Solution - Refuse to purchase property subject to an HOA. I realize this might not be a tenable solution for some people, and I find that to be a very unfortunate situation. We should really educate our friends, kids, neighbors on the perils of these often-broad and legally binding agreements that seem to be sneaking into real-estate contracts/deeds at an alarming rate nationally. If you aren't comfortable with each and every provision being enforced upon you, don't purchase!
Regarding the grass lawn situation, there are alternatives like mixing in clover varieties which actually fix nitrogen (e.g. improve soil health) while requiring considerably less water than most lawn grass to survive. Here in urban Denver my wife and I have opted for a 100% "mini clover" lawn in both the front and back yards. It's already green and growing while neighboring yards are still dead winter brown grass. It also stays nice and green well into the late fall after most grass is dormant/dead.
I realize this doesn't do a lot to address the biodiversity angle the article took on, but it's a potential alternative for those seeking options. If you allow it to grow a bit you'll get flowers that are helpful for pollinators in addition to the healthier soil. I can attest that after you give the clover seed 6 weeks or so to set roots and sprout (no walking on, keep it moist) it will serve you for years. We're on year 4 at our house. No regrets.
It’s even worse. Sometimes you can be comfortable with all provisions at signing, but then the provisions change or the interpretation of them can change. It does not take much to elect some nut jobs to HOA board - especially that most owners don’t vote and even smaller portion run in HOA elections. Sometimes it’s not even HOA board that changes but the management company. And those management companies tend to be incentivized to find as many violations as possible.
No state in the US has the majority of its population living in HOA communities. There are choices but some people want all the upside of HOAs (imposing rules on others) and none of the downside (rules imposed on them). According to the Foundation for Community Association Research, Florida and Vermont are the most HOA focused states, with 45% of the population living in HOA communities. New York is only 18.8%, Oregon 13.1%, Wisconsin 12.7%, Georgia 21.8%, Arkansas 3%, and California 35.6%.
It's 100% true that you can avoid HOAs by simply not buying into one. No need for bureaucrats in DC to parachute in to run everyone lives for them. If you want to "opt-out" you can easily do so by not buying in an HOA. That's what the majority of people do. Having the government mandate the ability to opt-out is simply another way of denying others the ability to freely come together and decide rules for themselves instead of having people in DC decide for everyone.
It's entirely possible for someone to buy a property which is subject to an HOA, a well run respectful one. Then over time as "leaders" change, the HOA could become a poorly run one.
Tax foreclosure generally leads to a property free and clear of all encumberances. It's a bit of a pain to arrange though. :P
A federal opt out would be a huge intrusion into contract law, IMHO.
It's pretty easy to avoid HOAs, they have to be disclosed. It may be hard to buy where you want to buy and avoid HOAs though. But my parents' house doesn't have an HOA (but does have pretty picky city code enforcement), and the two houses I've owned didn't either; although the first did have a dry covenant that everyone I talked to said is unenforcable and I found amusing. Tends to mean older lots or more rural, because new developments like to setup HOAs, presumably because the buyers of new homes don't reject them.
Some sort of association is also more or less required if there's any form of shared responsibility, like in a condo.
> It's pretty easy to avoid HOAs, they have to be disclosed.
This is why I always cringe when my neighbors on social media bitch about HOA. It just floors me that there are people who simply do not read HOA covenants before they buy their homes.
It wouldn’t be bad except that the board and the members can change the bylaws and rules at any time. I would be fine with an HOA where no power existed to change the rules but they’ve never been like that.
Exactly. I’m no fan of them and have had a battle or two in the past with a previous house I owned. My issue was not due to ignorance, but a weird interpretation of a statute. I had a tree die. I removed it because it was unsightly. I was dinged because I wanted to replace it when the season was appropriate for planting another tree. Had I left it in I wouldn’t be in violation. So I had to plant a tree (that subsequently died), just to plant another when the season was right. Just dumb.
I swore I’d never buy in an HOA community angain after that, but around me, non-HOA communities are crap. I want to maximize value and opportunity to resell so, HOA it is.
A bit of common sense and understanding would go a long way to eliminating half the complaints you hear about HOAs.
If you know the tree is going to immediately start dying, you're just going to find the cheapest, least healthy sapling at the nursery. Had they let you wait until the tree is more likely to survive, there's a better chance you'd be willing to spend a bit more to buy an older/larger sapling that'll look better and provide more shade from the start. Plus, the temporary tree slowly dying would probably be less visually appealing than an empty spot for a few months.
There are reasons why we plant street trees: improved aesthetics, increased home value, shade along the street and sidewalks, traffic calming effects, etc. By ignoring the reason behind them and just focusing on checking the box, your HOA was just begging for some malicious compliance that undermined the benefits of the replacement tree.
I am surprised by this negative attitude towards HOAs. In my experience they have been absolutely necessary and helpful. I own a condo. The HOA maintains the exterior of the buildings, the shared driveway including snow removal, the landscaping. Every cent I pay in HOA fees is accounted for. The HOA board are other owners who work for free.
I have also heard of badly run and even fraudulent HOAs, that take money and then don’t use it for the good of the homeowners. But I doubt this is the norm.
Condo HOAs serve a very different function to suburban HOAs.
Suburban HOAs essentially function only to browbeat everyone into maintaining their property according to arbitrary standards. While usually well intentioned, initially, because these standards are arbitrary, they often result in abuses of power.
In either situation, condo or suburban, the politics of an HOA often result in the HOA becoming dominated by bad actors, increasing the propensity for abuse.
I grew up in the North East in the US and I only knew a few people across all the places I've lived that actually were interested in their lawns. Most of everyone's laws just "happened". I really never gave it much thought. Water comes from the sky and your lawn grew to the point you needed to cut it every two weeks or so. You had some clovers and weeds in there, but it was mostly grass. We'd pull weeds as kids if they were particularly egregious, but that was only when my mom would plant flowers near the house.
I rent in a city now, so I have very little lawn exposure these days, but is this experience similar for others in the North East (or maybe East coast in general)?
HOAs are a completely separate beast entirely. I can't imagine spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home only to pay an additional fee for the privilege to do what someone else tells me. I don't care if my neighbors have a project car that's half built sitting in the drive way or a dead lawn.
Ohhhh... my HOA is west of Austin. We've been in stage 3 draught restrictions since 2016. That means one-day-a-week watering, and total water expenditure limits. I have the 3rd largest lot in the neighborhood. When the temperature goes above 105°F, the lawn requires 1" of water per day, which would be 75k gallons per month. With penalties, this would be a 50k$/month water bill. Needless to say, the lawn is ... dirt.
The HOA sent letters, telling us to water, so we told them to foot the water bill through the water district first (which was a HOA change made a few years ago, thankfully). They STFU pretty quickly after that.
That's how it was in the Midwest where I grew up too, we mowed lawns because we had to (every week even, not every two weeks) but otherwise it was rare to find someone who really cared about them. Most people would have at least one patchy area on the side of their house caused by kids using it as a shortcut.
I wonder if HOAs would still exist the same way they do now if the American economy wasn’t so centered around the promise of infinite property value growth
I've been in New England a while and have the same experience. And for all the talk about "evil HOAs" I can't say I've run into such a thing here. Maybe they are more popular elsewhere and became a meme.
I'm also in New England but grew up in suburban Denver and I think it might well just be a matter of the houses and neighborhoods' having existed before anybody got the bright idea to make HOAs. It's hard to enforce an HOA on owners who already have their houses. It's a different thing altogether when you're expanding into unbuilt territory.
