Comment by pdonis
5 hours ago
> From their perspective, they get to found little vassal townships where they can say “it’s your problem” to little people problems like “there’s too many potholes in the road” and “that sewer lift station is making weird smells.”
Roads and sewer are two things I've never seen an HOA have jurisdiction over; in every HOA community I've lived in, the municipality still owned the roads and the water and sewer infrastructure. The HOA was only responsible for things like mowing the grass in common areas and maintaining play equipment there.
I am a president of an association that handles all aspects of road maintenance (construction, sweeping, snow removal), a full commercial sewer lift station, stormwater drainage, trash / recycling, street lights, interfacing with utilities, forestry maintenance, and permitting along with general Q&A. We are a volunteer 3-person Department of Public Works.
Interesting. I wonder how common this is (as I said, I've never seen it, and I've owned homes in 3 different HOA communities in two different states).
I’ve lived in two HOAs and they both owned and maintained roads in the community. One of them was a new development, and making the roads private was probably a big reason the county required an HOA for it.