> You can very easily run to be part of your HOA leadership
Yes, and then you find out just how petty petty politics can be.
The inconvenient truth, at least for HOA advocates, is that a community of 20-30 people, or even a hundred or so, does not need to be governed at the level of the community. Most people are reasonable and will respond to reasonable requests from neighbors if there is an issue, without having to drag in a higher authority at all. Those who are not reasonable, are not going to be magically made reasonable by having an HOA--indeed, as you admit, they're precisely the ones who are going to end up running the HOA. On balance, you're better off not having "governance" at all until you get to a larger population, like a town or a city.
You definitely need that level of governance if there are common elements which need to be funded and maintained (pools, parks, the building itself for condos)
You need an organization to manage the common elements, yes. But the only "governance" that's required for that is...to manage the common elements. Which isn't really "governance", it's just management, and oversight of whoever is doing the managing. There's no need at all for the rest of the intrusive rules and regulations that HOAs impose in the name of "governance".
Only in a very minimal sense. A management that is only empowered to maintain common areas of a community can't "govern" the community members except in the very narrow sense of enforcing whatever rules the community wants to have for the use of common areas. Which is just an aspect of the fact that the community as a whole owns the common areas and the owner makes the rules.
Such a management can't mess with community members about how often they cut their lawns, or what color they paint their house, etc. But that sort of micromanagement is what "governance" by HOAs ends up being when it goes beyond basic management of common areas.
> You definitely need that level of governance if there are common elements which need to be funded and maintained (pools, parks
Sure. I think very few, if any, people dispute that. If there actually are common facilities like pools, it makes sense to have a common pot of money everyone contributes into, to maintain those facilities. Just about everyone will agree with that.
How do you make the huge leap from that, into saying a HOA has any kind of right to demand what kinds of flowers or windowshades or decorations someone installs into their private (not shared!) property?
Okay, well, nearly half of all HOAs are condominium communities which inherently have common elements. I’m not saying that detached SFHs with no common elements should be governed by HOAs; I was if anything implying the opposite
> Okay, well, nearly half of all HOAs are condominium communities which inherently have common elements.
This varies widely depending on the city. In many cities, it's hard to find a detached house in a neighborhood (that isn't ghetto) that doesn't have an HOA.
In the article, the associations that appear to be causing the most problems, at least in Florida, are condominium associations. So it might be worth reconsidering whether filling a "need" for such governance ends up being more trouble than it's worth--at least if it goes beyond just maintaining the common elements (which it seems like condo associations in Florida do).
Yes, and then you find out just how petty petty politics can be.
The inconvenient truth, at least for HOA advocates, is that a community of 20-30 people, or even a hundred or so, does not need to be governed at the level of the community. Most people are reasonable and will respond to reasonable requests from neighbors if there is an issue, without having to drag in a higher authority at all. Those who are not reasonable, are not going to be magically made reasonable by having an HOA--indeed, as you admit, they're precisely the ones who are going to end up running the HOA. On balance, you're better off not having "governance" at all until you get to a larger population, like a town or a city.