As to the ubiquity of HOAs, about 60 million Americans live in them. That’s about 20% of the population. That’s not 20% of home owners, but I’d venture most apartment dwellers face tougher restrictions than any HOA could impose. Even if that 60 million works out to 30% of single family homes, that’s still quite the minority. In light of that, and the fact that in my own experience I’ve never lived more than a mile from developments that never had an HOA, I’m somewhat amused by hearing so many folks here complain that they can’t get away from them. One could possibly deduce from this that it’s the desirable properties that are covenant controlled.
As to relying on zoning, there are a lot of businesses that are allowed in residential areas by zoning laws. Zoning varies greatly from state to state and even within states, so HOAs often are able to restrict these activities when they’re not desired.
HOAs are tightly regulated. There are restrictions on their formation and powers. Laws vary widely from state to state, obviously, but the trend in legislation the last 20 years is to cripple HOAs ability to place liens on properties, severely curtailing their ability to collect dues. HOAs are far from unchecked.
I’m also somewhat amused by your characterizations of back room alliances and petty bickering. I’m not saying such things don’t happen, but I’ve not seen them. All board meetings are open, any homeowner is welcome to attend. They are scheduled well in advance and that schedule is published to the owners. In states where I’ve been a board member, we could schedule ad hoc meetings but still had to give advance notice to owners. Minutes are published.
Despite the noise on internet message boards, HOA boards spend very little time dealing with rules enforcement. Board members essentially are operating a business. Non-profit, to be sure, but a business that might maintain a million dollars in assets. So board members are dealing with subcontractors, budgeting, activities (like community garage sales or easter egg hunts), insurance, and collections. Rules enforcement is background noise - ever present but not very loud. As I said earlier, there are very few enforcement actions. In ten years on HOA boards, I oversaw the collection of far less than a thousand dollars in fines. In a development of over 550 homes, we probably sent out an average of 5 rules violation notices each month. And a good number of those were 2nd and 3rd notices for the same violation. So well under 1% of homeowners in violation.
So, yeah, HOAs have nearly unlimited arbitrary power to interfere with people’s most basic freedoms. They are nearly unavoidable, exerting these powers over a whopping 20% of Americans, HOAs can, according testimony here, change the rules at whim and without notice. Even if owners are presented with said rules, they can’t be bothered to read them, and so live in ignorance of these arcane and obscure rules. And in my experience we have almost complete compliance. Somebody here will probably say it’s coercive, that people only obey to avoid the fines. But if the rules are hidden or simply not read, they don’t know they’ve broken them until they get a notice letter. Obviously, my personal experience is anecdotal, but I challenge anybody to inspect their HOAs minutes for the number of violation letters sent.
In HOAs, as in everything else in life, you can’t satisfy everybody. But from my vantage point, people have less grievance with their HOAs than just about any other institution. And when they do have grievances, they have to power to deal with them by talking to a few of their neighbors.
Ah, perhaps there’s the rub. Who in suburban America talks to their neighbors?
