Banned is maybe too far, but why should we as a country allow people to have petty power over meaningless things their neighbors do? Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it’s sold the new owners have to opt in?
For the most part, I’m wondering about this in the context of single family homes since for homes like condos, you could make the case that HOAs are useful for shared things like roofs and whatnot. Maybe limit mandatory HOA involvement to things like what’s truly necessary and shared and not how tall your grass is?
To be clear, anyone who can get a loan can buy the houses. The HOA can only decide if the potential residents meet community standards. The mechanism used to keep people of color out is the background check. It doesn’t mean the person rejected has a criminal record. The HOA doesn’t have to give a reason why someone failed the background check.
We don’t even get notified if a house is sold or not unless there’s a lien from dues. We have nothing to do with sales and don’t even know about them.
In the area of South Florida where I was living, the HOA dues were factored into the loan and though the HOA had no control over who could buy a house, they could reject the occupant (including the owner) based on any criteria they liked. I thought about buying a house there and went through the loan procedure then decided I didn’t want to stay in Florida long term and decided to rent. The HOA has to approve the occupant of the property in either case. Lucky for me, I’m Caucasian so I wasn’t rejected anywhere.
Florida? Racist? No way!