It's a chicken and egg situation.

Nobody wants to live under the thumb of an HOA.

Without the HOA busy-bodies, suburban neighborhoods tend to turn into the kind of place most people would not aspire to live.

Often, HOAs are annoying. More often it's like teenagers who hate it when mom makes them clean their rooms.

I've lived most of my life in houses not subject to an HOA, but for the past four years I've been "under the thumb" of one. Anecdotally, I notice startlingly little difference between the two regimes. I suppose if someone wants to park a wheelless rusty pickup truck in the middle of their lawn the HOA would do something about it, but that sort of thing was never really an issue.

From my perspective, the HOA has done little except offer a pool, and insist once that I remove an almost completely invisible stump in my front lawn that was over my water line.

Valuable things my HOA does: pools, parks, negotiated bulk internet, neighbors keep their lawn mowed and low weeds, no junk cars in the yard type stuff, no unsightly house colors, no serious disrepair of homes, no cars parked on the side of the road because 10 people live in a 3/2.

Annoying things my HOA does: I had to replace some plants in my yard because they were not technically shrubs, and the rules said I had to have shrubs.

You’re forgetting feeling like you live in the Truman show mixed with North Korea in either your pros or cons.

I don't feel that way. I will go this far. The negative emotion from having to swap out plants because they are technically not shrubs is far worse than the positive emotion I get from having nice parks and neighbors who have nice grass.

I get that, HOAs wouldn’t survive without people like you, I think the US wouldn’t be what it is either. The feeling I get from having all so manicured is like I’m living in a fake world with no creativity, where everything is made of the same cookie cutter, where a small group dictates minuscule details like what blinds you can have or what plants. It feels very oppressive and constricting to me.

Not that it matters, but just for conversation's sake I value my HOA primarily for property value reasons. Once my kids are out of school and I don't care about things like school zones or parks I will be moving to more rural areas without an HOA for similar reasons to why you dislike HOAs so much.

It’s odd that in my area non HOA areas have grown in price more than the gated cookie cutter communities. The people with money want out of there and live by the river and be able to have block parties with cookouts without having to be backed by a change.org petition and petty meetings.

But I’ve also seen that in some areas all you have is HOAs because nothing was developed before those communities and whatever is outside can be pretty crappy.

I think the main issue is that hall monitor types are attracted to the power, and so if a HOA gets taken over by people who like judging others without any other major obligations, they lose sight of the reason for the HOA rules and enforce to the letter of the rules rather than the spirit.