Same with my place in the PNW - I don’t do anything to my lawn aside from mow it occasionally, I don’t water it or seed it or anything. Sometimes it’s mostly clovers, sometimes it’s grass, sometimes there are dandelions, or crocus, sometimes it’s mostly dry and dead. I just let it do its thing.
HOA's are part of how supremacists of the day, after losing a tool ("state-backed discrimination, segregation, and oppression of ppl of the global majority") figured out how to hide the oppression elsewhere.
The concept in american jurisprudence of 'the government is less likely to interfere with contracts between private parties' meant refusing to sell a home to a person of the global majority, while being illegal in some ways, is no longer illegal if it's backed by this fictional entity called "a home owner's association".
The belief in political authority, and indeed any sort of authority, is sometimes hard to view as anything but a dangerous superstition.
Especially older people who didn’t have a fulfilling career. HOAs satisfy their desire for power and control. It’s really dumb we allow this quasi-government with no due process (I couldn’t mow because I was ill, for example) to exist.
Lawn apologist here. I have one because my kids use it daily, and it’s easy to spend 30 minutes to mow it a few times a month instead of maintaining countless bushes in the same space. I also don’t use chemicals except fertilizer and a copper-based fungicide, so there’s a decent amount of bug life.
The real ecological dead zones are the fake grass “lawns”, that are both nutrient free and heat islands, and for some reason get tax breaks to install.
The perfectly manufactured, 100% single grass variety, that takes lots of chemicals, water, and mowing? Terrible.
Grassy area that has some clover and dandelions, gets mowed 2x month, and doesn't need watering or chemical treatment? Fine by me.
Personally, I'd rather have some bushes and perennials that I trim 2x year, add much in the Spring, and that's it. And that's the way yard has been going over the last 5 years - the grass portion is smaller every year. I might just pull the plug on grass this season, dig it up, add some fresh soil, and plant some plants.
You can have it both ways though... A nice little grass play area, maybe some small soccer goals, and in the periphery of that some perennials, maybe some rosemary so the kids can pick it when helping at the kitchen? You may delimit the play area with a clover lawn too
You should be able to have it both ways, except there are neighborhoods/towns that require "though shalt have 100% Kentucky Bluegrass trimmed within 1.5"-2.75" inches length and bushes shall be aligned with building edges or property boundaries."
Ideally, there should never be requirements to have a "well groomed" lawn. And incentives should be aligned to discourage overly manicured lawns (higher water costs, taxes on fertilizer, whatever else works).
It really shows how poorly designed these incentives are. One should get a credit for not owning an ICE car, or for not using more than x m^3 of water a month.
My neighbor has zoysiagrass, and has someone spraypaint his lawn green in the winter. It's pretty hilarious. I too have zoysiagrass, but I'm cool with the dead look in the winter so that I don't worry about it in the summer when I forget to water.
Wouldn't the kids benefit from a tree or two instead of a barren wasteland of green under direct sunlight? If you do have a tree I guess the antilawn crowd doesn't mind you at all
Sounds like the problem is that the house lacks a park or similar area within walking distance. We have a garden here but there's two grass fields running along the street along with several play parks, a large park and a small swamp area within 5 minutes walking (Netherlands).
When I've lived abroad everyone (Norway, Poland, Canada...) almost everyone also had lawns in the suburbs. This is not an American-only thing.
Obviously the HOA resistance to anything different is bad, but less than 30% of homes in the US are in a HOA. Most homes with a yard without an HOA still have a green lawn.
> Hartzheim identifies as a libertarian but told me she considered neat lawns a sort of civic virtue, which she acknowledged could be inconsistent with her usual suspicion of onerous regulations. “I generally think government should stay out of people’s business,” she said. “But we live in a city, and there are rules for a reason; we have to live next door to folks. Letting yards go willy-nilly, having mice and voles everywhere — that isn’t something we should support.”
This is such a perfect encapsulation of actually-existing libertarianism that I would call it a mean-spirited and uncharitable parody if it wasn't quoting a real person. "The government should stay out of your business, except when I hold you at gunpoint until I like your lawn."
(And you can't even blame this part on HOAs, this was a city councilor talking about a municipal regulation for lawn standards)
When Americans talk about getting rid of lawns, they generally assume that means allowing just sparse or natural growth over the same construction arrangement. I'm thinking of Tucson, Arizona and places around New Mexico.
I think there is a much better approach. I'm lived around the Middle East, where most residential planning is around walls and courtyards. It's a wonderful use of space. I would always prefer a house with a courtyard over the traditional American open layout, lawn or no lawn.
I have to assume this is entirely because American architectural practices are ultimately derived from England’s, where courtyards are not particularly helpful.
They make perfect sense in warm, sunny regions like the Mediterranean because they provide a shaded and comparatively cool area on hot sunny summer days.
The courtyard giving shade is a negative in England since it seldom gets very hot and so people are actively trying to enjoy the sun, not hide from it. And as a double whammy a courtyard means more exposed walls so a home that’s harder to heat in colder winters.
Of course plenty of Americans live in places much hotter and sunnier than England - but their English heritage has left them with standard building practices unsuited to their environment.
Correct. In Europe and Mexico, South America etc. this is also the building pattern. The walls of the house go up to the sidewalk and all the yard space (if any) is at the back. And maybe a courtyard, as you said.
> How did the American lawn become the site of such vicious disagreements? American culture embodies a zeal for individuality and property rights — of the idea that people should be able to conduct their own affairs in their own territory without the neighbors or the government imposing their views and forcing conformity.
As recent events showed, this position is purely an aesthetic one for most. Americans are actually very keen on dictating to others what they should or shouldn't do.
Middle class habits and whatnot get the blame for most ecological ills.[1] It’s your car commute that is causing climate change, not the whole system of fossil fuel dependence.[2] It’s all those plastic straws and plastic bags that you’re using, not the fishing industry dumping their equipment in the Ocean. It’s you throwing out food, not food makers being incentivized to throw out food in order to optimize supply for profit. It’s your lawn using all the water which is causing a water shortage in California, not the farming industry growing almonds in an arid climate. And now it’s your, oh look it’s your lawn again.
On the one hand you can look at America. It ain’t very densely populated. And it takes active effort to get rid of dandelions. Are we really that good at mowing lawns and paving over nature?
On the other hand Georgia is a big piece of land.
If I were an American I would say screw it, let’s just
1. Ban sickeningly green residential lawns in arid climates
2. All lawns that remain are required to have at least 1/3 dandelion per square feet
Would that help the bees and the water shortage? Maybe. But at least opinion-makers would stop complaining. (And move on to the next thing.)
[1] I wrote all of this and then a Ctrl+Shift+W fatfinger killed it, thanks Chrome. Reminds to use a “notepad” before posting.
[2] And cars play a role in that. And who made countries like America massively car-dependent? Joe Parkingspace who has to live one hour by car from work or two hours by bus? (This is ill-informed. I’m not American so I don’t know what the ratios are on the ground. And it will differ from Philadelphia to Vancouver, WA.)
I had a lawn and it cost money to maintain but ..I liked it. I liked the space it gave my kids to play, for me to play, and I liked the dark green grass; the area got lots of rain. The lush green is pleasing to the eye but I do agree that we should be as environmentally concious about it as we can in avoiding pesticides and other harmful chemicals
Clover is easier to maintain, easier to setup and remains green longer. You might want to make your lawn at least 25% clover by just thrown down some seed - apparently that's what the country used to do in the past.
It won't be "homogenous" look but IMHO I think that's even prettier.
