A homeowner in Goodyear, Arizona is locked in a dispute with his homeowner’s association over his practice of distributing free cold water from his driveway.
A homeowner in Goodyear, Arizona is locked in a dispute with his homeowner’s association over his practice of distributing free cold water from his driveway.
They are suprisingly difficult to avoid. Shared units, condos and apartments all have associations that are just an HOA with a different name. The only difference for these are that they are responsible for replacing the shared roof every 20-ish years or so.
Having shared assets to maintain is legitimate, but the vast majority of HOAs (those governing single-family neighborhoods) don’t really have that as an excuse. Even if they do have something to maintain, like a private street or a pool, it’s only because the local government was shirking its responsibility to provide what should have been public infrastructure.
(And that’s why they’re so common: because low-density development is so ruinously unsustainable, governments heavily encourage developers to establish HOAs so that the time bomb of future maintenance is the homeowners’ problem instead of bankrupting the city.)