Quote Originally Posted by early morning View Post
There are HOAs in a few neighborhoods around here. The problem is that they are only as good as the governing board, which is subject to change over time. Despite bae's board clarifying that it has very very limited powers, another set of board members somewhere down the line can again rewrite the governing documents and seize much more power. (sound familiar, lol?) Honestly, all it takes is a couple power-crazed people, and you're off to the races. Bae, your HOA sounds immensely sensible, and of real use to the membership. I really hope it stays that way after you decamp to, ah, where-ever.
Luckily, it is nearly impossible to change our HOA rules in any way detrimental to property rights. The founding documents give it very little power to begin with, and to change them requires a huge majority of owners to agree, not just the Board members. We've changed the documents once, to correct a pile of errors and simplify things. New WA State law requires a further simplification, as the existing documents no longer are relevant in many ways. So our upcoming revision will be removing things.

Every few years people move here from places with heavyweight HOAs, and try to get us to increase restrictions. It then gets pointed out to them that, well, we can't really. I got on the board years ago to explain this to the previous board, which had been hijacked by folks who wanted to impose aesthetic standards, which was far outside the powers granted.