I've heard that the standard grass seed mixes used to include a percentage of clover, until early herbicides came out that tended to kill it, so the Yard Industry retconned clover into a weed.
You're just going to make lawn a privilege, and even more of a status symbol than it already is, and therefore more desirable. Just ban lawns in places where it can't grow naturally, it's not that hard.
This is from memory, and I can't find the sources - but at one point I read that some company developed some new pesticides for lawns and as a side effect, dandelions were killed. Which meant the company did a PR campaign to re-brand dandelions as weeds... and here we are.
This article is conflating the need for a "lawn" and what it means with people violating the terms and covenants they signed when they joined an HOA.
If your HOA requires grass, you've gotta have grass, even if you want a garden. As someone that has had the poor fortune of being on an HOA board neighbors like these might say they're well meaning but really they're just breaking a promise and not willing to do the hard work to convince the HOA to amend their bylaws.
Having a lawn can be great - it's hard to play soccer or toss a frisbee in a rain garden. Having a garden or letting it go "natural" is also cool and a lot of people do it in the US - but not if you've signed a piece of paper saying you will keep your lawn a lawn.
But that's just a straight-forward appeal-to-authority argument, and it doesn't really do anything to justify the existence and prevalence of the rules. Is it really a good use of time to go and fight each HOA individually? It doesn't really seem like we have time for that.
<But that's just a straight-forward appeal-to-authority argument
No, it isn't. It's a simple statement of contractual obligation. They signed a deed under the authority of an HOA so they are bound to obey the rules of the HOA. If you don't like that don't buy property beholden to an HOA.
Not when municipalities demand HOA and consequently you don't have much choice. This is not option people take because they want to, that something people have to enter because there is little other choice.
That isn't what is being questioned here. What we're calling into question the legitimacy of the agreements in the first place.
When it brings up the story of the home owners unknowingly breaking their HOA agreement in the beginning, the point isn't that it's unreasonable to expect people to follow rules that they agreed to. It's really two things; it's that A.) They didn't even realize they agreed to those rules and B.) Those rules are, in our opinion, stupid and arguably harmful, and we don't have to allow them.
Now you might argue, "Tough shit, their fault for agreeing to something without paying attention." I don't know if you guys happen to be homeowners, but I would dare you to even try to enumerate the number of obligations you've agreed to throughout the journey of buying a home. The enormous stack of paperwork you have to deal with is not exactly the easiest to digest, especially if you aren't a legal professional. It is fully understandable that someone would fail to grasp what they're getting into when they sign their HOA agreement, which I'm sure to many uninitiated people, is just another formality of home ownership. Most people are only aware of the practice of HOAs because of the pushback from normal people who assume when you buy a house and own land you generally are allowed to do what you want on it subject to some fairly basic legal requirements. And that's crap you have to read and understand in addition to hundreds of other such documents and contracts in your life. Cue the HumancentiPad episode of South Park here.
And even if you do know what you're getting into, it might not exactly be something you want to get into. The housing market is not always in your favor, and these HOAs are quite prevalent in some localities. So while it's technically an agreement, it's often a begrudging one. People who wind up here often won't be caught by surprise by an HOA rule, like the case at the beginning of this article, but that doesn't mean they're any happier.
The good news is, there is precedent here. We don't just let people agree to whatever they want, because the dynamics of some kinds of relationships are too ripe for abuse and negative outcomes for society. Just like how labor laws can restrict what employers can ask you to do, the law can also restrict what HOAs are allowed to enforce, and that's what we're after here. The rationale here is pretty straightforward; I don't give a shit about people's desire to live in neighborhoods with lawns that look like golf greens, but I do care about the ecological disaster that American lawns can be, especially depending on where you live.
Now if you disagree with that premise, then fine, nobody says you have to agree with the article, and I'm not trying to convince anyone to either, but this line of argument is offensively missing the point. I promise you, nobody is misunderstanding how an agreement works.
The piece of paper you are pretty much forced to sign if you want to live in any neighborhood at all. That's not really the full consent you are implying it is, most people are forced into joining an HOA
> 82.4% of new homes sold in 2023 were part of HOA communities
Not sure if this is AI-generated but this almost contradicts it on the same page (though it is constructed vs sold.)
> 64.7% of newly constructed homes were part of HOA communities in 2023, down 2.1% year-over-year (YoY)
> 77.1 million Americans live in HOAs, condominium communities, or cooperatives in 2024; this number represents 22.7% of the 2024 total U.S. population
Interesting, wonder if new construction tends to be bulk construction on subdivided farmland and such, and there is some reason for HOAs to make sense there. Maybe it makes it cheaper to pay for landscaping and similar services which in turn makes more profit for the developer?
Existing municipalities tend to require HOAs for new subdivisions because it reduces the administrative overhead on their end. The services a HOA provides are mostly things which would otherwise have to be done by the city.
Park and tree maintenance and stormwater drainage are the most common. Sometimes they also take care of things like road maintenance, garbage service, and street sweeping.
In my state you don't sign the hoa (covenants). Instead it is just something a dead guy signed 40 years ago, encumbered on the land for infinity*, and recorded somewhere. Maybe the title search will turn it up, maybe it won't, but either way it is enforced whether you know (or even could know) about it or not.
I was particularly enraged that even in unpopulated desert wasteland ( not even roads to get there ) 9 of 10 properties I looked at were encumbered by this nonsense, usually by a dead boomer who was afraid of anything but a mansion next to his mobile home pig farm. Several times I was lied to by everyone and only discovered it during title search and only because I sifted through hundreds of pages of ancient scanned documents.
It is truly a poison on the land and by design the proportion of encumbered land ratchets up with no way to reverse.
* Theoretically the law requires them to have a way to be removed but clever lawyering makes it next to impossible for a regular person.
No one is forced into joining an HOA. If you don't want to be bound by one then don't buy property bound by one. If there's property you want not bound by an HOA them's the breaks.
Except that the article said that the HOA needed to change the rules before that forced the couple to change what they were doing. The only thing that was called out as being against the rules was them keeping chickens in their backyard
supporting HOA's is supporting a key tool supremacists used in the USA for a long time to enact oppression and violence on people of the global majority.
You can keep supporting it. if we were hanging out IRL I would clock[0] you (unhappily, regretfully) as someone supporting supremacy.
a belief in authority can get real dangerous, real fast.
Update:
[0] I mean "clock" in the "to note the flaws of" sense. Urban dictionary gives one definition which sounds right-enough:
> used in gay vernacular especially among drag queens
> to call out someone's flaws, to uncover or reveal the truth in a situation or one's true gender
> If the targets, their family members or associates wouldn’t speak to deputies or answer questions, STAR team deputies were told to look for code enforcement violations like faded mailbox numbers, a forgotten bag of trash or overgrown grass, Rodgers said. “We would literally go out there and take a tape measure and measure the grass if somebody didn’t want to cooperate with us,” he said. Rodgers said people sometimes would fail to pay the fine, which would result in a warrant being issued for their arrest.
So, the gap between HOAs and police (deputized slave patrols) exists only for the people that want to imagine it as existing.
>You can keep supporting it. if we were hanging out IRL I would clock you (unhappily, regretfully) as someone supporting supremacy.
Let me understand you - you would assume that the individual in question knows for certain how HOAs have been used against minority groups, and then you would physically attack them before asking them if they were even aware and trying to enlighten them to the issue?
Edit: And at the risk of pushing HN's guidelines, I'll point out that this is what you've put on your personal website:
>I value coherence, meaningfulness, compassion, and kindness.
