It amazes me that people don't know, and never gets taught, the history of HOAs and restrictive covenants on deeds. Everyone acts as if it is for the betterment of the neighborhood, consistent looks upkeep of property and so forth. When you dig into this you'll find out it is about keeping out undesirables from your area. Originally those undesirables were of different races. All of this is strongly embedded in historical racism and it has continued forward to this day although not strictly race-based but there are still deeds that have unenforceable restrictive covenants that deny property to certain races.
As with anything when it became impossible to enforce a race-based segregation they simply do it in other ways. HOAs should be abolished in my opinion or their power greatly curtailed and deed restrictions largely removed. Especially given that many HOAs or at least the ones we hear about a lot are quite abusive with the power that they have and they are selectively abusive in that power. Likable neighbors that have the same minor offenses never get fined for them but undesirable neighbors get harassed constantly. One thing to fix the abusive HOAs would be to have it so that if covenants are not enforced equally they cannot be enforced to anyone. Even in the situation where they rely on people reporting violations they can only accept the report if they do a complete audit of all properties to ensure the same violation does not exist elsewhere. If it does they must cite everyone equally even not citing one person means that all the citations are invalid. This would get rid of the buddy system that HOA is used to abuse undesirable people in their neighborhood.
>, the history of HOAs and restrictive covenants on deeds. Everyone acts as if it is for the betterment of the neighborhood, consistent looks upkeep of property and so forth. When you dig into this you'll find out it is about keeping out undesirables from your area. Originally those undesirables were of different races. [...] are still deeds that have unenforceable restrictive covenants that deny property to certain races.
That retelling of HOA history rooted in racism is common but it's not a persuasive explanation for the new HOAs created today. In other words, there can be _2_ independent motivations and they both end up with an "HOA":
- motivation #1 : roundabout way to keep black people out --> leads to HOA
- motivation #2 : maintain baseline property values --> leads to HOA
You have to look for the counterfactuals that eliminate reason #1. E.g. Places up North like Anchorage Alaska and Calgary Canada didn't have a massive "white flight" and yet the suburbs up there also have HOAs.
Those neighborhoods also have HOAs. Maybe it's for reason #2 -- protecting property values.
The immoral HOA motivations in the 1950s don't necessarily dictate the same motivations for creating an HOA today. Sometimes there's really no threat of "other races" and instead, people really do want to collectively protect their property values.
The removal of the undesirables from an area is still the motivation of an HOA. You can gloss over it by saying protect property values, but that's just code for, this group of people is undesirable and it locks people out of communities. So while race isn't the motivation it's been replaced with class. It's still immortal.
I similarly despise HOAs. I've never actually been threatened by an HOA and most people I know that have an HOA have relatively benign ones, but the concept and the concentration of power outside of official government is frightening to say the least.
In contrast, my current neighborhood does not have an HOA but we do have a "neighborhood association" that's entirely voluntary and mostly exists to support a collection of streets with activities, clean up drives, etc.
Is there no such thing as objectionable behavior that people might not want to live around? Is it wrong to want to do something about things like your next door neighbor turning a 1/3 acre property into a chicken-egg and honey farm? Or buying a second house to rent out for weekly parties that flood the street with cars, including sex parties? Should people just ignore those things? Cities don't want to deal with those things in my experience.
For fifteen years, I lived in a development with an HOA. It was at least as diverse as where I lived before and since. And the HOA was the least of our problems: cheap and unsound construction was the main one.
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It amazes me that people don't know, and never gets taught, the history of HOAs and restrictive covenants on deeds. Everyone acts as if it is for the betterment of the neighborhood, consistent looks upkeep of property and so forth. When you dig into this you'll find out it is about keeping out undesirables from your area. Originally those undesirables were of different races. All of this is strongly embedded in historical racism and it has continued forward to this day although not strictly race-based but there are still deeds that have unenforceable restrictive covenants that deny property to certain races.
As with anything when it became impossible to enforce a race-based segregation they simply do it in other ways. HOAs should be abolished in my opinion or their power greatly curtailed and deed restrictions largely removed. Especially given that many HOAs or at least the ones we hear about a lot are quite abusive with the power that they have and they are selectively abusive in that power. Likable neighbors that have the same minor offenses never get fined for them but undesirable neighbors get harassed constantly. One thing to fix the abusive HOAs would be to have it so that if covenants are not enforced equally they cannot be enforced to anyone. Even in the situation where they rely on people reporting violations they can only accept the report if they do a complete audit of all properties to ensure the same violation does not exist elsewhere. If it does they must cite everyone equally even not citing one person means that all the citations are invalid. This would get rid of the buddy system that HOA is used to abuse undesirable people in their neighborhood.
>, the history of HOAs and restrictive covenants on deeds. Everyone acts as if it is for the betterment of the neighborhood, consistent looks upkeep of property and so forth. When you dig into this you'll find out it is about keeping out undesirables from your area. Originally those undesirables were of different races. [...] are still deeds that have unenforceable restrictive covenants that deny property to certain races.
That retelling of HOA history rooted in racism is common but it's not a persuasive explanation for the new HOAs created today. In other words, there can be _2_ independent motivations and they both end up with an "HOA":
- motivation #1 : roundabout way to keep black people out --> leads to HOA
- motivation #2 : maintain baseline property values --> leads to HOA
You have to look for the counterfactuals that eliminate reason #1. E.g. Places up North like Anchorage Alaska and Calgary Canada didn't have a massive "white flight" and yet the suburbs up there also have HOAs.
Another counterfactual is this list of majority black wealthy neighborhoods: https://spotcovery.com/the-best-affluent-black-neighborhoods...
Those neighborhoods also have HOAs. Maybe it's for reason #2 -- protecting property values.
The immoral HOA motivations in the 1950s don't necessarily dictate the same motivations for creating an HOA today. Sometimes there's really no threat of "other races" and instead, people really do want to collectively protect their property values.
The removal of the undesirables from an area is still the motivation of an HOA. You can gloss over it by saying protect property values, but that's just code for, this group of people is undesirable and it locks people out of communities. So while race isn't the motivation it's been replaced with class. It's still immortal.
My last house had a HOA and blacks were definitely not a minority in my neighborhood. Definitely middle to upper middle class neighborhood.
I similarly despise HOAs. I've never actually been threatened by an HOA and most people I know that have an HOA have relatively benign ones, but the concept and the concentration of power outside of official government is frightening to say the least.
In contrast, my current neighborhood does not have an HOA but we do have a "neighborhood association" that's entirely voluntary and mostly exists to support a collection of streets with activities, clean up drives, etc.
Is there no such thing as objectionable behavior that people might not want to live around? Is it wrong to want to do something about things like your next door neighbor turning a 1/3 acre property into a chicken-egg and honey farm? Or buying a second house to rent out for weekly parties that flood the street with cars, including sex parties? Should people just ignore those things? Cities don't want to deal with those things in my experience.
Zoning ordinances are different from an HOA and deed restrictions. You're confusing there's two things with your examples.
For fifteen years, I lived in a development with an HOA. It was at least as diverse as where I lived before and since. And the HOA was the least of our problems: cheap and unsound construction was the main one.