What consequences are sane for a member who does not pay dues, water bills, etc., for a prolonged period? Turning off the water is illegal here. Liens get ignored. My HOA will avoid foreclosure for years, and has only resorted to it twice in twenty years, but it's the ultimate recourse. Should the other members just suck it up forever?
Until the house is sold or refinanced. Yes, the HOA has to wait, but can eventually get its money with interest.
An HOA isn't just about neighborhoods of freestanding houses, it's also about multi unit buildings.
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.
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?
Typically the HOA's I've seen manage community resources. Where I used to live that meant the neighborhood parks, green spaces, 3 docks in the river, a pool, and a few lakes. No value seems a bit hyperbolic.
most HOAs manage a tiny amount of communal green space that should have been turned over to become city property, but was held back as HOA property to give the HOA a reason to exist.
You are just making this up at this point. Why do you think the city would accept property that they would have to legally maintain and be responsible for, when it is generally isolated and (largely) accessible to only a specific neighborhood?
Mostly I don't understand why an individual neighborhood would need it's own out of band election process (that typically allows people to gain tremendous power and authority without anyone voting for them), and representatives completely decoupled from the state or government but often times acting in parallel.
Come on, at least try. HOAs (typically, your word) have elections. Someone doesn't just walk in and declare themselves the association president.
I think we have the wrong units of measure for government size. I live in a county where the lines made sense 200 years ago: Everybody in the county can ride their hose to the courthouse, file whatever they need and be home in time for super. These days everyone drives and can be there in half an hour or less. Instead what I care about is the metro area. I want a unit that ensures my transit system is a coherent whole, the water supply is cheaper to consolidate to one large entity vs many small ones.
There is one suburb near me where some people would have to drive 25 minutes to get to the city library - most of that is uncongested highway. I really need a smaller unit to own and run a library so kids are always in bike distance. That city does a good job of scattered small parks but there is one complex with large fields for softball - if you don't live close maybe you shouldn't pay for something you don't use. I want parks owned by a smaller area government that can bring my neighborhood something they don't have. - HOAs often serve that. They just have a poor legal structure.
If you own part of a shared walls building then a corporation is required to manage that. You have to pay your share of the share costs. However the corporation should be limited in what else it can do, but it must exist.
You can put in a special district, that's an HOA under a different name, with even more government powers and bureaucracy costs. For example, you vote on stuff via the general election, they can seize your home for unpaid property taxes, they can impose zoning laws, and in some places they can impose criminal ordinances (dog pooping in the park).
> they should lose access to the pool, not their house.
To enforce this you have to be able to gate, secure, and prevent them and their guests from using this. That costs a lot more money just to ensure they pay in. The HOA is the least worse option to "consent" and ensure that they do. Taking away the house is a much later step after a letter, 2nd and 3rd warnings, fines, ignored fines+interest, and a lein is ignored.
This is true sometimes, but if you are upset at a specific HOA, look at your docs to see what it actually manages. HOAs exist to pay for community obligated costs; sometimes that is a pool, sometimes it's "water and gas bills", and sometimes it's an entire golf course.
Further, if you're talking about a condo building (which, yes, is technically a COA, but the two get combined all the time), it is literally paying for your roof and elevators to work.
Buying into a "little club" and agreeing to pay your share of expenses only works when everyone participates. If not, your neighbors are just paying upkeep on your property; why should they have to do that?
Such arrangements used to be common, but they have become increasingly rare in the past few centuries. Many were explicitly abolished by law when free markets started getting popular. Often for antitrust reasons, or because people thought it would not be in the public interest to have certain types of contracts the previous owner made also bind the new owner.
I can think of a few similar arrangements in Finland. For example, membership in student unions at research universities is still mandatory, as is membership in reindeer husbandry associations. Those entities perform government functions, and the actual government has chosen not to assume the responsibility for one reason or another. As a consequence, the entities and their officials are subject to the same regulations as the government when wielding powers used to justify mandatory membership.
Condos are another story. If the entire complex is a single property for legal or practical purposes, it makes sense to have a single entity in charge of it.
Because they signed the paperwork saying they wanted to be part of the little club and gave that little club the power to take away their house.
Then "people want a house without dealing with strata" gets misinterpreted as "people want big houses on big lots". Not necessarily true, just that the premium for the BHoBL is the necessary price of not giving busybody neighbours power over your home.
HOA should be allowed to kick out member. And people should be allowed to not be members of HOA.
Even if it’s a very low maintenance and amenity HOA on public roads, how do you resolve the fact that all the fees and costs have accumulated if the home were to be sold, you essentially end up at a similar end point where the home is sold. Usually these are also not individual circumstances, i.e., a person who has ignored all kind of warnings and letters and board meetings over usually years, also has many other issues going on and often they’re just letting the home go anyways and e.g., are just living there for “free” for about 1-3 years of HOA/bank legal proceedings.
There is no need for "HOA owned and maintained street". You do not need HOA to maintain streets.
Just like labor unions (ie. "right to work" states), right?
Also I'm a firm believer that if you're at a union shop and decide not to be part of the union you shouldn't be able to use their pay scales and should have to negotiate everything for yourself. The same with HOA's, I guess. If they do something for the community, like the pool the other poster talked about, then you shouldn't have access. Easy.
They shouldn't be able to take your house for any reason.
At least in theory? Neighborhood "character" (and by proxy "land value").
But also I'm biased.
HOAs don't add value. All they are is an opportunity to power trip for those who have the most free time on their hands.
I'm sure the people who support right to work laws would also claim labor unions "don't add value". On the flip side I doubt HOA supporters think they "don't add value".
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.
The HOA hired a law firm, forced a foreclosure, held a foreclosure auction where the HOA itself bought her house for THREE DOLLARS, and continued to charge her HOA dues (even though the HOA owned the home now) before evicting her later.
The HOA then sold the home to an employee involved in the foreclosure, whose partner was on the HOA board that had voted to foreclose, and voted to accept the three dollar ($3.24, to be precise) bid, though they hid this behind an LLC that didn't actually exist when they did it. The employee then reactivated her real estate license and sold the home to another family several months later.
There are fewer greater lunacies than HOAs, and the type of people drawn to run 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.
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.
Net effect you lose money living in a worse location.
In this context, do you still believe that dealing with this fine should involve the work, effort, resources, legal fees, court time, delays in court availability because healthy 40 year old Jim bob was late for work and couldn't shovel their portion of the sidewalk the last 10 times? Or that the Gen Z, not my problem because I don't think it's a problem.
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.
There's probably a security aspect too with regular private security patrols in HOA areas that do enough to shoo away encampments from setting up. You don't have to look to hard to find encampments off vine north of melrose but you aren't going to find anything like that south of melrose in hancock park, thanks to the spend on private security, given it's the same LAPD in either case.
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.
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.
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?