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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   657 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 16, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Serious question; how are HOAs legal / constitutional?

The way I understand them, they are, generally, private non-profits. Yet, moving into an area "governed" by compels you to join them. There is no option not to.

How could such a thing be legal? The whole point of local-state-federal government is that they are the only "organization" one is compelled to be subject to. I can't square the existence of HOAs with the necessity of a government (even at the local level) maintaining full sovereign over its geographic jurisdiction

From a legal perspective, requirements to join HOAs are usually set up as contractual requirements on the land, as well as a requirement to pass that onto any further sales of the land. Some created themselves in extant neighborhoods by getting the then-current homeowners to buy in, but these days most are set up by the original land developer and transmit from the first sale on. Courts have invalidated this type of thing in very specific circumstances, but outside of that one context they generally don't like to break real property contract requirements.

That process is, imo, one of the stronger arguments that they can be whitewashed state action: in addition to the dependency on mode of enforcement that Shelley highlighted, land developers can get anything from nod-and-wink permitting favoritism to outright direct grants for setting up HOAs with policies that match whatever the local government wants done.

I'm Not A Fan of them -- there are some reasonable HOAs and some reasonable cause for them like shared facilities maintenance or setting explicit standards of behavior, and there are a tiny portion of actually-voluntary HOAs that don't have such contract requirements. But even the good ones can be pretty easily corrupted by a single neurotic, and a lot were never good to start with. In theory, frustrated homeowners could take over an HOA (or even dissolve it), but in practice the bylaws are set up to make this an incredibly difficult and ponderous thing.

I look forward to an eventual SCOTUS case that crushes them.

I know, it being real estate - and residential real estate at that - there's whole multibillion dollar lobby and industry behind it. Still, I think once home ownership becomes an actual impossibility for 85%+ of Americans, the worm will turn.

This won’t happen. America is HUGE. Not being able to afford a home in top metros won’t stop most Americans from home ownership because lots of Americans will move to Indianapolis for a more affordable lifestyle- far more than 15% of them.

Yes, there are bubbles- and some of those bubbles are disproportionately influential- which view living in a second tier city(or having black neighbors) as a fate worse than death. But most Americans aren’t part of them. Standard of living trumps all, it’ll shake itself out. This isn’t an Asian country where conformism lets such tendencies run rampant.

They're a replacement of the city layer of government in parts of the US where people live at suburban density outside cities.

True rural life has rules that assume each owner had many acres and most activities don't meaningfully affect their neighbors enjoyment of their landm. This sucks when houses get built at suburban densities (less than half an acre per home) so HOAs let communities build shared infastructure (roads and sewers mostly) and set community standards like cities do. They don't use laws which apply to new homeowners rather they use deed covenants.

They're a replacement of the city layer of government in parts of the US where people live at suburban density outside cities.

This is not even true, or at least not the whole picture. HOAs are common (and even make some sense) in condo communities with shared walls/floors, which are denser than suburbs and usually not built on unincorporated county land.

But you can also easily find detached houses within city limits with HOAs.

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