To say that mandatory membership homeowners associations in the US were an unpleasant shock when I came to America would be the understatement of the decade because I had been led to believe that “Everything” in America was supposed to be so much better. And freer than everything in the rest of the world.  

However, all I have found in HOAs here in the US are abuses and heart-wrenching horror stories.  In all the years I have been involved with HOAs, people have been looking for FIXES.  There have been many suggested fixes; however, none of them even came close to addressing the underlying problems.   I finally realized, after all these years, that the only real and permanent fix for HOAs is to ban them.  I do believe that they need to be banned!  Nobody wants them and the Government mandates them in order to sell them.  Whatever happened to the concept of giving the consumer what the consumer wants?  People want a house in a certain school district, with easy access to their jobs or hospitals and with enough space to accommodate their needs.