An Eyesore of Some Sort

Archived from Sep 07, 2023:

There’s this scene in Bojack Horseman (stick with me) when Bojack parks a giant boat, almost a yacht, in someone’s driveway. It pans to 2 neighbours who assert, “It’s just such an eyesore”. Obviously, the boat does not get moved. The joke is about HOAs, or Home Owner Associations. I was talking about HOAs the other day, who remembers why, and two things dawned on me:

One, HOAs are very rare in Canada, and the few that exist are mimicking their US counterparts.

Two, I have no idea where HOAs came from or why.

It took me about one second to guess that the history and formation of the first HOAs was very racist. I was, of course, right. Their history is deeply intertwined with redlining and to this day are a legal course of action to maintain white neighbourhoods throughout the US.

So hang on, what exactly is an HOA? According to Associa, a massive property management company:

“A homeowners' association (HOA) is a nonprofit organization that’s set up to help run, manage, and maintain a neighborhood, building, or another collective of homes. People who belong to an HOA pay annual or monthly dues which the HOA uses to maintain shared spaces and carry out other association duties like rule enforcement, meeting management, and financial planning. An elected board of volunteers runs the HOA on behalf of all community homeowners.”

Nonprofit! Community! Shared spaces! Well that all sounds pretty pleasant, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t sometimes feel like they need some support to help keep a home running smoothly? Now, from a financial perspective, I do understand pooling resources to build and maintain amenities that will benefit the community as a whole. Nothing wrong with that, especially given that’s basically what property taxes do. They fund schools, community centers and parks. Or, at least they do in Canada, for the most part. Hard to say what they do in the States these days. On the surface, a group of people looking out for their community sounds sensible. In practice, you get sued for where your garbage bins are.

HOAs were not common until about the 1960s when suburbs began to really sprawl in the US. This coincides with the 1968 passing of the Federal Fair Housing Act, prohibiting racial discrimination in the sale and rental of homes. The entire point of HOAs, in their foundation, was to legally protect racist homeowners in their quest to maintain all white communities. Jonathan Rothwell, author of "A Republic of Equals," notes,

"There is plenty of evidence from historic records and housing policy discussions that anti-Black racism motivated some of the strategies used by homeowner associations, such as deed restrictions and covenants that explicitly discriminated against Black people by compelling other owners to avoid selling to them. HOAs perpetuate racial and economic segregation by blocking fair participation in housing markets, thus denying wealth-generating opportunities and upward mobility for many Black people and lower-income families." 

This was not only the moral foundation of HOAs, but has persisted in them to this day. As recently as 2019, a woman in Florida contacted an attorney after she found a “Caucasian-only” clause in her HOA paperwork. HOAs are certainly not the only systemic form of discrimination minorities face in the US. There has been no shortage of stories where Black homeowners swap out pictures in their homes or have White friends show their house, only to have appraisals skyrocket by hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is, of course, horrific and it is completely unsurprising when something rooted in hate and racism attracts unpleasant people to run them. Generationally, HOA preference has been dropping and this makes sense when you look for a moment at the HOA horror stories that circulate online. From cars being parked for too long, whatever that means, to the placement or colour of garbage bins being incorrect, absurd things are labeled as “infractions” and result in warnings and fines.

This all sounds pretty shady and unpleasant, so surely when you’re moving in the US, you simply avoid any neighbourhoods that have HOAs, right? Good luck. There are “over 370,000 homeowner associations in the United States. Collectively, this represents over 40 million households (over 53% of the owner occupied households in America)”. This number seems to only be growing, with almost 8000 forming annually since 2019. A massive influx of a useless thing no young person really wants seems just a little on the nose, these days. What I find so strange about HOAs is their claims to community all wrapped up in American hyperindividualism. Currently, I live in an old Toronto neighbourhood with some really lovely houses. Among them are a few hyper modern ones. Personally, I don’t like them, nor do I understand the choice to build a flat top California style home among beautiful 100 year old homes, but it’s none of my goddamn business and I know it’s not. I cannot imagine the kind of person who thinks it is. To be an individual in an HOA is to legally succumb to conformity. To spend a massive amount of savings on likely the biggest purchase of your life, only to have a power tripping neighbour dictate every choice you make with it is a baffling thing to me. Imagine if you bought a car and then someone you have never met complained about your air freshener scent. Land of the free, with the correct documentation, of course.

There’s so much about this world view that confuses me. In a legal structure, these confrontations seem ridiculous, and when they’re interpersonal, to me at least, they come across as petulant and unnerving. This particular clip comes to mind. A desperation for control, for all to be immediately appealing to you, for everything to be unchanging, beige and within the realms of your personal comfort, everyone else be damned. Now, some of you will know that I don’t present in a particularly toned down way. I’m no stranger to people having, and voicing, their opinion on how I choose to present myself. My hair is always at least 2 colours, with eyebrows to match. Tattoos, peircings, the whole getup as it were. Do my parents aesthetically like this? I don’t know. Honestly, I’d guess probably not particularly but they would never treat me like that. Like property, like a canvas they alone are allowed to make choices with. They, as grown and compassionate people, recognize that they raised a whole person. They know that an oversized graphic t-shirt and combat boots don’t change my personality, intellect or kindness. Hell, no one in my life thinks that, because I simply don’t tolerate such a reductive way of seeing another person. To use aesthetics as an excuse to bully people, people in your community, in your family, is something I will never be able to wrap my head around. The discomfort around visual evidence of anyone outside yourself existing is so profoundly selfish, and antithetical to any claim of community an HOA makes. To desire the benefits, support and products created by a community while actively erasing the people who make it possible is ignorant at best and deeply cruel at worst. The beauty of community is the coming together of many for the benefit of many, regardless of differences. To build community, diversity must not only be accepted, but embraced. To build a home, love is required.

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Thank you, as always, for being here friends. Not that I’ll ever be able to afford a home in Toronto (or anywhere in Canada for that matter) but man, I am glad that I wouldn’t ever have to deal with these types of associations. Though, if I were going to get a house, money not being a worry, I think maybe I’d find a little cottage on a hill somewhere. That’s what I tell myself anyway. Where would you move, if you could?