HOA's are not government, but I loathe them. I received a notice this winter from my HOA stating that I had to remove my Christmas lights. Nothing obnoxious about the lights - plain white, non-blinking and limited in number. It just happens I am getting old, have bad knees and I don't do well in snow and ice. Everytime I planned to take them down the weather was a mess. So I just left the lights in place and on their timer.
I received a letter from the HOA at the beginning of March, three days after I took the lights down. I had been out of compliance for six weeks. I guess the HOA's efficiency isn't the greatest. It only took me 15 minutes to write a suitable response and another five minutes to edit non-Christian-like language in my letter to the HOA. I doubt if it did any good, but it allowed me to vent.
My experience would suggest a different explanation.
I was President of an HOA for several years because somebody had to do it and nobody else wanted the job.
The same held for the other Board members.
We would be pretty lax about enforcement if nobody complained.
If somebody did complain, then we were compelled by the CC&Rs to act. This happened with respect to signage, dog leash requirements, and visitor parking policies. The Board was compelled to enact policies which a majority of the membership would support and that were consistent with the CC&Rs.
Failure to respond to a legitimate complaint would open up the HOA to litigation which could have crippled the organization financially if we lost the case. We had to be very careful to understand the CC&Rs and to protect the unit owners' rights to have them enforced.
To this day I believe that there are widespread violations of the pet policy and that nobody has ever complained. At any time a disgruntled unit owner could complain about pets and the Board would be forced to act.
I pity any new owner who relies on past practices with respect to pets and later finds himself on the losing side of a fight with the HOA. If a person buys into an HOA with CC&Rs, the person needs to read them carefully and expect them to be enforced.
HOA’s are evil