One of these things is sure as hell not like the other. Yikes. Maybe go get some fresh air, bud...
Edit 2: And I say all this as someone who very much hates HOAs and will never own a home that is in one.
ooooh, not clock as 'hit' but clock as 'I would note this thing seems to be true about you, and it would lead to me thinking at least a little less of something about you."
That thing being "you operated inside of a HOA without noting the easy-to-encounter truth about how HOAs function/have functioned."
yeah, I'll update the wording in the original post.
Update: Wording updated. indeed, I value the things I said I value, I appreciate you pointing out the other common ways the word 'clock' is used. I normally don't use such loose language.
You're probably right about a walk - my co2 meter shows the current level in this room with an open window is 818 - pretty fine, but movement and sun is always nice. It's cloudy, but I was about to head away from my desk for the day anyway.
no, i think it is the right move, especially if it landed as such a provocative statement to dig around on the profile, and then THAT RESEARCH revealed such a contradictory impulse.
There are people who live like that, and the quick social shaming response is not a bad one. "you said you care about people {here}, and you are now behaving in a dehumanizing way. how interesting"
I simply used a word that means one thing to me, and I use it in spoken language often enough, but it happens to have an equally prominent alternative usage that means directly 'to hit'.
No apologies needed or received. I think apologies are useful for some mistakes, but in some cases, if it seemed like you're witnessing online bullying... I say keep on keeping on.
Me saying "i'd hit you in person if you said this" is straight-down-the-middle bullying. Me saying "I'd sadly think less of you, if you said this in person" is not bullying, IMO, so I say we're both right. how nice.
now i wanna take my frisbee for a walk in the local park but it's as bit too windy for good throwing... hm.
There are a shocking number of properties with covenants that either disallow black people or something associated with slaves like cotton.
Which given how unpopular that is now, goes to show that it is so impossible to reverse covenants you can't even remove wildly unpopular stuff like the exclusion of blacks. Thankfully such covenants are not enforceable.
yes, exactly this. I believe it rises quickly to attention, upon researching at all the history of this "HOA thing" in the USA, is that they existed purely as a legal fiction to better accomplish oppression of 'the other' by european american english-speaking peoples in the greater united states.
Clauses like "by purchasing this property you promise to sell it only ever in the future to a white person" are sprinkled like salt across legal documents from certain eras.
Everyone was saying the whole thing out loud.
They are not enforceable, per se, today, but they still remain like landmines or unexploded ordinance in the landscape. Where there were clauses like that, that are currently unenforceable, something else might be close-enough to enforceable that it matters.
I simply ask people involved with these institutions something like "Do you know the racist/supremacist underpinnings of (HOA's|zoning|road design standards) in America?"
and usually the first half-second of their next facial expression correctly telegraphs how it'll go.
Every industry I've worked in, I read with fascination the lurid writings of those who hate the industry, either as insiders or outsiders. That an institution in the USA is _soaking wet_ in supremacy, and exists purely to propagate the concept of 'race' into the future is so banal to me, it's not really a hot take, though I remember when I thought something like this was improbable.
Anyway, HOA's are one of 'em. The hold up as ideal the concept of the suburb, which existed as "the alternative" to all things 'ethnic'.
That ideal uses threats of violence to expunge all things 'ethnic'. Sometimes under the guise of displaying class conformity/'not looking poor', but, lets be honest, that's an anti-ethnic sentiment.
The natural angle is cool if you don't want to lounge around in your yard. The pollen, ticks, mice, raccoons, weeds, etc. are generally not what people are looking to deal with in urban/suburban living.
I have a shop on a couple of acres that I let get pretty unruly because I don't really give a shit how it looks. After picking off quite a few ticks and dealing with raccoons constantly trying to get into the building for a while, I just started knocking down all the bushes and kept the grass real short. No issues since.
Additionally, the HOA rules aren't there to stop well meaning homeowners who want a more natural yard, they're there to stop completely untamed blight. The latter case is significantly more common than the former and it is absolutely a problem. As much as it pains me to say (I think HOAs are one of the saddest, most pathetic parts of American life), lawn rules are reasonable at their core, even though the enforcement is overzealous.
A rule is itself unreasonable if it can only be made reasonable with selective/lax enforcement.
If the HOA just wants to combat "untamed blight" then the rule should be about untamed blight. Don't write the rule such that it demands a specific species of grass, with a length requirement specified to the centimeter.
>only be made reasonable with selective/lax enforcement
This is just a lot of local zoning ordinances. Sometimes it's stupid and annoying but like 95%+ of the time it's fine and not terribly important to expend any energy changing.
I don't need any convincing that HOAs do it in the most power hungry freak way possible, but so much of our lives runs on letting things be a little loose, and that's a good thing.
So you can't handle a raccoon living in a bush on a yard somebody says you own so you destroy it's habitat?
Very cool. Do you want a medal? Should the ruminants who need grazing land be allowed to bulldoze your stapled together plywood or is that unreasonable?
No, I couldn't handle the mountains of roundworm and bacteria infested piss and shit in the ceilings where they set up a latrine. I couldn't handle the trails of blood throughout the building from their fighting. I couldn't handle shooting rabies/distemper infected raccoons when they stumbled up behind me while I was working.
After I sealed up the building and knocked down the shrubbery, they just walked a mile down the road to the nearest wooded area and set up shop there. They're fine, man.
You're being awfully snide for somebody who very clearly has no idea what you're talking about. You wouldn't tolerate raccoons where you live for a second if you realized what letting them do whatever they want actually entails.
> "We were being bullied on our own property."
Solution - Refuse to purchase property subject to an HOA. I realize this might not be a tenable solution for some people, and I find that to be a very unfortunate situation. We should really educate our friends, kids, neighbors on the perils of these often-broad and legally binding agreements that seem to be sneaking into real-estate contracts/deeds at an alarming rate nationally. If you aren't comfortable with each and every provision being enforced upon you, don't purchase!
Regarding the grass lawn situation, there are alternatives like mixing in clover varieties which actually fix nitrogen (e.g. improve soil health) while requiring considerably less water than most lawn grass to survive. Here in urban Denver my wife and I have opted for a 100% "mini clover" lawn in both the front and back yards. It's already green and growing while neighboring yards are still dead winter brown grass. It also stays nice and green well into the late fall after most grass is dormant/dead.
I realize this doesn't do a lot to address the biodiversity angle the article took on, but it's a potential alternative for those seeking options. If you allow it to grow a bit you'll get flowers that are helpful for pollinators in addition to the healthier soil. I can attest that after you give the clover seed 6 weeks or so to set roots and sprout (no walking on, keep it moist) it will serve you for years. We're on year 4 at our house. No regrets.
It’s even worse. Sometimes you can be comfortable with all provisions at signing, but then the provisions change or the interpretation of them can change. It does not take much to elect some nut jobs to HOA board - especially that most owners don’t vote and even smaller portion run in HOA elections. Sometimes it’s not even HOA board that changes but the management company. And those management companies tend to be incentivized to find as many violations as possible.
It is really hard to avoid them. I think the only solution is a federal law allowing you to opt out of any HOAs.
No state in the US has the majority of its population living in HOA communities. There are choices but some people want all the upside of HOAs (imposing rules on others) and none of the downside (rules imposed on them). According to the Foundation for Community Association Research, Florida and Vermont are the most HOA focused states, with 45% of the population living in HOA communities. New York is only 18.8%, Oregon 13.1%, Wisconsin 12.7%, Georgia 21.8%, Arkansas 3%, and California 35.6%.
