One faction -- I'll call them the Malcontents -- was a bunch of people who complained about the HOA fees (as I said before, these fees are less than $100 per year) and insisted that the HOA was being mismanaged. These tended to be younger residents who were the second or third generation of owners in the subdivision. They had two particular demands: (1) conduct an audit of the HOA's books, and (2) consider disbanding the HOA so they wouldn't be subject to all the silly rules they dislike (which are really inconsequential). Some of them even claimed they had no idea there was an HOA when they bought their homes.
The other faction -- I'll call them the Veterans -- included mostly original owners. They were totally fine with the HOA and had no complaints at all.
I am one of the newest residents in the HOA. This was my first HOA meeting, in fact. I helped defuse the contentious situation by siding with the Veterans. I pointed two things out to the Malcontents (which didn't win me friends among them but perhaps did convince many of them to either vote for the Veteran board members in the election or not vote at all):
1. An audit of the HOA's books and records would cost the equivalent of about 300% of the HOA's annual budget. So their HOA fees would triple just to cover the cost of the audit they were demanding.
2. Anyone who wasn't aware of the existence of the HOA when they bought their home was a moron or should consider suing their real estate agent and/or the prior owner -- because that information was required to be included in the seller's disclosure package under state law.
The "Veteran" faction of the HOA was re-elected by an overwhelming margin.
My neighborhood has a community club... (no HOA thank goodness) just a volunteer organization who does things...
Well the old guard complained for years that the younger folks weren’t getting involved, finally younger folks came and took over, and long story short there was a contentious issue that divided the neighborhood because the way the old Community Club had been handling things (financially 501c3) had actually been violating some laws (unintentionally, but still, had been doing so)... the new board tried to do things the right way, which caused a huge schism...
Needless to say the new folks got fed up with the BS and all quit... now the club is back to the old guard who are slowly dying and the younger folks now, truly do want nothing to do with it.
I’ve been to numerous HOA meetings that nearly came to blows.
Our primary residence is in a gated community with 24/7/365 security with a guard and gates to get in/out.
Since our neighborhood has very little common area, the majority of the HOA fees cover the cost of security.
We had a couple of owners years ago that began complaining about how much of the HOA fees were going to security and wanted to get rid of the guards and go to security gates only.
We had near universal attendance at the next HOA meeting, the response overwhelming to keep the security guards and the complainers could kiss our collective ass, in that case it was a beautiful thing.