HOAs are benevolent dictatorships. That's supposed to be better than democracy. What could possibly go wrong?
We don't have a procedure to reliably establish a benevolent dictatorship.
Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
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Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
#52The problem is always with the extremes. On one side, you have someone creating a car junkyard in his frontyard with a car tire bonfire behind his house and on the other, you have a random karen neigbor measuring your lawn greenness and soil humidity to see if you're not watering the lawn enough and fine your for that. Take the power from a few powertrippers and make it more democratic and you solve both issues... tu…
No idea why you're being downvoted, as this is 100% correct.
HOAs are one of those things that seemingly no one likes, but then people look to buy a house and think it's just some weird coincidence that all of the "nice" neighbourhoods have HOAs. Everyone loves HOAs stopping their neighbours from doing obnoxious things, but are sure that the things they do should be immune from HOA influence.
And FWIW, I live in Canada and here HOAs are very uncommon in subdivisions (though of course condo towers and townhouse complexes with common property and needs have strata/boards that are basically HOAs), because instead municipalities usually have many of the same sort of rules regarding how you upkeep your property, inoperable cars, etc, even if it impinges on "property rights". Indeed, exactly the same stories happen where there are tearjerker stories about how mean the city is bugging someone about their unkempt lawn or junkers in the laneway, when the city in question is coincidentally one of the most desirable cities to live in. It's like people think these are just unrelated things, when the former often follows from the latter.
Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
#53There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc. I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff? AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that? This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan. If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violati…
The irony here is I've never found my neighborhood HOA problematic. They plan the block party and take care of the landscaping of the neighborhood signage. My condo HOA experience was so bad I would never again recommend someone buy a condo. They refused to look at a structural issue until I got a lawyer and then refused to let the residents see the engineering report for the building we legally own . (Note: If you e…
HOAs get lots of hate because many are terrible, but like all things there are good ones and bad ones.
My current suburban HOA is fine. My only gripe with them is when I had to get some outdoor changes approved, I never heard back from them so I had to wait until it was approved by default after no response for X days. Dues are $160/year so I'm not really complaining. Other than that, they maintain the common areas and the only times I've seen them flex their muscles were to pressure the bank to maintain and sell foreclosed homes in the neighborhood to get somebody living there again.
I also used to own a condo in a four unit building and the HOA board was just everyone who lived in the building.
Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
#54There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc. I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff? AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that? This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan. If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violati…
Agreed. The logical answer here is to limit the things HOAs can and cannot do rather than ban them outright. But that doesn't make for a good headline.
Or how about
if you don't want to join an HOA....
you don't join an HOA?
Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They can literally take your house because your mailbox is blue. This is hard to believe. Have you got a source?
One of the remedies HOAs typically possess is the ability to put a lien on your property. The end game to one of these liens can be complicated, but losing your house is among them.
There’s like 5 intermediate steps you’re just sort of glossing over there. This is like saying the inevitable result of a paper cut is losing the entire arm to gangrene.
Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
#56What I found ironic when I moved to suburban Virginia is that the same Tea Party, "Don't Tread on Me" conservatives that want to dismantle government love HOAs. I lived in a neighborhood full of them, with the most strict and annoying HOA. We were forced to wait several weeks to replace an actively leaking roof b/c the HOA had to sign off on the shingles -- even though they were the same color/size/etc as the shingle…
> "Don't Tread on Me"
It's right there in the name: don't tread on me, not us. Rules for thee, not for me.
Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
#57As a non-American, I've always been surprised with how common HOAs are, and how over-bearing they seem. I know that I only hear about the crazy ones because blogs about normal/good HOAs aren't going viral, but I've seen enough horror stories that if I ever moved to the US I would do my best to avoid one like the plague.
In some places they act as a kind of local governing authority similar to a town or village council. In much of the US the lowest level of governing body us the county, and those can be pretty huge and diverse areas so HOAs are used to fill that gap.
Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
#58There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc. I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff? AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that? This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan. If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violati…
I think he's only planning to try to ban them for single family homes:
>Porras acknowledged condominiums, with shared roofs and common areas, present a more complicated case. But he said single-family HOAs in particular have lost their purpose.
Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
#59HOAs are benevolent dictatorships. That's supposed to be better than democracy. What could possibly go wrong?
Every HOA I've lived in had an elected board.
And everyone I've ever heard complain about HOAs has never tried to serve on the board. They're not universally volunteer orgs, but a _lot_ of them are -- which means that if you run, you'll probably be elected, because nobody else wants to deal with that.
HOAs are small governments, with plenty of the problems of larger governments via unhappy but nonparticipatory voters.
Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash
#60As a non-American, I've always been surprised with how common HOAs are, and how over-bearing they seem. I know that I only hear about the crazy ones because blogs about normal/good HOAs aren't going viral, but I've seen enough horror stories that if I ever moved to the US I would do my best to avoid one like the plague.
I’ve lived in two. They were fine. They collected reasonable dues, provided some services, and that’s about the extent of it.
I still wouldn’t want to live in another one. Even if they behave well, they’re just annoying. It’s another set of de facto laws I have to keep track of, elections to vote in, proceedings to follow. The HOA’s finances are my finances so if they screw up it’s my wallet on the line. (I see so many people asking, the HOA fucked up, can they make us pay for it? You are the HOA, there’s nobody else to pay for anything.)
And they’re just not necessary in most places. Maintain common areas? We have something for that already, it’s called local government. Prevent eyesores? Fuck off, if you want to control what happens on a property then buy it. It’s unavoidable for a condo, but completely unnecessary for detached houses, and even townhouses don’t really need one.