At this point, HOAs are starting to seem less like community betterment organizations and more like fascist regimes run by people with a god complex.
It’s bad enough that they charge exorbitant amounts of money to tell their residents what they can and cannot do on their property. But the sense of entitlement many HOAs have is simply off the charts.
Take, for example, the story of a farmer on Reddit who has been harassed by an HOA with steadily escalating threats despite it having no jurisdiction over his family’s property.
The HOA is suing the farmer because his equipment on the family farm is ‘damaging’ the value of their property.
Homeowners Associations — typically a non-profit board that governs a housing community like a planned subdivision or condominium development — are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S., and with that rise have come more horror stories about the often insane overreach of these organizations. However, most of those stories surround issues that at least occur on the property of someone living under the HOA’s jurisdiction.
This gent on Reddit and his family farm? Not so much — yet that hasn’t stopped the HOA from wreaking havoc on his and his family’s lives, despite their farm predating the HOA’s “mini-mansions” by generations.
The HOA insists it has the ‘right to inspect’ the farm and files weekly complaints about his equipment and outbuildings.
The farmer explained that the so-called “mini-mansions” back right up to his farmland, and he has been receiving weekly threatening letters from the HOA “complaining about the tractor sitting in the field at the front of my property, where it can be seen from the street.”
Of course, the problem is that a tractor is not an abandoned old car on blocks in the driveway—it’s an active piece of farming equipment. As the farmer simply put it, “We’re working that field, and the tractor is necessary.”
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The HOA has even trespassed on his property several times despite the land being fenced and posted with “no trespassing” signs. In one incident, his grandfather assumed they were intruders and “went out with his double barrel 12 gauge to see what they were up to.”
He was told they were “HOA ‘inspectors’ who declared their ‘right’ to inspect the [barn] to make sure it met HOA rules,” the farmer recalled, which is pretty bold considering the farm is, as a reminder, NOT PART OF THE HOA’S DEVELOPMENT.
The HOA has also fined him $1000 a day, called the police on him, and is now suing him.
Recently, the HOA notified the farmer “that they were going to fine [him] $1000 a day until the offending striations and machinery were removed,” even though the farm is not on the HOA’s development.
When the farmer sent a threat back, the HOA “went nuts and called the County Sheriff’s Office,” who explained to the HOA that their dislike of the farm next door is not anyone’s problem but their own because, once again, the farm is not located on any part of the HOA’s property.
“He also informed them that, as I am not a member of the HOA, I have no requirement to allow them on my land and if he gets another call he will arrest the ‘inspectors’ for Criminal ‘Trespass’,” the farmer added.
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In response, the HOA went ballistic and had its lawyer send a cease-and-desist demanding the man halt his farm operations while they wait for a court date to hear the lawsuit they’ve filed against him for ” damaging the value of their property.” The farmer, of course, immediately contacted his own lawyer, “who, after he got done laughing, was amazed” at their temerity.
What are the origins of this insanity? It turns out that the property developer assured the HOA that the farmer and his family would sell their land. “They were more than a little surprised when I told them that we’re currently training the fifth generation to take over, and we have no intention of selling our farm, period.”
HOAs are on the rise despite becoming notorious for overreach like this — and despite most residents hating them.
HOAs aren’t just unpopular in viral social media stories — the people living under them hate them, too. A 2023 survey by Rocket Mortgage found that 57% of people living under an HOA hate the system.
HOAs, as they function in the U.S., are also uniquely American. While other countries have similar organizations, they mostly pool monetary resources for things like street repairs and building improvements — not litigating people’s use of their own property.
In the U.S., on the other hand, they function as autonomous mini-governments—ones that are often run like dictatorships. This has led to 72% of residents having had a dispute with their HOA and 1 in 10 homeowners considering selling their home simply to get out from under their HOA’s tyranny.
Nevertheless, HOAs are rising, with 60% of new homes and 80% of subdivisions falling under an HOA as of 2019. And like so many problems in the U.S., the rise of HOAs is partly tied to racism.
HOAs were born of 1960s-era “racial covenant” laws seeking to segregate suburbs. Housing policy organizations like the Urban Institute have found that they frequently function as ways to circumvent the illegality of those laws by placing barriers to entry that disproportionately exclude minorities.
HOA residents are overwhelmingly white as a result.
Taken in that context, this farmer’s story makes more sense. Only a system rooted in the absurd superiority fantasies of racism could ever come up with something so brain-meltingly ludicrous as the notion that they are entitled to force a farmer to shut down his farm simply because they think it’s ugly. Only in America, baby. Only in America.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.