The evils of HOA's (and neighborhood assocations too)

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I'll use this thread to talk about what I regard as two of the main causes of the housing crisis: (1) HOA's (mandatory "Homeowners' Associations" that homeowners must belong to in many suburban neighborhoods and in coop/condo apartment buildings), and (2) to a lesser extent voluntary neighborhood "civic associations" or "block associations," which perpetually lobby for highly restrictive zoning laws.

First, a video I watched just now:



Homeowners Associations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), Apr 10, 2023.

Seems to me we desperately need laws limiting the powers of HOAs over homeowners -- and over the people, if any, whom homeowners are allowed to rent to.

I'll post more later about the evils of restrictive zoning.

HOAs were initially inventions for Condos and COOPs where they are needed because you not only own your own unit but a fraction of the common areas so there needs to be a way to take care of those areas. They quickly expanded to single family homes, probably by white, wealthy, NTs as a way to keep undesirables out and to keep their neighborhood looking "normal".

The problem, as John Oliver pointed out, is the lack of regulation. The first issue is that there are 3 types of boards:

1) The board that works well with the owners and does everything in the open (very few and you are lucky if you get this board

2) The board that does not care and does nothing

3) The tyrant board, made of of angry people willing to use the HOA power to lord over the owners (this is the type of board that ends up running most HOAs).

Add to that the fact that FOIA laws do not apply to HOAs and not only can HOAs hide behind that, they can also embezzle the dues money and make it hard for the home owners to figure out what is going on.

Personally, I would never buy a single family home in an HOA. In fact, I would rather live in the ghetto than do that. If I want to paint my house neon orange, I should have the right to.

We have STRATA's here for condos & townhomes, but afaik there's no such similar thing for detached homes. There are "community plans," submitted to the City by developers and approved that technically put restrictions on things like exterior paint colours etc in some neighbourhoods so if someone decided to paint their place up in a way that neighbours hated they could complain and have them forced to change it to something within a pre-approved range back when the homes were built. But I've never ever heard of anything like that being enforced.

The evils of STRATA's in condo buildings... well, those vary. Could be a building with a bunch of nosy people that make life super miserable, could be a building where fees were too low for too long then when major repairs are needed everyone has to be able to take out another mortgage to pay their share.. or could be a building with astronomically high fees for some reason or another that might never make sense to me - like some downtown condo buildings have monthly strata fees that are ridiculous like over $700/mo + your mortgage + your property taxes etc.. 700+ bucks/mo to maintain the roof, exterior, common areas and a concierge at the front desk? I mean, sure you don't have to mow a lawn or replace your own roof and all that so it's convenient in some ways.. but $8400+ of after tax dollars per year? Jezuz.

As for zoning restrictions etc that cause bottlenecks in getting more housing starts - those are mostly City/municipal restrictions and requirements vs. things imposed by STRATA's. Tons of red tape, tons of restrictions and requirements, and for condos, tons and tons of money per unit that developers have to pay to the city to be allowed to build - it adds an astronomical amount to the price tag of each unit.. like people used to be able to build multiple detached homes for the fees the city collects.

In conclusion, the entire system needs to be burned to the ground and rewritten. It really could use Tyler Durden and Project Mayhem to cleanse the world of this bureaucratic BS and start fresh with some common sense stuff.. like maybe approving 3-6 floor apartment buildings all over the place despite very rich people not wanting to live within eyesight of housing that people who work jobs for a living can afford to live in.

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