this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
134 points (97.9% liked)
Asklemmy
43159 readers
1592 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, HOAs for residential neighbourhoods of houses with each house on its own land are bullshit, no question. Those are the ones that don't actually do anything, though (as far as I can tell anyway).
My HOA does have some petty rules, like specifying the backing colour of drapes or the shape of our windows, doors, etc. Some make a lot of sense, like "your balcony cannot be covered in dog shit" (which I'm paraphrasing but it's a recent addition spurred by at least one person leaving their balcony covered in it for weeks at a time), or "Damage to communal property by contractors or guests will be paid for by the homeowner contracting the workers/hosting the guests".
I think part of the problem is that under US law there are few restrictions on contracts that adults enter of their own free will. This approach kind of assumes equal power on both sides which obviously isn't the case here, or even most of the time.
The other issue of course is that greater regulation requires greater operating cost most of the time (if for no other reason than extra compliance burden), and ends up further raising the bar for citizens to band together and build communal utilities it other improvements that would be too great for a single person to bear.
It's a tough problem, and curtailing freedoms generally isn't a winning solution in the US, but it sure does need a solution. We all have enough to deal with; middle managers measuring your grass for a taste of authority aren't helping anyone.