On one side, you have someone creating a car junkyard in his frontyard with a car tire bonfire behind his house and on the other, you have a random karen neigbor measuring your lawn greenness and soil humidity to see if you're not watering the lawn enough and fine your for that.
Take the power from a few powertrippers and make it more democratic and you solve both issues... turn every issue into a mandatory vote, require some kind of above-majority vote (eg 70%), and you're done. If the issue is so bad, that 70% of your neighbors actually come to a meeting and vote against what you're doing, it must be something really bad.
> In Riverview, HOA disputes escalated into arrests and foreclosure threats. One homeowner was jailed for a week over brown grass, while another faced a lien and thousands in legal fees tied to her house paint.
What, excuse me, the hell? I thought "debtor's prison" was outlawed centuries ago?
There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc.
I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff?
AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that?
This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan.
If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violating peoples rights, like not being able to have cars in your drive way or only display flags certain ways.
Allow HOAs, with a strictly specific purpose of budgeting for common area expenses. Whether it is for structure maintenance (in apartment buildings and townhouses with shared structural elements) or common sports areas, elevators, pools, etc. A HOA can be allowed to collect reasonable costs to fund those projected maintenance expenses. That makes sense.
Then, outlaw everything else. A HOA must not be able to have any say in anything that is not a common area maintenance cost.
This would be very easy to codify into law and solves all the problems with HOAs.
One of my only stipulations when buying a SFH for just myself at the time, 15 years ago, was no HOA. Sure I also wanted 1 full bath, a driveway, and a not-awful commute. HOAs were an instant “nope” for any listing I came across.
This is a huge problem in Pennsylvania also, but most of the municipalities have abdicated significant maintenance responsibilities to HOAs. They refuse to take over roads, retention ponds, and common land areas requiring the HOA to cover maintenance. Snow removal from "public" roads and landscaping of "common areas" is a significant cost for HOAs. If the municipalitiies are forced to take these dutues over it's going to be a huge hit to their budgets. I'd think this would be a hard sell to most politicians in PA.
i'm ready for this new revolution that breaks hoas. i was on the board of an HOA for about 2 years for the property i own in atlanta and i figured out really quickly it is a way for the eldest residents with more capitol than the youth to essentially drain the financial life from them and protect themselves from change or new ideas.
behind closed doors saying things like "that rule only exist when we don't like someone and helps us be able to get rid of them", "it's supposed to be a fair process but we just let the tenants we like and prefer know first, we will send everyone a letter so it's too late for them to respond against it".
The problem you'll run into is when the HOAs are responsible for common areas or shared infrastructure. In some places the HOAs are responsible for the roads and there may be a common pool, gym, or other amenities.
You'd be better off preventing HOAs from doing petty things like requiring homes to be painted certain colors and requiring them to have their books audited yearly to ensure there's no fraud or abuse going on.
As a non-American, I've always been surprised with how common HOAs are, and how over-bearing they seem.
I know that I only hear about the crazy ones because blogs about normal/good HOAs aren't going viral, but I've seen enough horror stories that if I ever moved to the US I would do my best to avoid one like the plague.
What I found ironic when I moved to suburban Virginia is that the same Tea Party, "Don't Tread on Me" conservatives that want to dismantle government love HOAs. I lived in a neighborhood full of them, with the most strict and annoying HOA. We were forced to wait several weeks to replace an actively leaking roof b/c the HOA had to sign off on the shingles -- even though they were the same color/size/etc as the shingles that the house was built with. When we bought the house, the previous owner had to pay fines for installing a fenced doghouse in his back yard w/o their permission.
I really enjoyed it when a halfway house managed to find a loophole in their rules and rented a house down the street. That HOA tried and failed to kick them out..
I am a BOD and Officer in a HOA. This will be messy - we would have to sell all of our common amenities, parking lots, overflow parking lots, playgrounds, gym, pools etc to the government or a private company if this happens. County would have to take over maintenance of our platted common property and property that we mow (and get paid for) by the County. County would have to step up enforcement of parking on street rules, trespassing on what would become County property. What do we do with the $500k we have the operating funds and reserves collected over the past 40 years?
County would have to find another place to do their voting as we have offered our clubhouse for years. We would have to fire our LCAM.
