In , Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:

See the words "common sense"? That is not a phrase I am in the habit of
using in the same sentence as the term "HOA" -- unless the sentence also
includes a negative.

But this wasn't an HOA. It was the local government bureaucracy. You
take the idiocy of an HOA and concentrate it one hundred fold and you
are still not nearing the idiocy of a bureaucrat.

What I hear from family members and friends is that HOAS tend to be
worse because their busybodies are not lazy. While municipal governments
have more of a tendency to be lazy.

I have yet to hear of municipal governments forbidding people from
parking trucks on their driveways, regulating house paint colors and color
schemes to such extent as sometimes effectively specifying a particular
brand, forbidding people from working on their own cars on their own
driveways, forbidding above-ground pools where in-ground pools are
allowed, forbidding outdoor solar/wind drying of laundry, or forbidding
someone from romantically kissing a date in front of the home before going
in for the night.

That gets me thinking that in comparison, NYC is more reasonable despite
banning specific breeds of dogs and a cat hybrid, and CA is more
reasonable by banning sale of paraboloidal microphones and .50-BMG rifles.
That gets harder to enforce, since cops don't tour homes the way I hear
HOA busybodies often get to do one way or another. A cop needs a
warrant to look for my .50-BMG rifle or my paraboloidal microphone. Heck,
my experience is that landlords are not busybodies the way HOA board
members are said to be.

One laziness of some municipal governments: Make HOAs responsible for
maintenance of the sewer utility (if any) and
neighborhood-level/street-level water distribution, local roads, things like
that... Make the developer build those and write deeds ordaining
existence of an HOA whose duties include in part maintaining these...
The municipal government then gets to brag about its taxes being lower...
The HOA busybodies get to hire their buddies to do the maintenance on
the roads and the under-street water lines and any sewer lines there...

Do enough homeowners that have HOAs go to their HOA meetings to hold
to the fire the feet of "that level of government"? So that, for example,
road maintenance is performed at a reasonable frequency and to a
reasonable extent by the winner of a reasonable competitive bidding
process? (Of course, I wish people also held municipal gubmint feet to
their respective fires.)

Do enough homeowners who are not "busybodies" run for election to their
HOA boards? It's hard enough to get good-honest people to run for
municipal, county and state government offices for that matter!

And as much as Americans like to bash lawyers, why do Americans vote for
so many of them for state government legislative offices and for both
houses of US Congress?

--
- Don Klipstein )