Florida Lawmaker Floats Ban on Hoas Amid Growing Backlash

Forcing mandatory attendance for HOA votes won't work out, that's the thing. Too many cases of remote landlords, properties stuck in inheritance limbo, or even First Amendment issues (can you be compelled to make speech, aka participate in a vote?). Requiring a "70% of all owner shares" would flat out kill most HOAs, and requiring a "70% of present owner shares" perpetuates the status quo of giving disproportionate amounts of power to the usual suspects.

1. HOA has stupid rule about mailbox 2. Homeowner is found to be in violation of the rule and fined. 3. Homeowner does not pay fines 4. HOA places lien on house and is eventually able to force a sale to pay the fine.

It has to escalate to get there, but it is possible.

Also I can state from personal experience with two different HOAs on two different sides of the state of Ohio that they are exactly that petty.

The first one harassed my grandparents and threatened them with fines over having the "wrong" mailbox despite my grandparents literally being the first owners of the home and the mailbox they had having been put up by the developer who built the neighborhood and still controlled the HOA at the time (if you're not familiar with HOAs, in new developments it's common for the developer to have a controlling vote until a certain percentage of lots have been sold which allows them to exercise tighter control over the way the neighborhood appears to potential buyers). If I recall correctly the "right" mailbox was also one that was built by some random local shop that was connected to the developers so you couldn't just go buy one retail.

The second one was a decade later when I was renting a room from a friend, he had one of the common "Step 2" brand plastic mailboxes which had been installed for years and was also common around the neighborhood. Apparently it wasn't the right color, it was tan and only the black and green variants were allowed.

I don't mind the concept of a HOA for maintaining shared areas and such. The one in the second case actually was responsible for all yard maintenance in the neighborhood which was nice (except that their vendor loved to show up at 6 AM on a Saturday to wake us all up with the sound of two-stroke engines) and that was fine. The problem is that they have too much power over individuals' property. Outside of special cases like historical properties there is no excuse for HOAs to care about what color I paint my front door, what brand of mailbox I use, what type of shingles I install, if I have a satellite dish, etc. If it does not objectively affect others who are not on my property the HOA should keep its nose out of it.

https://www.tampabay28.com/news/local-news/i-team-investigat...

Which is to say if I had had the time and money for a protracted court drama, I do think a judge would have literally laughed them out of the courthouse, but everyone involved knew the case wouldn't get that far.

One really fun fact I learned from this is lawyers mostly just email each other polite requests with the vague threat of "this could escalate to court" as the grease that moves things. And if one side doesn't think it'll end up in court they just... say no!

In most places, this is called the city government.

Ultimately this feels like the "low tax area" myth is getting exposed. You still need to pay for all the same things your taxes would otherwise pay for, but for some reason it's different as long as it's not called a tax.

And in some areas it's very difficult to find housing not part of an HOA. I think somebody mentioned elsewhere in this thread that all new housing in Phoenix requires an HOA.

Even before the 2021 surge in home values, homes on city streets almost never saw as much growth in value (except for homes in the heart of metro areas where people will pay for location to work. On suburban city blocks, home values are often stagnant even in good markets)

An HOA isn't a separate body with no stake in the properties involved—that would be a property management company or something similar. It's a body made up of the people who actually live there. So while they could potentially charge you $3000 or $10,000 in bullshit fines for something they decided you did, they (usually) can't realistically charge you $3000 for dues without charging the same to everyone. Including themselves.

That said, there are definitely circumstances where an HOA is fully captured by a small clique of highly-active, highly-entitled, power-mad people with too much time on their hands and too little common sense or compassion, and they can't be gotten rid of either because of byzantine bylaws or because they actually are a majority of the people in the neighborhood.

> If I had to pick one thing I dislike the most about HOAs, it would be this. There is never a guarantee that your quiet HOA will remain that way in the future. Which, to me, seems like a crazy chance to take.

Exactly this. HOA boards have a great tendency to attract the interests of the most busy-body, have to dictate to everyone what they do, Karen's that exist in the area covered by the HOA. Such that, over time, the original HOA that just maintained common areas and only got involved in egregious violations mutates into one that has rules specifying exactly where, by measurement, you are to position your trash container in relation to your garage door when it is not out front for trash pickup day. One of the worst offenders of HOA's near me has exactly that rule (position of trash container in relation to garage door) and the HOA has paid "inspectors" to drive around each trash pickup day after the HOA decreed time that the container should be returned to this location, to look for violations of the position and write folks up.

There was an entire story in the local newspaper about this pettiness on the part of this particular HOA (which is how I learned they had "trash can position relative to garage door" rules and that they had paid "inspectors" to monitor compliance).

And all it takes is for those with "controlling personality disorder" [1] to start running, and getting, elected to the HOA boards for this to happen. And for most HOA areas, the only population group even interested in running for HOA board member are the "controlling personality disorder" types. So no matter who one votes for, the HOA slowly mutates into a "control everyone, everywhere, all the time" one.

[1] I.e., those personality types that want to control everything that someone else is allowed to do.

There must be cases of HOA's being force disbanded / dissolved in the past to use as a template. I think it's just a majority vote from home owners and submission of articles of dissolution? If enough properties could be liquidated then a good incentive could be giving home owners back a few years of dues. As a bonus all the over-zealous rules that have grown over the decades get dissolved and people just default to county and state laws.

Edit: If/when it becomes known that there will be some kind of a payout, people selling their homes will need to adjust the price and/or expect some kind of credit from the buyer at closing.

This statement makes no sense. The property owners are the ones who own the properties, today. It is very clear cut who they are, it's even public record.

I understand it wouldn't be easy to change all these management responsibilities, but in principle everything the HOA does can be devolved to either voluntary associations, or to public authorities (as happens in most of the rest of the world). Unlike a condo association, it's not a completely unimaginable shift what this lawmaker is proposing.

This neighborhood has a few amenities like soccer fields, tennis courts, bike/walk trails and exercise stations. In the early days of construction there was some debate about a HOA but that was fortunately shot down pretty quickly as far too toxic.

Instead, there is a property tax assessment on all houses in the area that covers for the city to maintain these common areas. Sure we pay for that, which is fair. The areas are maintained, they are open to all which is great, and there is no nasty HOA meddling in how people paint their houses or what flowers they plant or what car they buy. Best of all worlds.

What the legislator wants, and what can be done legally are likely to be two separate things. They could certainly repeal laws that allow for mandatory membership to be durable upon sale, and provide support for HOA bylaw enforcement, but a law “abolishing” HOAs entirely would likely be struck down a day later. That Likely runs afoul of the first amendment among other things. It would be like saying people can’t form private political groups or enter into private contracts; nonsense, as HOAs are often private non-profit corporations.