Should HOAs be banned?

Disclaimer: I'm very anti-HOA. But I do think the case could be made for them in high-density housing like apartment buildings and condos.
Single family homes, though, no. When I was house shopping, I removed any that were part of an HOA from my search. I'm not saying there are no "good" HOAs, but I've heard too many horror stories, and good HOAs can become bad HOAs over time, and your only recourse is to move. No thanks.
I don't think they should be banned, per se, they definitely need reigned in as far as what they can mandate and an opt-out mechanism. I'm not sure how the latter would work if there's things like street maintenance, etc that's part of it, but I'm sure some solution could be found.
- Wouldn't things like street maintenance be handled by the city? If they aren't currently and HOAs got banned, it seems like cities could step in and take over without much fuss.
  
  The maintenance costs are why cities make this deal with developers. The city will green light the development provided an HOA is present so their responsibility is kept at a minimum.
  The HOA of today isn’t an idea born of people saying they want to govern themselves. It’s from government yelling “less regulation” and pushing their residents into an adrift situation where it’s the only option.
  The ethos from the gated community is there, somehow, but that’s the grift. The HOA is only there, in most cases, to remove cost and responsibility from the municipality.
  
  This is why HOAs are allowed to exist in the first place.
  They tell the city, "hey, you've got this huge plot of land that can be developed for residential housing, but it looks like you can't afford to develop it (roads, water pipes, power, etc). Instead of developing and selling it bit by bit, you can sell the land to us, and we'll take care of everything, and just cut you your check!"
  HOAs pass the municipal buck from the government to the HOA. Since the HOA (in most cases) owns the infrastructure for the community, there isn't a good way to allow individuals to opt out.
  
  In theory but they do a shit job of it.
  Neighborhood associations also exist and are usually much better than HOAs. I would be happy if mine was in charge of the streets instead of the city. But not my HOA, they suck.
  
  I was thinking like gated community type areas which are treated more like private property. And in that example, I meant more like if one house opted out of the HOA, but the HOA was still there, then they'd be using the roads without contributing to maintenance.
  But yeah, assuming the HOA dissolved, I would imagine the city or county would take over.
- yeah I live in an apartment type condo and its a necessity.
- I think I wouldn't mind an HOA if the dues they collected were used to fund things like maintenance and upkeep of houses to the standards they set, but as far as I can tell all they really do is take your money to tell you your lawn's too weedy and your fence is the wrong color.
  They only exist because everyone in this fucked up country treats housing as an investment vehicle first and a shelter second.
  
  if the dues they collected were used to fund things like maintenance and upkeep
  That was basically their original intention until they got perverted to only care about protecting their property values like you said. There are still some "good" HOAs that are basically just that, but you don't hear much about them. Still, any good HOA can become a bad one at any time, so I just avoid them like the plague.
- I don’t think HOA’s should be banned, but I don’t think they should have any real legal power around them. Like they should be able to give fines and such, but those fines should not be legally enforceable or affect your credit. So that if the HOA tries to apply something heinous in your neighbourhood you can opt out without much action or repercussion as long as you don’t give a fuck if you’re removed from the HOA.
  
  If the fines are not enforceable, then they are only a suggestion. Thus defeating the entire point of the HOA.
  Not taking a side on that, but that is the end result.
- When I lived in a single-family house, there was technically an HOA formed when the development was, well, developed. Everyone forgot about it until someone wanted to build on an addition to their home. They asked the town for building permission, town said "what'd the HOA say?" and the homeowners went "oh, shoot", and formed a quick entity to rubber-stamp plans. No dues or anything.
  The only other thing they did was send out annual reminders to have your septic system pumped please (we had communal drainage fields but per-house septic tanks).
  I'm good with that sort of HOA for single-family homes.
  
  That's cool it was easy-peasy, but would also have been a prime opportunity to dissolve the HOA (which, I believe, the HOA can do itself).
- You chose not to live in an HOA. Why do you think it's OK to force others that want to live in an HOA from doing so?
  There's tons of horror stories out there, but that's also because "I live in an HOA and I like it" isn't really a story that get written and shared on the internet. It's boring.
  I'd never live in one. No one is telling me what color my house is or where I can put a fence. But I also know plenty of people who do live in HOA's and like it.

