majority, isn’t that more like a managed community than an actual neighborhood?
if by people you mean corporations
Most of the HOAs in my area are a mix of privately owned homes and rental properties owned by the company that built the neighborhood.
In my HOA almost all of the board members own multiple units and they don’t even live in our neighborhood. I know one is a realtor, as she sold me my place, and another is just an investor.
They’re not always the most pleasant people, but they do an ok job the majority of the time. People seem to hate owning a house but still getting told no on things.
I don’t know if they actually vote multiple times, but I think we’ve had less than a half dozen rule changes in the almost 20 years I’ve been there.
They have a vested financial interest in making the neighborhood as attractive and successful as the rest of us. While their motivation is purely a financial interest, the petty and self-centered things I’ve seen my fellow residents try to demand is crazier than anything our board has actually done.
My new neighborhood has a corporate HOA and they won’t hand over control to the residents until a certain % of houses are occupied. The problem is the builder has been building houses for the past 4 years and they’re far away from completion, so we have to deal with the shitty HOA until then.
I also enjoy pedantic arguments, but I try to remember to avoid them when I think the topic is important. I had to stop myself from arguing against this point, because even if I won the argument, it wouldn’t mean anything.
FWIW I thought it was a great line - a bit of a zinger, even.