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Should HOAs be banned?
(discuss.online)
Banned is maybe too far, but why should we as a country allow people to have petty power over meaningless things their neighbors do? Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it's sold the new owners have to opt in?
For the most part, I'm wondering about this in the context of single family homes since for homes like condos, you could make the case that HOAs are useful for shared things like roofs and whatnot. Maybe limit mandatory HOA involvement to things like what's truly necessary and shared and not how tall your grass is?
I think HOAs and Business Improvement districts persist because they fill a need for hyper local government that the existing, formal governments are not fullfilling. HOAs don't need to be banned, they need to be replaced with something else that better fulfills this niche but is more regulated and accountable.