Yes.
HOAs, at base, are there because the municipality the development is being built in doesn’t want to pay for anything. Not paying is part of the deal worked with developers that now has inertial momentum to it such that it’s baked into just about every new development.
Houses, people, and taxes are added to the municipality with as little responsibility as possible. It’s a great deal, for them.
The grift is this. Normally, sidewalks, parks, and snow management fall to the city, town, or village governments. With HOAs, the town government gets to say it’s not our responsibility, let that neighborhood manage itself. We don’t want to pay for another park or police the snow, so build your houses within our borders, but leave us out of it. The town grows, has enough people to attract new business, but adds less new costs and responsibility than they otherwise would.
So now the people are managing themselves and the only enforcement on it is the risk of losing your house (having it sold out from under you to pay random fees), depending on how Karen the people in the HOA happen to be.
Example. You’re alone in the world. You get sick and end up in an extended hospital stay, let’s say 62 days. It’s a GI problem and you had an ileus. Your lawn isn’t mowed for the duration. You finally get a taxi ride home and find you’ve been fined $1000 a day for 6 weeks because your lawn isn’t mowed. Alongside the incredible medical bills, you can’t pay this. A lien is placed on your home.
That this scenario is even possible with HOAs is very wrong.
An HOA makes perfect sense in a condo scenario because people share walls and the HOA deals with building management. But with single family homes, absolutely not. At that point, it’s no longer a single family home but a condo, just not one that shares walls.

Never understood how they gained traction in the US you pride yourselves on freedom and land protection but then allow some curtain twitcher to dictate how you use the land you paid for.
- HOAs were created to keep the ~~blacks~~ people who couldn't meet the community standards out.
- Never understood how they gained traction in the US
  They gained traction specifically in 3 types of places:
  Condo buildings with shared common elements where everyone in the building should share the financial burden of maintaining the roof, elevators, common areas.
  Planned communities where farmland or other underdeveloped land was converted into a lot of houses, in a city or state unwilling to build or maintain the roads, power lines, sewers, and other infrastructure that makes it livable.
  Communities with exclusive amenities, like private beach/lake access, private parks/playgrounds, golf courses, gate guards who keep out the uninvited non-residents, etc. There's a strain of historical practice here of basically keeping our non-white people from gated communities.
  None of these 3 types of places need an HOA to accomplish this.
  For that condo category, New York pioneered the use of co-ops that effectively accomplish the same thing. It's just that the co-op legal structure is a little bit more unwieldy and inefficient than a modern condominium owners association.
  For the "the city won't pay for our infrastructure" category, it is always possible to persuade the city to actually take over those responsibilities, but it would probably slow down development, and put too much in favor of the incumbent residents over potential future residents. NIMBYism is bad enough, we don't need to take away a legal tool for overcoming it.
  For the "let's keep out the poors" type of community, those are exactly the types of communities that actually love their HOAs. The HOAs are, in a sense, harmful to the people not within the community but upheld by the people who are in that community. Abolishing that is probably fine, although it would do nothing about the types of complaints that most people have about their HOAs.
- City governments love HOAs, because they can push the responsibility for utilities and public services onto the hoa. The city supplies water to the hoa with a single bill, the hoa bills the residents. Privatized trash and recycling pickup. Maybe even an electrical substation. Hoa builds and maintains the roads and parks.
  The city gets the benefits of property tax payments without the costs of infrastructure.
- pretty sure HOAs exist everywhere, you kinda need an entity to coordinate local amenities like water pipes and roads. The problem in the US is just that HOAs can make up any arbitrary requirements they want and no one seems to give a shit.
  in sane countries HOA-equivalents have pretty strict limits on what they can and cannot do, generally their ability to outright ban things is limited to extreme cases like someone painting their house magenta and lime stripes or having 8 cows in their backyard.
  
  Here, this is 100% the councils job. There are no HOAs here with curtain twitchers that tell you that you have to keep your grass this green.

HOAs are great for enforcing Jim Crow laws privately, since the government can't do it anymore. Fuck HOAs
- How?
  
  Oh, it's easy. The HOA gets to approve all new residents to the neighborhood. While they can't block a family of color who qualifies for a loan, from buying a house, they can prevent them from moving in, through background check requirements or simply by using stupid rules to harass them into leaving. The same goes for renters. I lived in South Florida for a few years and the segregation is real. All white neighborhoods run by HOAs and you cross the highway and it's all black people. The rent is just as outrageous in both places. Money isn't what is keeping the black people from renting the newer nicer housing. They aren't allowed.

Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it’s sold the new owners have to opt in?
This is a really good suggestion.
Maybe limit mandatory HOA involvement to things like what’s truly necessary and shared and not how tall your grass is?
A shared maintenance cost for very specific things like the community center, garbage pick-up, the roads, etc., is a great idea.
They've just figured out a way to be racist and get rid of neighbors they don't like. They should be remade at the very least.

No. Should they be as pervasive as they are with unbounded layers of beurocracy? Also no.
I think people might not understand how many assholes live around you that the HOA keeps in check. I didn't until I joined the board. Sometimes you have to litigate, but sometimes you also just need a dedicated (and elected) group of people to go knock on the door and talk out a problem. It's nicer to have this somewhat regulated (bank accounts, insurance, taxes, and yes even covenants for procedure if they are kept up to date) than to just knock on some doors and wing it.
If your HOA has an old lady measuring your grass and some dude using color swatches to check the paint on your mailbox, move. If your neighborhood has lights, clear sidewalks, fences and landscaping that are cared for, and no dog crap to step in, keep paying into it. They are doing a good job.

Yes. When we bought our first house we were told the HOA was optional. The day after closing they showed up and told us we were part of it. We needed to start paying our dues, and we needed a copy of the rules. That was $140 for a photo copy of a photo copy of a photo copy at least 13 times over. It was totally illegible.
My elderly grand mother was visiting, so we moved our car to the visitor spot so she could be parked in front of the house. We were towed.
My car had a flat, we were towed because the car appeared to be abandoned.
Everything about it was a nightmare. Shortly before we moved we found out the president no longer lived in the area, and was embezzling. He was reelected after that was revealed to the rest if the neighborhood, but no one was allowed to see the votes.
- Should have told them to kick rocks, when they showed up.
- The problem is "we were told". If the real estate says something, tell them to include that in writing in the contract. If they don't, they lied.
  
  There are a lot for things I wish 20 some year old me knew when we bought that house.

I wouldn't ban them, but I would make sure they need continual community buy-in to keep going. Make them automatically sunset if not renewed. Like, every ten years you have to get signatures from 2/3 of the home owners in the HOA in order to renew it. Good HOAs can keep going indefinitely or be reestablished later. Bad ones just disappear when they can't get enough signatures to keep the thing going.
I don't have a problem with people volunteering to bind themselves into a communal covenant. I do have a problem with the long dead hand of developers past binding people into a perpetual obligation. I know it is possible to dissolve HOAs, but it requires getting the vast majority of homeowners to come together to actively choose to revoke it. I would use the opposite system. Every ten years you need a supermajority of homeowners to commit to renewing it.
This is obviously in the context of single family homes. They're unavoidable in condos.
- Thank God someone in this thread actually knows how HOAs work.
- bind themselves into a communal covenant
  This sounds like a black magic ritual in a fantasy game. I dig it.
  
  I would support a state law that required all HOA board members to dress in black robes during meetings. Also all meetings must be conducted by candlelight.

Banned? No. Regulated to rein in power? Yes.
My HOA has mellowed a bit over the years. Nowadays, 27 years after the subdivision was built, they negotiate for decent landscaping service, and make sure people don't leave trash and junk cars in their yard, that's about it. I'm happy enough with how they operate. I don't own a lawn mower or a rake.
Some HOAs are run like mini fiefdoms, though.
- I feel like you really only hear about the terrible HOAs. No one is posting videos online of how pleased they are with their HOA. I would bet that most people are somewhat satisfied with their HOA.

