[dionidium]

It's odd to me that anyone finds this compelling. You have a right to wear whatever t-shirts you like. You don't have a right to prevent other people from wearing t-shirts with colors you find objectionable. Yet, somehow in housing we've decided that, no, you actually do have the right to object to all kind of innocuous nonsense (window styles, setbacks, paint colors, and on and on). There's nothing so trivial that it's beyond objection.

I understand that people would like to control what others do around them, but we should be totally unresponsive to those desires. The sentiment behind modern NIMBYism isn't remotely confusing. Presumably, people who buy a house in a neighborhood do so because they like the neighborhood the way it is and don't want it to change. But...so what? That desire is outweighed by other concerns at every turn.

[kwillets]

Building codes and zoning are constitutional, but it's now the case that nobody is allowed to build up to the limits of zoning, and the approval process has been hijacked to impose all sorts of expensive economic programs.

Mao's Great Leap Forward was similar -- essentially an "Affordable Rice" program which drove producers out of the market.

[sokoloff]

I will never buy a property that's subject to an HOA board of approval for things. Mostly for the reasons you list above.

However, people who did buy in an area subject to an HOA presumably did want that and agreed to it ahead of time. I don't think that should allow someone to come in, buy into the development, and unilaterally decide "because my liberty" that they don't have to follow any of the HOA rules.

[dionidium]

HOAs are the vanguard of unreasonableness. What I’m more concerned about has nothing to do with HOAs. It’s zoning, design review, and scores of other unreasonable laws that impact even those of us who aren’t crazy enough to join an HOA.

[sokoloff]

Sorry, I was trying to say that even though I would personally never buy into an HOA, I support the legal rights of those who did to enforce the bylaws/covenants of the HOA agreement.

I think HOAs are stupid, much the same way I think that many other things are stupid, but I also support the right of people to choose to voluntarily do things I find stupid (like worshipping an obviously incorrect deity [because it's different from mine]).

[twblalock]

There are a lot of things that matter more than window styles and paint colors, and they can have a severe negative impact on quality of life and property values and safety.

[dionidium]

Re: property values: who cares? Again, I don’t find this even remotely compelling when weighed against the rights of property owners to do what they want with their own property. Again, I understand why rational actors want to protect the value of their property. But we shouldn’t assist them as a matter of policy.

(And this is really neither here nor there, given my stance, but property owners actually tend to be very bad at knowing what’s going to negatively affect the value of their properties over the long term. Allowing more density would increase values, in most cases, yet homeowners universally oppose it.)

Re: safety: sure, there are some reasonable safety rules. Those aren’t what we’re talking about here.