County would have to maintain some expensive drainage and ponds that our HOA manages. Fountains. Weir replacement alone is $250k that we keep up.
Yes, reform HOA laws but abolishing them I am not sure is the right thing to do. It would create such a massive mess and requirement for Counties to maintain things that they don’t currently manage. It may lead to these areas to incorporate because then you would end up with City based code enforcement.
HOA reserve funds (not Condo) needs to be relooked at. We have healthy reserves because we have been keeping on top of reserve studies.
I lived in an HOA community for eight years and I have mixed feelings. So many things can go wrong without one - old cars in the front yard, political signs (I don’t care what your political persuasion is they are tacky), yard not being kept.
HOAs suck. But so do people. As another poster said, there are shared responsibility parts in some neighborhoods like pools, gyms, tennis courts etc
I wonder if this could be part of the Florida/Disney spat? Are some of Disney’s properties under HOA?
Just random speculation, I haven’t been following it too closely. But, always got to be suspicious of a politician who suggests something that seems popular.
In Florida, condominium associations (COA) and homeowners associations (HOA) are not legally the same thing, but in discussions like this people often refer to them interchangeably. There is a big difference between an HOA requiring mowed lawns and paint colors and a COA that maintains roofs, pools, playgrounds, common elements, etc. People will refer to Surfside as a reason HOAs are important but the Champlain Towers was a condo.
I volunteered to run my HOA in Massachusetts because I was afraid someone would come in and abuse their power and fine everyone for trivial matters.
What I learned was that the town "forces" all new developments to have an HOA because town politics prevents the town from adopting roads from new housing developments. Thus all new neighborhoods in the town have "private" roads.
It's a lot of "BS" work that's pushed on residents simply because of malfunctioning politics.
There has to be nuance.
If a community has shared areas then there has to be an organization to maintain and service them and that org. requires funding. This is especially true with Condo style communities. To attempt to shut that management down and replace it with either voluntary fees or some other solution seems destined to fail or to lead to outright war amongst the residents as those that don't contribute continue to use the facilities.
Things start to get a little more complex with SFR communities. I have always intentionally chosen communities where there is no HOA. I have no interest in someone telling me what I can and cannot do with the property I own. This of course means that I have always intentionally purchased in areas with no common spaces. I make sure to drive the area carefully first to see who lives there and the condition of the homes. Of course this could go wrong; nothing stopping someone from selling and the new owner paints his house purple and green and changes his oil in his front yard. Its a price I am open to paying though to ensure that my property is mine fully beside government control.
My MIL has a HOA and they determine what color residents can paint their homes, the type of roof tile, etc.
They also have gated entrances though with security that checks Id's for entrance. No way to run that without some sort of HOA like organization. If someone wants to live in this type of community then no reason to stop it, each to their own.
My major personal issue with HOA's is when they mandate the type of fencing you can have, often requiring open fences that provide no privacy. I want tall 6+ foot solid fences and even taller plant life. The more privacy I can implement the better. I am also getting a pool built and its nice knowing that no one else can have input over it except the city permitting office.
I would be good with a law that says an existing community without an HOA cannot create one without 100% of the homeowners agreeing. That seems like something worth considering.
Other than that its a complicated situation that I just don't think a quick law for cudos is going to solve.
Simply banning something seems... not well thought out.
We need a federal level HOA ban. They serve no productive purpose. When people defend HOAs that usually boils down to them feeling like they have some right to tell other people how to live.
I live in an old neighborhood (1890s) so I'm not very familiar with HOAs, but I assumed they were the ideal solution: small government, very local, voluntary, and not government at all, they're private. These are attributes I was told made for ideal situations. What (or who!) causes this mechanism to fail?
26 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 35.1 ms ] threadOn one side, you have someone creating a car junkyard in his frontyard with a car tire bonfire behind his house and on the other, you have a random karen neigbor measuring your lawn greenness and soil humidity to see if you're not watering the lawn enough and fine your for that.
Take the power from a few powertrippers and make it more democratic and you solve both issues... turn every issue into a mandatory vote, require some kind of above-majority vote (eg 70%), and you're done. If the issue is so bad, that 70% of your neighbors actually come to a meeting and vote against what you're doing, it must be something really bad.
