HOAs are one of the weirdest things I've learnt about the USA.. Land of the free, hates tax, loves guns, because freedom.. But the freedom to decide what color your fence is ? Nah, that doesn't matter ?
HOAs aren't contrary to the American love of freedom--they are a result of it. The ability to create HOAs is the direct result of our broad freedom of association.
If you don't like HOAs... then don't move into a neighborhood with an HOA. If you have to live in a neighborhood with an HOA and you want to change the way it runs, then change the way it runs. Convince your neighbors to make a change. Run for a seat on the board. You'll be surprised how easy it is to get elected. If you can't convince your neighbors to make the change you want, then you'll just have to live with the crushing oppression of the democratic process.
What's the alternative? Banning neighborhoods from associating without giving HOA members a say in the matter? That wouldn't make us more free, it would just transfer control out of the neighborhood and up to the City/County/State, where your control over your own neighborhood is transferred to people who don't live in the neighborhood. Does that make us more democratic?
It is my sincere wish that each and every person who champions an HOA ban is rewarded with a neighbor who repairs roof leaks with tarps and tires, puts junk cars on cinderblocks in their un-mowed front yard, and keeps a rooster--enjoy your "freedom", brother!
> That wouldn't make us more free, it would just transfer control out of the neighborhood and up to the City/County/State, where your control over your own neighborhood is transferred to people who don't live in the neighborhood. Does that make us more democratic?
It can and we have decided this many times. As example - nationally it's why a neighborhood can't decide to be "whites only" anymore. "Just convince your neighbors" wasn't working out everywhere so people convinced enough it was better worth deciding once instead of by location.
Of course it leaves more nuance than "all powerful HOA or ban" when it comes to voting on how society should be allowed to work. E.g. people can want building codes to protect general health and safety, especially in context of needing to provide emergency services when things go wrong without wanting to specify how often you need to paint the garage door. An example more relevant to the useful portion of HOAs would be wanting to allow them for community pooling for better street cleaning/clearing or a community bus stop for the kids while not wanting to allow them for what color the fence is (coming back to the GP).
And even "conservative values" is a dogwhistle for a certain shard of radicalism.
Conservatism in the sense of just generally being resistant to change is a valuable social function. It slows down change, lessening the social shock and upheavals, and allows for the consequences of changes to be better predicted and understood as they happen. If you oppose everything you'll be right some of the time, and catch things others miss when making case-by-case decisions. And this is in tension with and balanced by others who try to make changes before they're fully understood, because if we wait until we know everything we'll never do anything.
The american conservative movement is mostly not conservative in that sense, and in some ways is one of the most radical ideologies extant right now. They are fine with and support swift, sweeping changes across large parts of american life: socially, politically, legally, towards certain ends.
To the extent they are motivated by the state of change it is to undo change we have already gone through, and already experienced the unknowns and social consequences of. Trying to walk back large-scale social change has other names: reactionary, revanchism.
The signalling and actual actions is always so weird for me. Like the stimulus checks. To me those sound exactly like socialism. Such that would not have really flown in one of these socialist European hellholes.
HOAs were created in the early 1900's as a way to maintain upscale communities. In addition to forcing community standards on residents, covenants were also used to restrict racial and religious minorities from participating in these communities. We in the USA seem to love freedom for some, but we have trouble with freedom for all. I suspect this is common world-wide.
This is my number one argument against HOAs: They are fundamentally un-American. Truly in every sense they are for collectivism over individual rights and it's insane.
I live in a neighborhood where if you want to cut down a tree more than 10" in diameter you have to get all of your neighbors' buy-in. It's my tree! And your trees are your trees!
Where I live the city mandates that I can't cut down trees over a certain diameter no matter how many of my neighbors I ask. Even if I planted the tree!
You can, of course, in actuality, but you'll face a fine for doing so. Though if none of the neighbors report it you might get off scot-free.
That IS the US approach to freedom in a nutshell through. Freedom means stopping government, it doesn't mean stopping any other crazy group/person. In fact those are to be embraced and empowered.