I won't live in an HOA. But that being said, I don't really have an issue with other people wanting to live in an HOA.
However, I do not like the fact that the HOA has permanent authority over any property you purchase inside of its zone.
I feel like there should be a specific and reasonable amount of money that you can pay in order to exempt your home from the HOA permanently, a method to break the HOA contract at least for as long as you live there.
Like maybe the HOA could reinstate the contract once you move out, and the next owner would have to break it again, but at least while you're living there, you should be able to be exempt from them if you so choose.
- And also, I feel like there should be a governmental body that HOAs are responsible to that can handle mediation and give you a higher authority to appeal to.
  I've heard horror stories of HLA presidents coming into people's houses to make sure that they've emptied their trash appropriately and other weird stuff like that should have a method of redress that does not necessarily involve a protracted legal battle.
  Some sort of HOA governance that is nationwide with state and county chapters would massively lower my resistance to HOA's and give them a little bit more legitimacy in my opinion.
  They should have to clearly establish their bylaws and submit them to the governance body and have them approved, and then they should only be allowed to exercise the bylaws that have been agreed upon by the community.
  No more weird old people sitting out in your front yard, measuring your grass with a ruler and stuff like that.
  
  I've heard horror stories of HLA presidents coming into people's houses
  The primary remedy for ~~coming into people's houses~~ home invasion is called "Castle Doctrine", which falls well outside the HOA's jurisdiction.

The point of HOAs is protecting/increasing property value. We need property to be cheaper, not more expensive. Higher property values benefit speculation, not ownership. Burn them all.
- Also, higher property values can mean increased property taxes. As out of reach as it feels, I'd rather my future home cost me less money to just live and grow old in, thank you :c

Anyone who's in favor of HOA's should watch Hot Fuzz.
- Or anyone who isn't. It's a good movie.
  
  Excellent point.

Absolutely ban them as they currently exist. If you must band together for whatever reason, do so en masse not hand the reins to a small handful of people who inevitably go power mad
- Fun fact: this also works this way for whole societies!

Freedom of association means the freedom to be a member of an HOA. But requiring HOA membership to purchase a specific property should be banned. Freedom of association means that you should have the freedom to not be a part of the HOA.
- There's nuance to it. I live in a townhouse and if some fucker in my row tanked my property value because they didn't redo their roof on a reasonable schedule, I'd be pissed. There are limited situations where having a collective solution on stuff like this is necessary, but the vast majority of shit the HOA does is just red tape annoyance and platforming the neighborhood Karens.
  
  Maybe the HOA should pay for his roof then? You know, with HOA fees.
  I get there is nuance, but times suck, people can afford less, and HOAs have become a way for people with tiny dicks to harm others. If we used them as a a way to identify and address issues in a neighborhood in constructive ways, it wouldn’t be an issue. They are about power.

I have a likely rather unique viewpoint as someone who's HOA just had their whole board resign and be replaced after a scandal came out proving they weren't legitimate:
Ours basically only maintains the local park & roads & lights and negotiates fair rates for trash pickup and fuel deliveries for everyone, sort of like how a union can get better wages (if it's just for this purpose it's called a collective btw)
Why doesn't the city, you may ask? We're in unincorporated county land: there is no city to do maintenance work on these things, so without it things would be.... Worse, here
Though in most places yeah, they shouldn't exist
- Probably shouldn't be able to live there in the first place, frankly. It's a problem covering a problem caused by another problem. we have a very poorly built society.

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned it yet, but HOAs are a holdover of practices to keep minorities from moving into neighborhoods. They still are sets of discriminatory practices, reinventing themselves in pettier ways.
Tl;dr fuck HOAs.
Imagine Bob is a city construction worker with a work vehicle. He and his wife both park in the driveway, so he has to park the work vehicle on the street. The HOA digs up a rule to keep slapping fines on his vehicle because Bob is “making the neighborhood unsightly,” aka neighbor Jane doesn’t want to live in a “blue-collar” neighborhood.

Most HOAs are run by assholes.
But when run properly they keep neighborhoods clean and safe.
- In other words, they're almost never run properly. You're literally saying it's great when it works but it rarely works.
  HOAs need to die a fiery death, and there's a special place in hell for HOA managers.
  
  That's been our experience. It wasn't the board (who were all neighbors and shared goals), but the management company that sucked.
  
  If the HOA board is a problem, fix the board.
  If you've ever lived in a place where disrespecting property is common, you've seen the need for an HOA.
- So when they work they do what your government should be doing? How is putting a shit covered bandage over a festering wound gonna help?

