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Comment by wat10000 | Hacker News Reader

It’s extremely common for local governments to make an HOA a legal requirement for new developments. This lets them put things like road maintenance, park maintenance, and trash pickup in private hands so the local government doesn’t have to pay for them. (They’re still happy to collect property taxes from the new residents at full rate, of course.) The result is that it becomes harder and harder to find non-HOA homes.

I’d have no problem with their existence if it was a free market, but I have a big problem with them when they’re being legally mandated.

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> It’s extremely common for local governments to make an HOA a legal requirement for new developments.

Then people ought to be complaining about their local governments, not HOAs.

I'm sure there will be things citizens ought to be doing all the way to the collapse of the empire.

> Then people ought to be complaining about their local governments, not HOAs.

Complain all you want, but if all new homes in your city are in a HOA, you are going to be under the thumb of those 80-something HOA board members who have nothing else to do in life but nitpick your house violations. Is that a desirable outcome for anyone?

It’s pretty common and reasonable to complain about a specific thing you don’t like rather than a general complaint about the government. Compare “then people ought to be complaining about their local government, not Flock cameras.”

To your “happily collect taxes at full rate” comment, strongtowns.org’s whole message is that only the densest cities in the country bring in enough taxes to pay for the maintenance of streets, sewers etc.

“Full rate” is almost always subsidized through the windfall taxes on new growth and development, putting towns in a ponzi scheme like situation.

Vocabulary objection: "Ponzi" requires fraud, where someone is lying to you about what assets exist, how much of it is yours, and where the money goes.

Kind of like how most software bugs problems are not Integer Overflows, most unsustainable things are not Ponzi schemes.

And then those dense cities proceed to not spend that money on infra maintenance and instead use the money to buy free drugs for homeless people

brother your ideological jibber jabber is blinding you to some truly incredible feats of engineering that are happening right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_and_Reservoir_Plan

Which cities do that and how much are they spending on drugs?

> It’s extremely common for local governments to make an HOA a legal requirement for new developments.

This is true, and I'd never choose to live in an area like that.

I mean, there's only so many hills you can die on before you become homeless.

I imagine a lot of people dont have the luxury to avoid entire areas

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