Homeowners Associations.

Interesting article in the NY Times about homeowners associations and the occasional disasters that come when the associations enforce their rules against homeowners. I can see both sides - the homeowners who don't realize just what it means to move into a development that has a homeowners association (HOA) with the power to make rules like a miniature government, and the association boards who may become a bit too zealous in enforcing "the will" of the association. I know that when I was involved with the board of the HOA when I owned my townhouse, the board often wanted to do things to "punish" absentee homeowners or to make excessively intrusive rules ("you can have only one cat or one dog, but not both") even if those rules violated rights given by the development's restrictive covenants. I usually fell back on an argument of "you don't have the power to do that" when the board wanted to do something silly, and it was sometimes even true. On the other hand, I got to experience trying to deal with homeowners who didn't want to believe that the HOA had the power to do those things it was supposed to do (charge quarterly dues in order to pay for trash collection and lawn maintenance, or approve architectural changes), or to enforce its rightful decisions.

It was an interesting experience, living in a neighborhood with an HOA that had such powers, and it was enough to make me realize that any future house I own won't be in a neighborhood with an HOA.