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Comment by recursive | Hacker News Reader

My HOA seems pretty good.

Mine is also pretty good. It's a beautiful place with a guard gate. I don't even like hoas, it kind of pisses me off that I can't do ugly customizations, but it's not really a big issue. The neighborhood was nice enough that I chose to buy there. If there were no HOA it would look like the rest of town which is shoddy.

If my neighbor decides to start blasting music at 3am for some reason, I don't have to suck it up for the next decade, I can just get the HOA to deal with it. Very peaceful.

I feel like if you need a guard gate then whatever city you live in is basically a failed state.

If there is blasting music at 3am the police in my area would deal with that and every city I have lived in deals with those type of nuance issues quickly.

HOAs are not common where I live and they just sound like people privatizing what your local government should be doing.

> they just sound like people privatizing what your local government should be doing.

Yes, that is what they are. It's easier to agree to a covenant to follow some rules and do things than it is to change laws and then get them enforced. You can't think of one thing you wish would be enforced that isn't a law? "I wish my neighbor didn't paint his house an ugly hot pink and park a rusted tractor on the lawn." Well with a hoa you can all agree to not do that.

American cities are largely failed states where police would not respond to anything short of murder, so yeah be grateful for your place of living

American cities are not largely failed states and no I can’t think of anything like what you are suggesting. The laws we have in my very average city cover the issues I would have with my neighbors. Personally I appreciate people being creative and have housing designs I might not choose. People storing things on their property is fine as long as it isn’t a health and safety issue.

Also since my city is a democracy with vibrant civic engagement, if I thought a law needed changing I am pretty sure it would be fully debated and considered. What I have heard from friends who have lived in HOAs would suggest that I could not be confident the HOA board would give a crap.

> whatever city you live in is basically a failed state

And yet, people still live there. Sounds like a reasonable work-around.

Plenty of people live in failed states around the world. Just moving isn't as simple as it sounds.

I don't personally think that the existence of an HOA implies a failed city. But perhaps the utility of an HOA is even higher in such a city. I also will grant that bad HOAs can and do exist.

It wasn’t the existence of an HOA. It was the HOA feeling they needed a guard gate to protect the community.

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