It's 100% true that you can avoid HOAs by simply not buying into one. No need for bureaucrats in DC to parachute in to run everyone lives for them. If you want to "opt-out" you can easily do so by not buying in an HOA. That's what the majority of people do. Having the government mandate the ability to opt-out is simply another way of denying others the ability to freely come together and decide rules for themselves instead of having people in DC decide for everyone.
Some different statistics in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439164
Particularly it looks like if you want a new home, it is harder to avoid a HOA
The problem is when they change over time.
It's entirely possible for someone to buy a property which is subject to an HOA, a well run respectful one. Then over time as "leaders" change, the HOA could become a poorly run one.
Tax foreclosure generally leads to a property free and clear of all encumberances. It's a bit of a pain to arrange though. :P
A federal opt out would be a huge intrusion into contract law, IMHO.
It's pretty easy to avoid HOAs, they have to be disclosed. It may be hard to buy where you want to buy and avoid HOAs though. But my parents' house doesn't have an HOA (but does have pretty picky city code enforcement), and the two houses I've owned didn't either; although the first did have a dry covenant that everyone I talked to said is unenforcable and I found amusing. Tends to mean older lots or more rural, because new developments like to setup HOAs, presumably because the buyers of new homes don't reject them.
Some sort of association is also more or less required if there's any form of shared responsibility, like in a condo.
It is the government's job to make sure we have fair contracts to protect consumers right? Contacts are not always enforceable.
Land is a limited resource. We are not making any more of it. Sometimes just looking farther away is an option but often times it isn't.
HOA's being required on certain properties is bonkers to me. It feels like extortion. Either agree to these onerous terms or get nothing.
> It's pretty easy to avoid HOAs, they have to be disclosed.
This is why I always cringe when my neighbors on social media bitch about HOA. It just floors me that there are people who simply do not read HOA covenants before they buy their homes.
It wouldn’t be bad except that the board and the members can change the bylaws and rules at any time. I would be fine with an HOA where no power existed to change the rules but they’ve never been like that.
Not where I am. They need a majority vote from homeowners, which is almost always impossible to get in large associations
And also that this from OP may actually be a causal relationship for many:
> It may be hard to buy where you want to buy and avoid HOAs though.
Gotta fully accept the tradeoffs you make.
Exactly. I’m no fan of them and have had a battle or two in the past with a previous house I owned. My issue was not due to ignorance, but a weird interpretation of a statute. I had a tree die. I removed it because it was unsightly. I was dinged because I wanted to replace it when the season was appropriate for planting another tree. Had I left it in I wouldn’t be in violation. So I had to plant a tree (that subsequently died), just to plant another when the season was right. Just dumb.
I swore I’d never buy in an HOA community angain after that, but around me, non-HOA communities are crap. I want to maximize value and opportunity to resell so, HOA it is.
A bit of common sense and understanding would go a long way to eliminating half the complaints you hear about HOAs.
If you know the tree is going to immediately start dying, you're just going to find the cheapest, least healthy sapling at the nursery. Had they let you wait until the tree is more likely to survive, there's a better chance you'd be willing to spend a bit more to buy an older/larger sapling that'll look better and provide more shade from the start. Plus, the temporary tree slowly dying would probably be less visually appealing than an empty spot for a few months.
There are reasons why we plant street trees: improved aesthetics, increased home value, shade along the street and sidewalks, traffic calming effects, etc. By ignoring the reason behind them and just focusing on checking the box, your HOA was just begging for some malicious compliance that undermined the benefits of the replacement tree.
Depends on where you live in the US
We literally threw down clover seed on our barren front yard and it's a lush green expanse now. Like almost zero effort other than initial watering.
What kind of clover?
I am surprised by this negative attitude towards HOAs. In my experience they have been absolutely necessary and helpful. I own a condo. The HOA maintains the exterior of the buildings, the shared driveway including snow removal, the landscaping. Every cent I pay in HOA fees is accounted for. The HOA board are other owners who work for free.
I have also heard of badly run and even fraudulent HOAs, that take money and then don’t use it for the good of the homeowners. But I doubt this is the norm.
There’s a difference between a managment company looking after a shared building and a management company with authority over individual plots
Condo HOAs serve a very different function to suburban HOAs.
Suburban HOAs essentially function only to browbeat everyone into maintaining their property according to arbitrary standards. While usually well intentioned, initially, because these standards are arbitrary, they often result in abuses of power.
In either situation, condo or suburban, the politics of an HOA often result in the HOA becoming dominated by bad actors, increasing the propensity for abuse.
I grew up in the North East in the US and I only knew a few people across all the places I've lived that actually were interested in their lawns. Most of everyone's laws just "happened". I really never gave it much thought. Water comes from the sky and your lawn grew to the point you needed to cut it every two weeks or so. You had some clovers and weeds in there, but it was mostly grass. We'd pull weeds as kids if they were particularly egregious, but that was only when my mom would plant flowers near the house.
I rent in a city now, so I have very little lawn exposure these days, but is this experience similar for others in the North East (or maybe East coast in general)?
HOAs are a completely separate beast entirely. I can't imagine spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home only to pay an additional fee for the privilege to do what someone else tells me. I don't care if my neighbors have a project car that's half built sitting in the drive way or a dead lawn.
Ohhhh... my HOA is west of Austin. We've been in stage 3 draught restrictions since 2016. That means one-day-a-week watering, and total water expenditure limits. I have the 3rd largest lot in the neighborhood. When the temperature goes above 105°F, the lawn requires 1" of water per day, which would be 75k gallons per month. With penalties, this would be a 50k$/month water bill. Needless to say, the lawn is ... dirt.
The HOA sent letters, telling us to water, so we told them to foot the water bill through the water district first (which was a HOA change made a few years ago, thankfully). They STFU pretty quickly after that.
That's how it was in the Midwest where I grew up too, we mowed lawns because we had to (every week even, not every two weeks) but otherwise it was rare to find someone who really cared about them. Most people would have at least one patchy area on the side of their house caused by kids using it as a shortcut.
I wonder if HOAs would still exist the same way they do now if the American economy wasn’t so centered around the promise of infinite property value growth
I've been in New England a while and have the same experience. And for all the talk about "evil HOAs" I can't say I've run into such a thing here. Maybe they are more popular elsewhere and became a meme.
I'm also in New England but grew up in suburban Denver and I think it might well just be a matter of the houses and neighborhoods' having existed before anybody got the bright idea to make HOAs. It's hard to enforce an HOA on owners who already have their houses. It's a different thing altogether when you're expanding into unbuilt territory.
Look for suburban golf courses and you'll find hoas
Same with my place in the PNW - I don’t do anything to my lawn aside from mow it occasionally, I don’t water it or seed it or anything. Sometimes it’s mostly clovers, sometimes it’s grass, sometimes there are dandelions, or crocus, sometimes it’s mostly dry and dead. I just let it do its thing.
HOA's are part of how supremacists of the day, after losing a tool ("state-backed discrimination, segregation, and oppression of ppl of the global majority") figured out how to hide the oppression elsewhere.
The concept in american jurisprudence of 'the government is less likely to interfere with contracts between private parties' meant refusing to sell a home to a person of the global majority, while being illegal in some ways, is no longer illegal if it's backed by this fictional entity called "a home owner's association".
The belief in political authority, and indeed any sort of authority, is sometimes hard to view as anything but a dangerous superstition.
So you're saying some people enjoy a power trip.
Especially older people who didn’t have a fulfilling career. HOAs satisfy their desire for power and control. It’s really dumb we allow this quasi-government with no due process (I couldn’t mow because I was ill, for example) to exist.
