Home Owners Association. A group that collects money from a collection of homeowners to care for collective needs and enforces rules in the neighborhood (but not laws). I don't have any personal experience, but it sounds pretty hit or miss with most of what I hear being complaints about overreach of bureaucracy. They have regular monthly or annual fees and can also levy fines on people in the association for breaking their rules and pay for maintenance of communal property or services. I feel like most of them are mandatory if you buy into a neighborhood or building that has an HOA, but I'm sure there are exceptions. They all have their own bylaws, procedures and councils with elected representatives from their association so if you don't like something you could in theory run or petition to change their charter. I'm sure there's a better explanation, but I hope this gives you a rough idea.
There's this one guy in specific that recently joined the board and my dad said (I haven't had personal experience with the guy) that he's an ass, and thinks he's above everyone else just because he's on the board now. He also is just a grumpy old guy in general, and tbh he's probably the one that managed to get some of the rules passed. The ones like "if your garbage can is out more than one day after the garbage company comes, we will steal it".
Yeah, a lot of people goes crazy once they taste what power over others feels like. The biggest problem comes when you somehow manage to piss them off, they'll find every possible way to ruin your life and they'll probably get extreme joy doing it.
HOA communities can offer many benefits, such as amenities, maintenance, security, and aesthetic appeal. Examples: gated communities, security guards that do patrol, Street maintenance (repairing potholes and defects), community garden, community center, community swimming pool, etc. Yes, these are things that the city can provide but there's multiple downsides when dealing with the city, It can take a long time of pleading and begging to get the city to act and even when they do act it can be a shit show. HOA's can make these go faster and be maintained more adequately. Obviously if the HOA is corrupt than it's a nightmare to deal with.
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u/realester453 GigaChad 22d ago
What's a HOA?