Comment by bagacrap
3 hours ago
As someone who lives in an HOA, the purpose of it is to push responsibilities the city doesn't want to pay for onto us (even though we pay city taxes e.g. property and sales taxes). These include road maintenance and weed abatement. The predictable outcome of forcing a bunch of volunteers to be in charge of this stuff is that the final product is even worse than what the government manages, I.e. everything is constantly falling apart.
> road maintenance and weed abatement
I am completely unfamiliar with a world in which HOAs fix roads.
I have also never lived in a city whose government got rid of weeds. What even is “weed abatement”? (Joke: Is this some slang for getting rid of the local marijuana grow houses?)
In one area I lived in, there were legally defined "noxious weeds". Mostly invasive species that have several undesirable attributes.
One example is Musk Thistle. It grows extremely rapidly, reproduces at a rate that's unbelievable, and is very difficult to kill. In this heavily farmed region, a few of them growing in a roadside ditch can turn into tens/hundreds of thousands of them within a year. Not only do they outcompete just about any other plant including crops, but they have incredibly sharp barbs that injure livestock.
In publicly owned spaces or abandoned fields/lots, the county has people that searches for them and sprays them with a herbicide. If they're spotted on your private land, usually they'll notify you that you have X days to cut them down (before they flower and seed) or they'll come do it whether you want them to or not. Some counties will send a bill for this, some fund it from property taxes.
If you haven't lived in an area where they vigorously grow it sounds like a huge overreaction, but left uncontrolled because one neighbor isn't taking care of it, it can become impossible to keep it out of your yard. According to wikipedia, a single plant can produce 10,000 seeds that disperse through the wind and remain viable for decades in the soil. Even the desire to not have a painful rapidly reproducing weed in your yard aside, they can do incredible damage to cropland.
It's a shame though, it's a kinda pretty flower. Imagine a vivid pink sunflower.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carduus_nutans
In WA we have enormous problems with Himalayan blackberries and scotch broom. When they get a toehold, they take over and leave a "dead zone" underneath. They're very hard to kill. The blackberries grow over 8 feet high and form a thicket that is a lot like razor wire.
Scotch broom seeds will also be viable up to 30 years.
My HOA owns all the common area in the neighborhood, including the streets and parking spaces. So, all that upkeep (paint, seal, re-pave, snow removal, etc) gets paid out of a HOA dues. They also pay for landscaping of common areas, neighborhood lighting, and a few other things. The also organize trash collection (without which we'd have to buy individually and have a constant stream of trash trucks rolling through). And they have to carry insurance to cover that common property.
Who else is going to fix the roads? The county and state aren't going to, they don't own it. We seal the asphalt every 5-8 years and repave every 15-20 (I've only lived her 10 years, so those are very rough guesses).
> The also organize trash collection (without which we'd have to buy individually and have a constant stream of trash trucks rolling through).
That's not a given. I live in a non-HOA area, and everyone on my street has trash collection from the same company on the same day. Thursday night, we set our carts out. Friday morning, we bring them in.
There's a wide middle between HOA bureaucracy and pure chaos.
In my (and most) neighborhoods, the city or county is responsible for all of that.
There is a single trash company serving our area. Everyone just has a contact with them.
Don't know if it's what gp is talking about, but in areas prone to wildfire, there are often laws about keeping brush and weeds a certain distance away from any structures.
Not only that but also a responsibility to build whatever fire breaks the fire department seems necessary on land the HOA owns. (This is land that can't be developed; land ownership becomes a liability.)
I lived in a townhouse community with an HOA for a few years. They handled paving the roads and all the lawn mowing and landscaping (which included weeding, as well as replacing the tree outside my unit when it died).
Not that I'd ever want an HOA again, but that was nice and your experience isn't canonical.
If there is a gate then the roads behind the gate are privately owned and the HOA members pay thousands of dollars a year to maintain the roads.
Wrt weeds, I suspect you are simply unaware of all the maintenance tasks your city does. Consider yourself blessed!