I have no idea what you are saying.
Lawn apologist here. I have one because my kids use it daily, and it’s easy to spend 30 minutes to mow it a few times a month instead of maintaining countless bushes in the same space. I also don’t use chemicals except fertilizer and a copper-based fungicide, so there’s a decent amount of bug life.
The real ecological dead zones are the fake grass “lawns”, that are both nutrient free and heat islands, and for some reason get tax breaks to install.
Yeah, there's lawns and "lawns".
The perfectly manufactured, 100% single grass variety, that takes lots of chemicals, water, and mowing? Terrible.
Grassy area that has some clover and dandelions, gets mowed 2x month, and doesn't need watering or chemical treatment? Fine by me.
Personally, I'd rather have some bushes and perennials that I trim 2x year, add much in the Spring, and that's it. And that's the way yard has been going over the last 5 years - the grass portion is smaller every year. I might just pull the plug on grass this season, dig it up, add some fresh soil, and plant some plants.
You can have it both ways though... A nice little grass play area, maybe some small soccer goals, and in the periphery of that some perennials, maybe some rosemary so the kids can pick it when helping at the kitchen? You may delimit the play area with a clover lawn too
You should be able to have it both ways, except there are neighborhoods/towns that require "though shalt have 100% Kentucky Bluegrass trimmed within 1.5"-2.75" inches length and bushes shall be aligned with building edges or property boundaries."
Ideally, there should never be requirements to have a "well groomed" lawn. And incentives should be aligned to discourage overly manicured lawns (higher water costs, taxes on fertilizer, whatever else works).
Some also substitute grass with plants like creeping thyme.
> for some reason get tax breaks to install
Isn't that reason "water"?
Really a regional thing.
The home I grew up in up in the Northeast had 1 acre lot and not a sprinkler in sight.
We aren't getting tax breaks for drought-resistant landscaping in the Northeast, though.
Yes that’s ostensibly the reason, but I wouldn’t get tax breaks for covering my lawn with plastic bags.
Well, sure, just like I don't get an EV credit for walking.
It really shows how poorly designed these incentives are. One should get a credit for not owning an ICE car, or for not using more than x m^3 of water a month.
My neighbor has zoysiagrass, and has someone spraypaint his lawn green in the winter. It's pretty hilarious. I too have zoysiagrass, but I'm cool with the dead look in the winter so that I don't worry about it in the summer when I forget to water.
That’s tinted fertilizer but I also find it amusing
Right - it’s not literal paint. I don’t know the utility of fertilizer in fall/winter though. I just pay some guy to do all the stuff and I enjoy it.
Wouldn't the kids benefit from a tree or two instead of a barren wasteland of green under direct sunlight? If you do have a tree I guess the antilawn crowd doesn't mind you at all
I do have one large tree, but space is limited because much of the lawn is over underground utilities near which you really shouldn’t place trees
Sounds like the problem is that the house lacks a park or similar area within walking distance. We have a garden here but there's two grass fields running along the street along with several play parks, a large park and a small swamp area within 5 minutes walking (Netherlands).
We have 3 parks within 1km, but it’s easier to just let them outside and play ball with minimal supervision in a safe enclosed space
When I've lived abroad everyone (Norway, Poland, Canada...) almost everyone also had lawns in the suburbs. This is not an American-only thing.
Obviously the HOA resistance to anything different is bad, but less than 30% of homes in the US are in a HOA. Most homes with a yard without an HOA still have a green lawn.
> Hartzheim identifies as a libertarian but told me she considered neat lawns a sort of civic virtue, which she acknowledged could be inconsistent with her usual suspicion of onerous regulations. “I generally think government should stay out of people’s business,” she said. “But we live in a city, and there are rules for a reason; we have to live next door to folks. Letting yards go willy-nilly, having mice and voles everywhere — that isn’t something we should support.”
This is such a perfect encapsulation of actually-existing libertarianism that I would call it a mean-spirited and uncharitable parody if it wasn't quoting a real person. "The government should stay out of your business, except when I hold you at gunpoint until I like your lawn."
(And you can't even blame this part on HOAs, this was a city councilor talking about a municipal regulation for lawn standards)
When Americans talk about getting rid of lawns, they generally assume that means allowing just sparse or natural growth over the same construction arrangement. I'm thinking of Tucson, Arizona and places around New Mexico.
I think there is a much better approach. I'm lived around the Middle East, where most residential planning is around walls and courtyards. It's a wonderful use of space. I would always prefer a house with a courtyard over the traditional American open layout, lawn or no lawn.
I have to assume this is entirely because American architectural practices are ultimately derived from England’s, where courtyards are not particularly helpful.
They make perfect sense in warm, sunny regions like the Mediterranean because they provide a shaded and comparatively cool area on hot sunny summer days.
The courtyard giving shade is a negative in England since it seldom gets very hot and so people are actively trying to enjoy the sun, not hide from it. And as a double whammy a courtyard means more exposed walls so a home that’s harder to heat in colder winters.
Of course plenty of Americans live in places much hotter and sunnier than England - but their English heritage has left them with standard building practices unsuited to their environment.
Correct. In Europe and Mexico, South America etc. this is also the building pattern. The walls of the house go up to the sidewalk and all the yard space (if any) is at the back. And maybe a courtyard, as you said.
This is also common in Mexico. Spanish influence. It creates a private space for the residents, which I think is nice.
> How did the American lawn become the site of such vicious disagreements? American culture embodies a zeal for individuality and property rights — of the idea that people should be able to conduct their own affairs in their own territory without the neighbors or the government imposing their views and forcing conformity.
As recent events showed, this position is purely an aesthetic one for most. Americans are actually very keen on dictating to others what they should or shouldn't do.
Middle class habits and whatnot get the blame for most ecological ills.[1] It’s your car commute that is causing climate change, not the whole system of fossil fuel dependence.[2] It’s all those plastic straws and plastic bags that you’re using, not the fishing industry dumping their equipment in the Ocean. It’s you throwing out food, not food makers being incentivized to throw out food in order to optimize supply for profit. It’s your lawn using all the water which is causing a water shortage in California, not the farming industry growing almonds in an arid climate. And now it’s your, oh look it’s your lawn again.
On the one hand you can look at America. It ain’t very densely populated. And it takes active effort to get rid of dandelions. Are we really that good at mowing lawns and paving over nature?
On the other hand Georgia is a big piece of land.
If I were an American I would say screw it, let’s just
1. Ban sickeningly green residential lawns in arid climates
2. All lawns that remain are required to have at least 1/3 dandelion per square feet
Would that help the bees and the water shortage? Maybe. But at least opinion-makers would stop complaining. (And move on to the next thing.)
[1] I wrote all of this and then a Ctrl+Shift+W fatfinger killed it, thanks Chrome. Reminds to use a “notepad” before posting.
[2] And cars play a role in that. And who made countries like America massively car-dependent? Joe Parkingspace who has to live one hour by car from work or two hours by bus? (This is ill-informed. I’m not American so I don’t know what the ratios are on the ground. And it will differ from Philadelphia to Vancouver, WA.)
I had a lawn and it cost money to maintain but ..I liked it. I liked the space it gave my kids to play, for me to play, and I liked the dark green grass; the area got lots of rain. The lush green is pleasing to the eye but I do agree that we should be as environmentally concious about it as we can in avoiding pesticides and other harmful chemicals
Clover is easier to maintain, easier to setup and remains green longer. You might want to make your lawn at least 25% clover by just thrown down some seed - apparently that's what the country used to do in the past.
