YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Regardless, they made a simple issue (which was not disclosed at least to me) a legal hassle.

The constant history lesson of what something was 80-90 years ago but they aren’t that way anymore but they were doesn’t advance the conversation especially when it has no impact on the actual topic.

How do HOAs enforce racial segregation in monoethnic countries?

"HOAs are most frequently found in the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines, and to some extent in other countries, such as New Zealand, Israel, Mauritius, South Africa, most of the countries of the European Union, such as Denmark, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Sweden, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Estonia, Slovakia and Slovenia, and some of the Latin American countries, such as Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association

Thats no longer the reason they still persist. But their creation was nothing but.

80% incoherent narration of random numbers, all down to the 1’s place so it looks super duper precise and impressive if you squint and don’t think too hard, like the “author” seems to have done.

You can say the exact same about the government. To be clear, are you in favor of more liberty for homeowners, or are you in favor of the government stepping in to regulate HOAs?

Then I moved to one in North Carolina that was god-awful. Dues started at $65/month and went up every year. They’d send out neighborhood reminders that a pressure-washing service would be in the neighborhood next week if anyone wanted to hire them; anyone who didn’t got notices a few weeks later that they needed to pressure-wash their driveway and/or house. I also had to buy a specific brand and sheen of paint to repaint my mailbox; of course, the lettering was only available from a single supplier.

I now live on an acre lot that sits between two neighborhoods. I have no HOA, and it is glorious.

What's wrong with lavender? Why does everything have to be a boring tan or grey? You sound like the exact reason I would never buy a house with an HOA.

"A foreclosure suit is not a lost home — most end when the owner, or the owner's lender, pays — but the pressure is the point."

Which makes no sense whatsoever. I thought they were making a housing crisis worse by forcing foreclosures, but now apparently "the pressure is the point." The point of what, exactly?

But that’s all beside the point, because this article is about how HOAs are bad for people who need somewhere to live, not about what offends your (unusual) taste.

This is relative. You might not think native flowers and plants are stunning, and that a manicured lawn is, but I do! And lawn rules might prevent me from obtaining my version of “stunning”. This is something…you want to defend? A lack of freedom to do what one wants with something they own?

I could show you HOA neighborhoods that look like a warzone, and beautiful nonHOA areas of million dollar houses.

I don't give a shit about a "stunning" neighborhood. If I own property nobody else should have a say about its appearance.

The only exception I'd defend is a historic neighborhood where the goal is specifically to upkeep a historically accurate appearance of centuries ago.

But no, I will NEVER support an HOA anywhere else. These consortiums of Karens that patrol modern housing communities can go to hell.

I will plant the flowers I want, have the Halloween decorations I want, and do whatever woodworking I want in my front yard. What's the point of ownership if I can't own it?

Net effect you lose money living in a worse location.

Most neighborhoods I’ve lived in have not had an HOA. They’ve ranged from okay to great.

I can think of a few neighbor situations where an HOA with teeth would have been welcome. The most specific involved someone getting a big angry dog breed, neglecting it, and then leaving their gate unlocked so it got out. That one was eventually dealt with by the city, though.

Meanwhile the one HOA I lived under was pretty boring and friendly. Didn’t really bother anyone but maintained a nice common area. HOA board members were friendly and reasonable, but then again so were all the neighbors so there wasn’t much to deal with.

I think the nightmare situation is a busybody HOA that starts going after things that don’t matter, which would be hell.

I would wager that the money residents might have paid for HOA fees have largely gone into their own home/yard improvements, and it shows. Adding an HOA in this place, and I think most places, would be a burden rather than a benefit.

Also, once in a decade is not a rare occurrence for events of this significance. Once in 20 years is OK, once is 50 is rare, but once in a decade is not.

I mean, the idea is nice, but it involves humans.

given that an HOA is completely unnecessary... yes. you should suck it up forever. if you want to be part of an HOA and pay dues into it, good for you, go ahead.

if somebody else doesn't want to be part of your little club, why should you get to take their house away for that?

Until the house is sold or refinanced. Yes, the HOA has to wait, but can eventually get its money with interest.

HOA should be allowed to kick out member. And people should be allowed to not be members of HOA.

For example, they’ve fought for the right to have a “right to work”, so that closed shops can’t be a thing — you cannot compel inclusion in a bargaining unit by nature of employment.

Yet restrictive deed covenants where you are compelled by the state to join a private association are fine.

The arguments for or against them are similar if you dig into them.

I can't imagine that a good judge would accept that settlement to scam someone out of a house far below value and leave them with the debt.

If you live in close proximity to other people, you should not be allowed to do whatever you want on your private property.

Pretty much every municipality already has laws that limit you in that manner.

If you have horrible neighbors you will wish you had one.

The one advantage of higher levels of government over HOAs is that they are generally impersonal. The faceless bureacrats that are processing your forms generally don't have any personal animus against you. They don't have to live next door to you and they don't have to care what your personal oddities are. They're just executing a bureaucratic process. Whereas with an HOA, every little petty personal grievance gets magnified, and so-called "governance" turns into endless feuding.

Where I’ve bought houses, HOAs were rare. I’ve always heard about these places where HOAs are the only option but I fortunately haven’t run into one.

This is true, and I'd never choose to live in an area like that.

No, it isn't. You can also get in that situation by having the HOA cite you for a violation of its rules and regulations and you not fixing the violation.

An HOA acting in good faith will not do this unless it's actually necessary. But an HOA run by busybodies can cite you for things that aren't actually violations (and often what is or is not a violation can be subjective, because the language in the rules and regulations is often vague or ambiguous), but which you still have to take the time and energy to respond to--or else they can say you didn't fix the violation and put a lien on your house.

And if you do respond, now you're embroiled in an argument about whether what they cited you for actually is a violation or isn't, and you're arguing with bad faith actors who are not going to be reasonable. And who might put a lien on your house anyway--even though they're actually not supposed to do that if you're following the process established by the HOA (and often by state law) for disputes--and now you're faced with having to hire a lawyer and convince a judge that the lien should be dismissed.

In practice, HOAs generally don't do anything useful, though.

Feels really odd, no one in our area actually wants an HOA. Yet i think people are going to flip when their HOA dues are suddenly required by the city and at much steeper rates (i imagine 2-4x the cost, our dues are quite small atm).