Don't ban them, there are some good parts in there
Require yearly elections on who leads
Limit the power they have, especially with giving out citations
Don't allow to outsource the work. You want a HOA, you do the HOA. Those HOA companies are thr worst

This might be unpopular, but I don't think HOAs should be banned. WAIT! I, personally, think HOAs suck and I'd never agree to buying a home in an HOA. That said, not everyone feels that way. Some folks genuinely like living in HOAs, and for all the horror stories, there's at least a few where the HOA simply exists to provide amenities to the neighborhood i.e. playgrounds, walking trails, pools, etc. People should be free to choose the kind of housing arrangements they want, and if they want an HOA, then that's their prerogative.
The real problem with HOAs is that we're trying to solve the housing crisis exclusively with single family residential zoning, which means that HOAs are vastly overrepresented in terms of what's available on the housing market. It's fundamentally a zoning issue. People who don't want an HOA or can't spend $2,000/mo in mortgage plus another $300/mo or whatever in HOA fees should have options, but they kinda don't. Ask your city why their zoning sucks.

I think HOAs and Business Improvement districts persist because they fill a need for hyper local government that the existing, formal governments are not fullfilling. HOAs don't need to be banned, they need to be replaced with something else that better fulfills this niche but is more regulated and accountable.

I think at least HOA’s should be banned from requiring certain plants in your yard. Namely grass. HOA’s should not be able to prevent people from replacing their lawns with native and edible plants.

I think they have the potential to be good if they were way more democratic, but they're never run that way.
When I lived in a townhouse that was part of an HOA that had some nice things going for it. There were a couple tennis courts, a swimming pool, a communal garden, a club house thing you can pay to use, they regularly mowed the front yards and trimmed the front hedges and they would periodically repaint the fronts of the houses. However, while I was living there, the head of the HOA was a douche that kept misusing funds.
The house my sister lives in has an HOA that does literally nothing except removed residents to upkeep their lawn.
- it's baffling that HOAs don't have strict regulation on how they're run, how it should work is like any other association: elections every X years, any member can run for positions, and operations have to be documented and transparent.

Currently live in an HOA that won't even let people put up actual privacy fences around their back yards so every fucking dog for 8 houses in either direction can see each other when they go outside and bark non-stop. So yea, fuck HOAs.
- Poor dog owner community
- Let me get this straight. You bought a house owning a dog knowing you couldn't have a fence OR you bought a dog owning a house knowing you couldn't have a fence. And not only that, you're entire neighborhood did the same thing, and you are mad at the HOA?
  It doesn't make sense. Yeah, the rule is stupid. But, like, you did it to yourself. Do what you need to do to have the bylaws changed.
  
  I didn't buy anything. I'm renting a room from the owners. They bought the house. I have no say in anything and this is the only place I could find that meets my needs of price and room to store my shit so I have to deal with it or move.
  I just think it's a stupid rule. Get off my back.

I think we should just aggressively limit their authority. Essentially saying you can't make a contract that exceeds our defined limits. If you do, the entire contract is void, not just the parts that cross the line. Let's put them on eggshells so they don't lose what little authority we allow them to have. I live in a suburb with no HOA. Really missing city community though.

HOAs can be really good things but have all the same problems as regular democracies, mainly voter apathy. If the members of the HOA don't keep informed about the issues in the neighborhood, don't attend meetings, and don't vote, then you very quickly end up with a few assholes gaining power and doing whatever they want.
Most of the suggestions I see in the comments would also render HOAs powerless and essentially pointless.

I think I can offer some perspective as someone who works in the real estate industry and is on an HOA BOD.
Of the hundreds of clients I've worked with, only 1 ever wanted an HOA, because he didn't have one and it was awful. We're talking fences laid on the ground, grass several feet high, vehicles parked all over the front lawn, the entire yard front and back being used as a landfill, you name it.
HOAs are essentially the smallest form of government. The HOA carries the force of law. This also tends to attract the worst people for the job. Think about it; who's going to take time out of their day to volunteer on behalf of the community? People who want power over others.
People are petty as fuck. One person receives one citation and they become salty and begin seeking out and reporting every single violation they can find, which just makes it awful to live in.
Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it's sold the new owners have to opt in?
That would completely invalidate the purpose of the HOA.
- It's like "right to work" legislation that destroyed unions, but used to destroy HOAs. "Right to home" legislation.
  Why should the fact some people a long time ago have away their power to a dubious political entity, permanently destroy the right to make your own house into a home. There has to be a way for people in a neighborhood to phase out of an HOA and a "Right to home" legislation could do it easily. If the HOA really is adding value to the neighborhood then they would easily be able to entice new homeowners to sign up!
  