It won't be "homogenous" look but IMHO I think that's even prettier.
I've heard that the standard grass seed mixes used to include a percentage of clover, until early herbicides came out that tended to kill it, so the Yard Industry retconned clover into a weed.
Simple solution is marginal water prices. Make the price curve steeper and steeper until water consumption decreases to desired levels.
Convincing people to care about the future is the hard part though, and I have no solution for that.
You're just going to make lawn a privilege, and even more of a status symbol than it already is, and therefore more desirable. Just ban lawns in places where it can't grow naturally, it's not that hard.
The goal is to reduce water usage, not ban status symbols.
As a non-owner, I would love to have a lawn of dandelions, but the owner insists on a lawn and buys a lot of chemicals to keep it that way.
This is from memory, and I can't find the sources - but at one point I read that some company developed some new pesticides for lawns and as a side effect, dandelions were killed. Which meant the company did a PR campaign to re-brand dandelions as weeds... and here we are.
My HOA charges $38 fine per dandelion. They send me a picture with all dandelions circled and counted along with the violation notice.
That's a shame since dandelions aren't actually harmful to lawns.
Maybe it's growing up with Bloom County comic books, but dandelions to me are even beautiful and joyful
Also, they're edible.
My friend makes a sort of artistic twine from the stems.
For some odd reason that has made me much happier to see a lawn full of dandelion flowers
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-is-our-obsession...
This article is conflating the need for a "lawn" and what it means with people violating the terms and covenants they signed when they joined an HOA.
If your HOA requires grass, you've gotta have grass, even if you want a garden. As someone that has had the poor fortune of being on an HOA board neighbors like these might say they're well meaning but really they're just breaking a promise and not willing to do the hard work to convince the HOA to amend their bylaws.
Having a lawn can be great - it's hard to play soccer or toss a frisbee in a rain garden. Having a garden or letting it go "natural" is also cool and a lot of people do it in the US - but not if you've signed a piece of paper saying you will keep your lawn a lawn.
But that's just a straight-forward appeal-to-authority argument, and it doesn't really do anything to justify the existence and prevalence of the rules. Is it really a good use of time to go and fight each HOA individually? It doesn't really seem like we have time for that.
<But that's just a straight-forward appeal-to-authority argument
No, it isn't. It's a simple statement of contractual obligation. They signed a deed under the authority of an HOA so they are bound to obey the rules of the HOA. If you don't like that don't buy property beholden to an HOA.
Yes. It's a simple statement of an obligation. The critique is against the existence of said obligation.
Which obligation you entered into willingly. So really you’re appealing to your own authority to legally bind yourself in contracts.
Not when municipalities demand HOA and consequently you don't have much choice. This is not option people take because they want to, that something people have to enter because there is little other choice.
That isn't what is being questioned here. What we're calling into question the legitimacy of the agreements in the first place.
When it brings up the story of the home owners unknowingly breaking their HOA agreement in the beginning, the point isn't that it's unreasonable to expect people to follow rules that they agreed to. It's really two things; it's that A.) They didn't even realize they agreed to those rules and B.) Those rules are, in our opinion, stupid and arguably harmful, and we don't have to allow them.
Now you might argue, "Tough shit, their fault for agreeing to something without paying attention." I don't know if you guys happen to be homeowners, but I would dare you to even try to enumerate the number of obligations you've agreed to throughout the journey of buying a home. The enormous stack of paperwork you have to deal with is not exactly the easiest to digest, especially if you aren't a legal professional. It is fully understandable that someone would fail to grasp what they're getting into when they sign their HOA agreement, which I'm sure to many uninitiated people, is just another formality of home ownership. Most people are only aware of the practice of HOAs because of the pushback from normal people who assume when you buy a house and own land you generally are allowed to do what you want on it subject to some fairly basic legal requirements. And that's crap you have to read and understand in addition to hundreds of other such documents and contracts in your life. Cue the HumancentiPad episode of South Park here.
And even if you do know what you're getting into, it might not exactly be something you want to get into. The housing market is not always in your favor, and these HOAs are quite prevalent in some localities. So while it's technically an agreement, it's often a begrudging one. People who wind up here often won't be caught by surprise by an HOA rule, like the case at the beginning of this article, but that doesn't mean they're any happier.
The good news is, there is precedent here. We don't just let people agree to whatever they want, because the dynamics of some kinds of relationships are too ripe for abuse and negative outcomes for society. Just like how labor laws can restrict what employers can ask you to do, the law can also restrict what HOAs are allowed to enforce, and that's what we're after here. The rationale here is pretty straightforward; I don't give a shit about people's desire to live in neighborhoods with lawns that look like golf greens, but I do care about the ecological disaster that American lawns can be, especially depending on where you live.
Now if you disagree with that premise, then fine, nobody says you have to agree with the article, and I'm not trying to convince anyone to either, but this line of argument is offensively missing the point. I promise you, nobody is misunderstanding how an agreement works.
I live in suburbia, and I don't think I have ever seen either soccer or frisbees in any of my neighbor's lawns.
I would never buy a house with an HOA. I realize that some places people don't have much choice, and I sympathize with their plight.
Ever see the movie 'War Games'? I'd prefer HOAs be starved, not encouraged
The piece of paper you are pretty much forced to sign if you want to live in any neighborhood at all. That's not really the full consent you are implying it is, most people are forced into joining an HOA
https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/hoa-statistics
> 82.4% of new homes sold in 2023 were part of HOA communities
Not sure if this is AI-generated but this almost contradicts it on the same page (though it is constructed vs sold.)
> 64.7% of newly constructed homes were part of HOA communities in 2023, down 2.1% year-over-year (YoY)
> 77.1 million Americans live in HOAs, condominium communities, or cooperatives in 2024; this number represents 22.7% of the 2024 total U.S. population
Of course, not everyone buys new homes.
https://www.nahb.org/News-and-Economics/Housing-Economics/Na...
> Key Findings about the home buyers in the 2021 AHS:
> 7% of home buyers purchased a new home
Interesting, wonder if new construction tends to be bulk construction on subdivided farmland and such, and there is some reason for HOAs to make sense there. Maybe it makes it cheaper to pay for landscaping and similar services which in turn makes more profit for the developer?
Existing municipalities tend to require HOAs for new subdivisions because it reduces the administrative overhead on their end. The services a HOA provides are mostly things which would otherwise have to be done by the city.
Do you have examples of what HOAs provide for the city when it is composed of single family homes?
Park and tree maintenance and stormwater drainage are the most common. Sometimes they also take care of things like road maintenance, garbage service, and street sweeping.
Around here the vast majority of new construction comes in shape of "A/B unit", a single lot with two SFHs. This is organized as a HOA of 2 members.
In my state you don't sign the hoa (covenants). Instead it is just something a dead guy signed 40 years ago, encumbered on the land for infinity*, and recorded somewhere. Maybe the title search will turn it up, maybe it won't, but either way it is enforced whether you know (or even could know) about it or not.
I was particularly enraged that even in unpopulated desert wasteland ( not even roads to get there ) 9 of 10 properties I looked at were encumbered by this nonsense, usually by a dead boomer who was afraid of anything but a mansion next to his mobile home pig farm. Several times I was lied to by everyone and only discovered it during title search and only because I sifted through hundreds of pages of ancient scanned documents.
It is truly a poison on the land and by design the proportion of encumbered land ratchets up with no way to reverse.
* Theoretically the law requires them to have a way to be removed but clever lawyering makes it next to impossible for a regular person.