What, excuse me, the hell? I thought "debtor's prison" was outlawed centuries ago?
I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff?
AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that?
This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan.
If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violating peoples rights, like not being able to have cars in your drive way or only display flags certain ways.
Allow HOAs, with a strictly specific purpose of budgeting for common area expenses. Whether it is for structure maintenance (in apartment buildings and townhouses with shared structural elements) or common sports areas, elevators, pools, etc. A HOA can be allowed to collect reasonable costs to fund those projected maintenance expenses. That makes sense.
Then, outlaw everything else. A HOA must not be able to have any say in anything that is not a common area maintenance cost.
This would be very easy to codify into law and solves all the problems with HOAs.
behind closed doors saying things like "that rule only exist when we don't like someone and helps us be able to get rid of them", "it's supposed to be a fair process but we just let the tenants we like and prefer know first, we will send everyone a letter so it's too late for them to respond against it".
It's a small scale dictatorship.
You'd be better off preventing HOAs from doing petty things like requiring homes to be painted certain colors and requiring them to have their books audited yearly to ensure there's no fraud or abuse going on.
I know that I only hear about the crazy ones because blogs about normal/good HOAs aren't going viral, but I've seen enough horror stories that if I ever moved to the US I would do my best to avoid one like the plague.
Even if your HOA is not gated and doesn't have a clubhouse, not a pool, it is the HOA that is responsible for maintaining the streets and parks.
But... that is normally paid for by tax money. Yet the home owner's taxes in those communities are not lower. So the city is double dipping.
Snark aside, it's clear this guy hasn't thought out how condos will operate without a HOA. Going after SFH HOAs may be the best initial play here.
I really enjoyed it when a halfway house managed to find a loophole in their rules and rented a house down the street. That HOA tried and failed to kick them out..
County would have to find another place to do their voting as we have offered our clubhouse for years. We would have to fire our LCAM.
County would have to maintain some expensive drainage and ponds that our HOA manages. Fountains. Weir replacement alone is $250k that we keep up.
Yes, reform HOA laws but abolishing them I am not sure is the right thing to do. It would create such a massive mess and requirement for Counties to maintain things that they don’t currently manage. It may lead to these areas to incorporate because then you would end up with City based code enforcement.
HOA reserve funds (not Condo) needs to be relooked at. We have healthy reserves because we have been keeping on top of reserve studies.
Be careful what you ask for is all I am saying.
Took me a while to figure this out.
HOAs suck. But so do people. As another poster said, there are shared responsibility parts in some neighborhoods like pools, gyms, tennis courts etc
Just random speculation, I haven’t been following it too closely. But, always got to be suspicious of a politician who suggests something that seems popular.
What I learned was that the town "forces" all new developments to have an HOA because town politics prevents the town from adopting roads from new housing developments. Thus all new neighborhoods in the town have "private" roads.
It's a lot of "BS" work that's pushed on residents simply because of malfunctioning politics.
Things start to get a little more complex with SFR communities. I have always intentionally chosen communities where there is no HOA. I have no interest in someone telling me what I can and cannot do with the property I own. This of course means that I have always intentionally purchased in areas with no common spaces. I make sure to drive the area carefully first to see who lives there and the condition of the homes. Of course this could go wrong; nothing stopping someone from selling and the new owner paints his house purple and green and changes his oil in his front yard. Its a price I am open to paying though to ensure that my property is mine fully beside government control.
My MIL has a HOA and they determine what color residents can paint their homes, the type of roof tile, etc. They also have gated entrances though with security that checks Id's for entrance. No way to run that without some sort of HOA like organization. If someone wants to live in this type of community then no reason to stop it, each to their own.
My major personal issue with HOA's is when they mandate the type of fencing you can have, often requiring open fences that provide no privacy. I want tall 6+ foot solid fences and even taller plant life. The more privacy I can implement the better. I am also getting a pool built and its nice knowing that no one else can have input over it except the city permitting office.
I would be good with a law that says an existing community without an HOA cannot create one without 100% of the homeowners agreeing. That seems like something worth considering.
Other than that its a complicated situation that I just don't think a quick law for cudos is going to solve. Simply banning something seems... not well thought out.