  "Right to work" legislation exists in other countries with strong unions.
  For example, in Germany you cannot be compelled to join or to leave a union which makes "right to work" the default nationwide. Forcing people to join unions they do not want to be part of violates their freedom of contract. For similar reasons, employers cannot ban employees from talking about their wage, from having relationships or demand they sign "non-compete agreements" . The freedom of contract is constitutionally protected and cannot be waived just like that, even if all parties were to agree.
  Yet unions are significantly stronger here than in the US.
  
  Take your last sentence and replace hoa with union.
  Yeah it didn't work so well for the unions
  
  Why should the fact some people a long time ago have away their power to a dubious political entity, permanently destroy the right to make your own house into a home.
  Because people bought into that neighborhood for a reason.
- People are petty as fuck. One person receives one citation and they become salty and begin seeking out and reporting every single violation they can find, which just makes it awful to live in.
  This is the truth. No one wants to volunteer to do anything or be on the board, but the second the board enforces any rules, the homeowners become self-conscious and start pointing the finger, making everyone's lives worse. The trick is to READ THE BYLAWS and don't buy a house if you don't like the bylaws.

My neighborhood's HOA has been pretty chill the few years I've lived here. The fees pay for the pool, landscaping, walking path maintenance, etc. Maybe I'd feel different if one of my neighbors was finding and reporting a bunch of violations, but so far it seems like the HOA has been good for my neighborhood. I'm sure other places get out of hand, but it's not always the nightmare people make it out to be online.

I like my HOA, but I live in a condo building. We all pitch in to keep the roof repaired and the common areas cleaned, and the few rules just make life tolerable in such a confined space (quiet hours, for example). I can't imagine what good an HOA does for single-family homes.

Yes, definitely. They’re just bullies trying to rebrand themselves.

A lot of things an hoa covers is already covered by the township here so I'm unsure why you'd join one. But they're also not as common here because of that. I know some neighbors tried ages ago and something like 80 percent told those prone to screw off.
- My experience- the difference is enforcement. In the US anyway, the town isn't going to tow cars parked illegally in the neighborhood or cite someone for their junked up yard.
  
  Town here absolutely cites for lawn maint. We've let it get too long and they've sent a warning. They also warn if a car is parked too long on the street. They don't care if a car is parked in a driveway and never moved though, that's fine.

Yes
You can have community orgs that don't make you pay fees as a condition of owning your home.

A thousand times YES

The city I grew up in (population around 30,000) made HOAs mandatory for any development of 5 or more homes. Why? The city council got fed up mediating disputes between neighbors. People would go and expect the city council to get involved if their neighbors fence was ugly, or the lawn was unkept, or their party was too big. It started happening every meeting so they decided forcing everyone into an HOA would force them to solve it themselves.
- So instead of directing them to civil court (or tell the karens to piss off), they made everyone suffer.... classic government.
  
  Everyone? How many people who are not petty assholes have a negative HOA story? A bad HOA is like bad plastic surgery: those are the only ones you notice.

Yes.

Yes

I’ve lived with good HOAs. I’d still rather they dissolve and everything be part of normal city operations.
Plus is it just me or are the same people that say they want small government also the ones who are super pro HOA?

I believe some TIC agreements are structured as HOAs, which is perfectly reasonable --- but I'm pretty sure that's not what you're referring to here.

I hate my HOA except that it's the only thing from keeping my neighbor from filling his yard up with garbage and junk cars. My bar is low, but it's above that. We live too close for that kinda shit.
- City ordinance usually covers things like that. Many even cover decent maintenance of the lawn.
  
  yep, and at least city ordinances are made by elected leaders or direct democracy so if having a used car collection located immediately in front of your house is a popular storage method it will be harder for the nimbys to prevent it.

Should HOAs be banned?
That's an easy one:
YES!!!

Objectively yes. We don't need an extra government to cover the job of the actual government, especially not ones that are easy for psychopaths to infiltrate. Your park? That's the damn state's responsibility, pay your fair share of taxes instead and let the city handle it. Your home value? Don't treat housing as a damn vehicle for investment. All those nasty poors and minorities? If they bother you find a way to leave earth, permanently.
HOAs are emblematic of everything wrong with America and actively strip away the good parts.