No one is forced into joining an HOA. If you don't want to be bound by one then don't buy property bound by one. If there's property you want not bound by an HOA them's the breaks.
Except that the article said that the HOA needed to change the rules before that forced the couple to change what they were doing. The only thing that was called out as being against the rules was them keeping chickens in their backyard
supporting HOA's is supporting a key tool supremacists used in the USA for a long time to enact oppression and violence on people of the global majority.
You can keep supporting it. if we were hanging out IRL I would clock[0] you (unhappily, regretfully) as someone supporting supremacy.
a belief in authority can get real dangerous, real fast.
Update:
[0] I mean "clock" in the "to note the flaws of" sense. Urban dictionary gives one definition which sounds right-enough:
> used in gay vernacular especially among drag queens
> to call out someone's flaws, to uncover or reveal the truth in a situation or one's true gender
Here's a few quotes about HOAs, zoning, and policing from https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...
> If the targets, their family members or associates wouldn’t speak to deputies or answer questions, STAR team deputies were told to look for code enforcement violations like faded mailbox numbers, a forgotten bag of trash or overgrown grass, Rodgers said. “We would literally go out there and take a tape measure and measure the grass if somebody didn’t want to cooperate with us,” he said. Rodgers said people sometimes would fail to pay the fine, which would result in a warrant being issued for their arrest.
So, the gap between HOAs and police (deputized slave patrols) exists only for the people that want to imagine it as existing.
mountain out of a mole hill? perhaps.
>You can keep supporting it. if we were hanging out IRL I would clock you (unhappily, regretfully) as someone supporting supremacy.
Let me understand you - you would assume that the individual in question knows for certain how HOAs have been used against minority groups, and then you would physically attack them before asking them if they were even aware and trying to enlighten them to the issue?
Edit: And at the risk of pushing HN's guidelines, I'll point out that this is what you've put on your personal website:
>I value coherence, meaningfulness, compassion, and kindness.
One of these things is sure as hell not like the other. Yikes. Maybe go get some fresh air, bud...
Edit 2: And I say all this as someone who very much hates HOAs and will never own a home that is in one.
ooooh, not clock as 'hit' but clock as 'I would note this thing seems to be true about you, and it would lead to me thinking at least a little less of something about you."
That thing being "you operated inside of a HOA without noting the easy-to-encounter truth about how HOAs function/have functioned."
yeah, I'll update the wording in the original post.
Update: Wording updated. indeed, I value the things I said I value, I appreciate you pointing out the other common ways the word 'clock' is used. I normally don't use such loose language.
You're probably right about a walk - my co2 meter shows the current level in this room with an open window is 818 - pretty fine, but movement and sun is always nice. It's cloudy, but I was about to head away from my desk for the day anyway.
Ah, fair. My apologies for assuming the meaning.
no, i think it is the right move, especially if it landed as such a provocative statement to dig around on the profile, and then THAT RESEARCH revealed such a contradictory impulse.
There are people who live like that, and the quick social shaming response is not a bad one. "you said you care about people {here}, and you are now behaving in a dehumanizing way. how interesting"
I simply used a word that means one thing to me, and I use it in spoken language often enough, but it happens to have an equally prominent alternative usage that means directly 'to hit'.
No apologies needed or received. I think apologies are useful for some mistakes, but in some cases, if it seemed like you're witnessing online bullying... I say keep on keeping on.
Me saying "i'd hit you in person if you said this" is straight-down-the-middle bullying. Me saying "I'd sadly think less of you, if you said this in person" is not bullying, IMO, so I say we're both right. how nice.
now i wanna take my frisbee for a walk in the local park but it's as bit too windy for good throwing... hm.
There are a shocking number of properties with covenants that either disallow black people or something associated with slaves like cotton.
Which given how unpopular that is now, goes to show that it is so impossible to reverse covenants you can't even remove wildly unpopular stuff like the exclusion of blacks. Thankfully such covenants are not enforceable.
yes, exactly this. I believe it rises quickly to attention, upon researching at all the history of this "HOA thing" in the USA, is that they existed purely as a legal fiction to better accomplish oppression of 'the other' by european american english-speaking peoples in the greater united states.
Clauses like "by purchasing this property you promise to sell it only ever in the future to a white person" are sprinkled like salt across legal documents from certain eras.
Everyone was saying the whole thing out loud.
They are not enforceable, per se, today, but they still remain like landmines or unexploded ordinance in the landscape. Where there were clauses like that, that are currently unenforceable, something else might be close-enough to enforceable that it matters.
I simply ask people involved with these institutions something like "Do you know the racist/supremacist underpinnings of (HOA's|zoning|road design standards) in America?"
and usually the first half-second of their next facial expression correctly telegraphs how it'll go.
Every industry I've worked in, I read with fascination the lurid writings of those who hate the industry, either as insiders or outsiders. That an institution in the USA is _soaking wet_ in supremacy, and exists purely to propagate the concept of 'race' into the future is so banal to me, it's not really a hot take, though I remember when I thought something like this was improbable.
Anyway, HOA's are one of 'em. The hold up as ideal the concept of the suburb, which existed as "the alternative" to all things 'ethnic'.
That ideal uses threats of violence to expunge all things 'ethnic'. Sometimes under the guise of displaying class conformity/'not looking poor', but, lets be honest, that's an anti-ethnic sentiment.
It hurts to behold, all of this.
Why would anyone do drugs when they could just mow a lawn? - Hank Hill
The natural angle is cool if you don't want to lounge around in your yard. The pollen, ticks, mice, raccoons, weeds, etc. are generally not what people are looking to deal with in urban/suburban living.
I have a shop on a couple of acres that I let get pretty unruly because I don't really give a shit how it looks. After picking off quite a few ticks and dealing with raccoons constantly trying to get into the building for a while, I just started knocking down all the bushes and kept the grass real short. No issues since.
Additionally, the HOA rules aren't there to stop well meaning homeowners who want a more natural yard, they're there to stop completely untamed blight. The latter case is significantly more common than the former and it is absolutely a problem. As much as it pains me to say (I think HOAs are one of the saddest, most pathetic parts of American life), lawn rules are reasonable at their core, even though the enforcement is overzealous.
A rule is itself unreasonable if it can only be made reasonable with selective/lax enforcement.
If the HOA just wants to combat "untamed blight" then the rule should be about untamed blight. Don't write the rule such that it demands a specific species of grass, with a length requirement specified to the centimeter.
>only be made reasonable with selective/lax enforcement
This is just a lot of local zoning ordinances. Sometimes it's stupid and annoying but like 95%+ of the time it's fine and not terribly important to expend any energy changing.
I don't need any convincing that HOAs do it in the most power hungry freak way possible, but so much of our lives runs on letting things be a little loose, and that's a good thing.
So you can't handle a raccoon living in a bush on a yard somebody says you own so you destroy it's habitat?
Very cool. Do you want a medal? Should the ruminants who need grazing land be allowed to bulldoze your stapled together plywood or is that unreasonable?
No, I couldn't handle the mountains of roundworm and bacteria infested piss and shit in the ceilings where they set up a latrine. I couldn't handle the trails of blood throughout the building from their fighting. I couldn't handle shooting rabies/distemper infected raccoons when they stumbled up behind me while I was working.
After I sealed up the building and knocked down the shrubbery, they just walked a mile down the road to the nearest wooded area and set up shop there. They're fine, man.
You're being awfully snide for somebody who very clearly has no idea what you're talking about. You wouldn't tolerate raccoons where you live for a second if you realized what letting them do whatever they want actually entails.
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