On the other hand, in most cases HOAs are representative of the community. The board members are elected by a majority vote of members in the community, and are up for re-election every few years. In many cases, only a small minority of people show up to the elections.
It’s pretty easy therefore in most cases to get yourself elected to a board. If your board is truly not representing a majority of the people, and the people are at all concerned, it is pretty easy to get enough to show up to elect a new more representative slate for the year (our HOA it’s 3 members out of 9 each year, so in 2 years you’d have a majority).
Many HOAs also allow proxies, so you just have to get your neighbors to give you their proxy, they don’t even have to show up.
But in fact, for all the grumbling, often a majority of the community actually support what the HOA is doing. It still may be tyrannical, but it’s not just the board, it’s the majority of the community that re-elects the board.
What counts are the CC&Rs. The Board can’t break those, and those are what you buy when you buy the property.
” It still may be tyrannical”
Many Germans supported the Nazi killing the Jews, but that didn’t make tyranny right. Neither are HOAs. They are adhesion contracts, nothing more. Perpetual contracts seem to be illegal, yet, HOAs persist.
That pretty much sums up my HOA.