Homeowners Associations: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

I remember reading a story a few years ago where a guy had a house out in the country. Soon a developer came in and built a HOA community around his house. His house was legally excluded from the HOA as it was not part of the development, but still in the neighborhood. On the back of his house, he had a huge deck. The HOA started harassing him about the deck saying it did not meet the rules and needed to be removed. He kept telling the them his house was not part of the HOA. Then one day he came home and his deck was gone. The HOA sent in contractors to remove it. He sued them and won. The court made the HOA rebuild his huge deck. That ended up bankrupting the HOA. Man, I wish I could buy that guy a beer!

Seeing this from the Netherlands, where HOAs only exist for apartments, and have nowhere near these powers, it's obvious that 'freedom' in the US is primarily for corporations, not individuals.

People will have to accept the possibility that we won't ever return to 3%. If sellers must sell, home prices will have to decline, and lower evaluations will follow. Sure I'm not alone in my chain of thoughts.

I was born in 1986 and John's assessment of my ability to own a home is very flattering.

HOAs are basically an answer to the question “what if Karens formed a union?”

i’m an incredibly non-violent person, but if an HOA secretly bought my house a year before evicting me for less than a Happy Meal i’d be catching multiple life sentences

My friend owned a condo. The HOA sent a paper to go in and redo her patio on the second floor while she was on vacation. They put the planters up on the railing. She was gone for a month. The papers didn't take down the planters and she started being get fines for the planters. It was the HOA people that put the planters up there.

In Utah. An HOA in daybreak kept charging my brother fines for having dog poop in his front yard. He doesn't own a dog. It's also part of the HOA to pick up after your dog. $74 per day. He went on vacation once and got charged $1400 for poop in his yard that wasn't from his dog while in vacation

If a HOA foreclosed on my house for $4, I think the HOA Presidents house would mysteriously burn to the ground shortly afterwards.

The fact that HOAs can perfectly, legally bypass even SCOTUS rulings on desegregation is some truly dystopian BS.

HOAs sound like the neighborhood equivalent of the Stanford prison experiment.

I was born in 1988, only able to buy my home because of an inheritance. Literally said while I was house hunting that I would not buy ANY home in an HOA. Bought a house built in 1922 and no HOA in sight. Loathed the idea of ever owning a home in one, because I don't want a bunch of busybodies who are not paying one red cent of my mortgage to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own home.

My grandfather lived in a neighborhood with an HOA. After a lengthy battle over a flagpole that was 1 ft too tall he went around to each of the board members houses at night and burned their lawns with fertilizer. He then reported them to their own boary that they weren't following HOA rules to keep grass at acceptable length. They didn't have any grass at all as the fertilizer burned it to death 😂 Gramps was a legend.

What confuses the hell out of me is that the people who are so damn adamant about not being told what to do by a government aren't doing a damn thing about this.

if i got evicted like that you better believe i'd be pouring concrete down all the drains

My parents moved to the suburbs when they retired and they are now a part of an HOA. Before they moved in, the head of the HOA was fighting for the power to be able to approve or deny renovations people wanted INSIDE THEIR OWN HOME. Needless to say, he's not in that position anymore.

A few home owners in my dads neighborhood tried to start an HOA a few years ago. They had a meeting to vote if it should be put in place and only two people voted for it. Those people were then ostracized to the point they sold their homes and moved. Truly the best outcome imo

“If you’re under 35 this story isn’t for you. You’ll never own a house.” Ok. Just because it’s true it doesn’t mean you have to say it out loud JOHN.

Jerry as a homeowners association leader is freaking perfect. Love that Voice Actor

My first experience with HOAs was in the 80s, in ARIZONA. They had a rule that you couldn't hang your laundry out to dry, in ARIZONA, SO FOR FIVE MINUTES. They had others that were also ridiculous, I told my husband there is no way I would ever live somewhere with an HOA, and I haven't. Such horror stories.