Great article, Sam. It kind of reaffirms my long-standing position that the TDG cannot have any real responsibility until it acquires the necessary skills and attitudes to make the TDG work.
I'll just provide a little anecdote of a civic issue in my town of Brooks, Alberta. Many people of a certain wealth acquired an RV, which they parked in their backyard. This was an eyesore and caused problem with RV's being parked within inches of each other or other structures. The town council was putting forth rules of "no RV's in back yards". Of course, the owners of RVs did not like these rules, citing "property rights" as their defense. Anyways, a lot of discussion happened, and the bylaw was put in place with some modifications. The RV owners rented places to store their RVs for a few hundred dollars a year.
One of social relief valves was the decision maker was the town council, not a neighborhood HOA. With the decision maker being farther away, that made the medicine go down a lot easier. In Canada and in general, our municipal councils make the decisions.
We do have condos, and the owners elect boards to run the affairs of condos. I was on the sidelines of one condo association. I thought it was run reasonably well. Most boards seem to be run well, but I have heard of a few dysfunctional boards.
As I read your article, I gained a further sense of how much we have lost our sense of civics. Choosing entertainment over a community meeting is a bad choice. But too often, meetings just are not fun. So we do not get the skills to become more vibrant participation for later.
My parents were quite involved in community affairs. But that was in the days of only three analog TV channels. Sitting on boards was, in part, their entertainment.
As the HOA issues you have raised, maybe some of them could be addressed by changing the HOA constitutions to something like: "For issues not requiring an immediate decision, motions can only be passed by two successive meetings with a majority vote". This will allow those opposed to the change to amass and show their opposition at the next meeting. Sort of like the "multiple readings" of our current systems of governance. My town council could not pass a bylaw about RVs in backyards in one meeting. It seems an American HOA can quickly make their decisions.
My understanding that HOA-like neigborhoods are quite common in Europe. And they are far more intrusive than American HOAs. While there is probably some grumbling, the discussion is of lower intensity.
I have another anectdote of a northern municipality who took a hands-off approach to property rights. If you wanted to overhaul your Kenworth logging truck on your front lawn, you had the freedom to do that. That town was really the wild west. Eventually the residents elected a council that started tackling the worst of the eyesores. It took about 15 years to get this town looking civilized.
We will always need rules.
