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Comment by jjav | Hacker News Reader

> What consequences are sane for a member who does not pay dues

None. No HOA should have any power over a private home owned by an individual.

Not sure how water bill is relevant, that is paid to the water agency. They'll shut off water if not paid for some months.

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Our community well water system is owned and operated by the HOA. That and (all private) gravel road maintenance are the great majority of HOA expenses. There is no municipality to provide these services. Should members not have to pay for water and roads but still get to use them? That's not sustainable.

Yes, they should pay for water usage based on provisioning costs.

What does this have to do with a HOA being allowed to demand color of windowshades or what kind of flowers someone likes to plant in their yard?

What do the color of windowshades or what kind of flowers someone likes to plant in their yard have to do with what delichon asked you?

The topic is HOAs

And his HOA maintains water service and roads. So his point stands. How can the HOA provide these critical functions if they lack capacity to collect fees?

The fact that some HOAs are meddlesome neighbor havens doesn’t mean all of them are. (Though I agree with others here that the roles herein described belong to a municipality.)

> There is no municipality to provide these services

... there should be one, wtf is wrong with your country? Why are you replacing towns with HOAs?

We're a rural subdivision that just needs to share private road and water system maintenance between land owners. HOAs are a simple lightweight form of governance for this. We can't add more services without pricing residents on fixed incomes out of their retirement homes. There is no growth or common development to manage. We don't need or want police or tax power or the overhead of incorporation.

Our property taxes are so low they have made previously suburban grown men shed tears of joy.

Honestly that sounds like a ridiculous scenario. Your community should have never been built in a location without municipal services. Because you did you took up the responsibility for those 'municipal' services. And now you have a hard time to deliver those services, because you lack the funds that would come with a real municipality and taxes.

So instead you put this burden on the people living there, who presumably are already paying some form of taxes?

What's the point of all this? Give up ownership of your own house and frontyard, so you can pay dues, to get access to services that would be free with a real municipality?

It sounds very much like this person’s HOA is de facto a municipality. They charge fees instead of taxes, which are essentially indistinguishable in this context.

> would be free with a real municipality

You can’t possibly be serious with this.

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