If you want to get a good idea of what is was like to live in east germany during the cold war, buy a house in an HOA ruled subdivision.
It’s like buying your own little slice of the socialist surveillance state. But if that is what you want, don’t whine when you get it.
The time I elected to buy into an HOA community, I had formerly been living in a neighborhood controlled by the mafia. Compared to the wiseguys, the HOA were amateurs. Going forward, however, I would hesitate for many reasons, including:
• With every year that passes, the liberal progressive agenda in place since the 1960s has nearly destroyed not only the Christian culture of loving one's neighbor, forming a close community and looking out for one another; it has virtually outlawed many forms of community behavior, such as repairing your own pothole or tidying up the city tree branches or flower beds (the city won't fix it, but will prosecute you if you do).• Since the immigration act of 1964, it started with a trickle and now it is a flood of immigration from non-European countries and non-JudeoChristian cultures. Immigrants used to have to relinquish their original citizenship but do not have to any longer, so many are simply using America as a place to work, but their loyalty and allegiance is elsewhere. At the citizenship swearing-in, they show a video of Obama reassuring "folks" that they don't have to leave their culture behind. And they don't.
• Even if you have an HOA with by-laws and people willing to pay for a gated community to try to keep both financial and social values high, the government in blue states like mine will now seize any opportunity to place Section 8 renters in any houses where people had to move away suddenly and their house didn't sell promptly. Hence, these government-subsidized "folks" don't feel any need to follow any rules or behave like people who have to work to afford their circumstances, including doing yard care, quiet behavior at night, trash containment, picking up dog waste or any other courtesy expected by people who are paying from their efforts.