I think a small community being able to have say in who moves in, asking contract term violators to leave in exceptional cases, while still being liable for discriminatory actions, can be a good thing. However, being able to fine members and repossess their property? That should be 100,000,000% illegal.

for regular ass house on a regular ass street, yes. exceptions are made for condominiums, apartment complexes and gated communities.

Waiting for the inevitable showdown over having hens in your backyard. Instant solution to the egg problem.

I mean I highly dislike them but also feel like many people like them for the exact reasons I dislike them.

Yes. Housing is tough enough as it is. Linking a lot of properties to the HOA is disgusting and should be illegal.

Absolutely.

An HOA can have a very positive effect on a neighborhood when handled properly, but inevitably a troublemaker gets on the board and starts making life miserable for everyone.
There was a recent local case where an elderly lady in her 80s accidentally underpaid her HOA dues by 30 cents. They started fining her, and before she figured out there was an issue, the fines were thousands of dollars, and she couldn't afford it. She tried to work it out with the HOA board, but they were immovable. Then they started foreclosure proceedings, and that's when she went to the local news.
This lady's house was paid off, and they had every intention of taking it away from her in her old age, over THIRTY CENTS!
The news tried to reason with the HOA, but they wouldn't be reasonable, and the last I heard, she was going to have to pay a lawyer to fight it in court.
No HOA should be able to take anyone's house away for any reason. Same with back property taxes, especially if a propery is fully paid off. It invites predatory behavior, and there are always people who will gleefully exploit such situations.

Banned? The freedom cities will be the best HOAs ever.

I don't want to live in a neighborhood where you can leave a car to rot on the front lawn, where you can have cows shitting all over, or you can build a 20 foot tall Jesus statue in your front yard.
If your HOA sucks, then get involved and make it better. Mine is fine.
- city odanances usually can prevent the first two, however requre elected leaders or direct voting to let it happen reducing the chance that a cowless minority could ban them.

Yes

if you cant even decide what color your house is, you dont own it.
youre LARPing as a home owner while a Kouncil of Karens could evict you from the house you supposedly own.
- so if i can't paint a massive realistic dick on my house, i don't own it? you sound like a very pleasant neighbour
  
  so if i can’t paint a massive realistic dick on my house, i don’t own it? you sound like a very pleasant neighbour
  but youre the one painting dicks on your house?

Yes.

The HOA hate is completely overblown online. It's practically clickbait at this point. Just a framework for petty neighbour stories to entertain reddit teenagers with no real world experience.
I fell for it at first, and when my wife and I started looking for houses, I specified no HOAs. We saw a couple of houses that didn't have HOAs, and then I realized that while I personally would prefer not to be in an HOA, I really, really want my neighbors to be in one.
So we got a house with an HOA. It was a gated community of small houses in a bad neighborhood. The HOA handled trash pickup, maintenance of common areas, what little landscaping we had, and a couple other things that we wouldn't want to deal with on our own. Sometimes they'd hire a security guard to deter package theft. They charged a little more than I'd like to pay, but overall it was a positive experience. They sent us a letter once saying we had to replace our door. We didn't. Nothing ever came of it. And to be fair, they were right; that door is in terrible shape.
Now I live in a different neighborhood with a different HOA. Sometimes they send us an annoying letter saying I can't leave my trash cans out. It's a minor inconvenience. Overall another positive experience.
The vast majority of HOAs are fine. You don't hear about those because that's not entertaining. It's silly to think that the stories about petty old busybodies would be the norm.
- most people posting online don't own houses. they just regurgitate what mommy and daddy or cool adults they know say. and everyone has a complaint about their HOA regardless of whether they're good or bad, so the kiddos only hear the complaints when being completely detached from the reality of owning a house and home buying process.

Conceptually great idea but they have people involved and people suck.

They’re already opt-in: you opt-in when you choose to buy a home with an HOA
Also you can’t “ban HOAs.” It’s a contract you agree to when buying a house
- It’s a contract you agree to when buying a house
  no, it's a contract you HAVE to concede to in a market starved for any available housing. there's no agreement, it's conceding to a system that stands in the way of you owning a home and getting off the ever-increasing rent train.
- Just like getting insurance is opt in. Sure you can technically opt out, but in reality that's not how it works.