Banned is maybe too far, but why should we as a country allow people to have petty power over meaningless things their neighbors do? Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it's sold the new owners have to opt in?
For the most part, I'm wondering about this in the context of single family homes since for homes like condos, you could make the case that HOAs are useful for shared things like roofs and whatnot. Maybe limit mandatory HOA involvement to things like what's truly necessary and shared and not how tall your grass is?
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.