It's usually the power-mad people who stay on the local boards, where hardly anybody in a 100-unit housing area shows up to vote, so they are elected by the 3 friends who do go to the meeting. It's high school all over again.
Rather than organize block captains, volunteering or fun community events, clean-up days, mulch days, etc., lazy HOAs just keep raising dues so they can pay their friends to do more and more socialist initiatives. Instead of communicating with members and doing their job of ticketing rulebreakers and collecting fines for dog waste and littering violators, they hide their identities and raise everyone's dues so they can pay a board member's brother-in-law to come around 52 times a year to pick up stray trash that should have been billed to the violators.
The worst is the selective targeting. HOA popinjays can really wreck the lives of temporarily vulnerable folks.
Our HOA had some good folks for a while, but a few years ago, we got one of those power hungry freaks who decided to go after people for nit picky things. She was argumentative. What she did ended up hurting the values of our homes; something she should’ve been interested in.
Instead of working WITH homeowners to resolve problems, she took them to court. It could have been avoided. Few in the neighborhood took kindly to her overreach. It wasn’t long before she started getting harassed, and talked about moving. I wish she had.
One family that she had sent a letter with a fine in it was for grass that was tall. Instead of reaching out to the homeowner first, she sent them a nasty letter. It made a bad situation worse. Turns out there was a death in the family, the husband/father, and they just needed some help. The HOA sending a threatening letter as a first resort is just not helpful. We can do better than that.
Thankfully, after that fiasco, she resigned and several neighbors took up the roles of board members and president. Now when we see something amiss, we approach the neighbor first with, how can we help you?
For the record, I’m not on the board. I wish I didn’t live in an HOA in the first place. We almost got to overturn the rules a few years ago, but guess who counted the ballots, and the rules stay in place for 10 more years? You guessed it. That same woman with the power trip. Funny how the vote was so close, but her side “won” by just a few votes.