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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]HOA's exist because [b]humans have a tendency to be lazy, gross and selfish.[/b]  Without them, there's no telling what your neighbors will let their homes look like.  Yes, even in Potomac and Chevy Chase....where the lazy kids inherit their parents' multimillion dollar home and then let it go to shit.

I live in an HOA community, and I have a love-hate relationship with them.  I love them when they enforce the rules by not allowing people to smoke in the community's public spaces, but I hate them when they tell me that I can't install a Ring security system on the outside of my front door. [/quote]

+1.  I agree.

And I would add that Americans tend to be very focused on "what's good for me," rather than "what's good for my community."  An HOA kind of forces us to care about our community as a whole, rather than just what is good for me.

If a person wants complete freedom to do whatever they want on their property, then they should probably buy some land and live in the outskirts, rather than in a suburb.[/quote]

The problem is that the HOA supporters and apologists are generally too short-sighted and ignorant to understand what is ACTUALLY good for the community.  That is why we have HOA rules like green lawns in August with no weeds (leading to increased pesticides and fertilizers in our groundwater and runoff), no clotheslines (increased electricity usage), no vegetable gardens in front yards (increased cost to homeowner plus increased overall food miles and agricultural land usage),  required nighttime landscape lighting (terrible for bug populations), etc.

I would say the flip side of the “don’t buy in a suburb if you want freedom to do as you please on your property”argument is that if you want total control over what you see from your house, you need to buy up all the property you see from your house.
[/quote]

As other posters have pointed out, HOAs usually have very low participation, so it’s easy to get things changed. Want to explicitly allow xeriscaping or clover yards?  Want to ban night time landscape lighting? Join the board, get active, talk to your neighbors. You would be surprised at how few of things are set in stone.

Most people aren’t involved, though, and only complain on the Internet.[/quote]

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