What gives HOA's their clout is that membership in most is mandatory and not "voluntary". That is, most HOA's are created by a set of covenants running with the title to the home's lot. These covenants are filed in the land records of the county in which the lot is located, and are specifically referred to in the deed passing title to the new owner. To be enforceable, the covenants must describe, with reasonable specificity, the purposes of the HOA, the composition of its membership, and its powers. Unfortunately, most people either don't read them, or don't understand their implications prior to taking title to property governed by them. Before buying a home in an HOA community, it is therefore a good idea to spend a few hundred bucks for consultation with an attorney who knows the "ins and outs" of such communities.

In what's name is it that one gives up the right to choose a trash can, or patio furniture that you want for your home, at least in the Columbia, MD case that I briefly alluded to. That dude's home was an apartment unit.

It just annoys me that a lot of it is more an aesthetic matter than it is one of safety or common decency. In my neighborhood we can only install in-ground pools and we have to have privacy fences for those. That makes sense. Restrictions on trash cans, patio furniture, and, though I grumbly admit, Winnie The Pooh blow-up dolls and windmills, don't, at least for me.

So what's undesirable behavior? Generally, anything that brings the neighborhood in disrespute; the guy who doesn't mow his lawn, the guy who uses his yard as a salvage yard; the guy who runs a business from his home and has lots of customers coming by every day; the guy who rents out his 2-bedroom house to 20 mexican illegals; the guy who builds a monstruous, butt-ugly steel shed and put it in the back yard, and so on.

And why is it undesirable? Because it affects everyone else's property negatively for one reason or other -- lower property values, more traffic, neighborhood looking run-down, and so on.

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