Hogwash. There's always glaring exceptions to everything. The majority of homeowners' associations are benign. I live in one. We have elections to the board every year. I live in a nice middle-class subdivision where our property values keep increasing because it's such a visually attractive, well-kept place to live. A non-convenanted subdivision abutting ours which started out 25 years ago with houses the same as ours has decayed and become a trash heap. Property values there went down over the years, and the homeowners take a beating when they try to sell. Our association board members are non-paid volunteers who live among us. They get a bop over their heads with brooms if they get out of line. I speak from experience as I did my bit as chairman of our association for two years. Of course, I had to deal with the occasional jerk who always had to do his/her own thing, like throwing laundry over rocks on the sides and back of their yards to dry them. Or to keep junk cars on the lawn. Or to paint their house a hideous day-glo lime green (which actually happened down the street from me.) I always say to each his own. If people want to live in subdivisions unprotected by covenants or anywhere else that suits their style of living, be my guest. But please don't intimate that those of us who choose to live in a place with safeguards for our property values are somehow stupid and non-individualistic people.
Leni
Hear, hear. I agree totally.
I don't want a mini-mart next to me or even a block away. I certainly don't want to live next to a mobile home or a house with junked cars in the yard. Sometimes I wonder what the houses of these anti-HOA people look like.