Judging by another guys post, HOA's are way of offloading a whole new tax structure on individual neighborhoods. The whole being racist thing is how they convinced everyone to pay it.

Wait until you learn about when they created SATs.

HOA's! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of municipalities, Dude, at least it's a system of governance!

My neighborhood is deed restricted but most of the rules are just how to be a good neighbor. Trash cans can only be out from this time to this time. Your grass can't be over grown. Personally, I like the structure and I like living on a street where everyone agrees we want our immediate environment to look and feel nice. I've never heard of anything ever having to be enforced because everyone just does it, and when someone doesn't, it usually just means they need to be checked on.

you'd both be morons in that situation

So they aren't a proto-city like an unassumed municipality, they are like a posto-city where late stage capitalism goes to retire and find a new revenu stream.

the city just can’t afford to maintain it all without raising property taxes

So, instead, everybody gets to pay HOA fees. I guess as long as you don't call it a 'tax' people will go along with it.

kinda funny though in that the city only exists to do that stuff so why not get rid of it and have the county run all the little developer cities.