[potato3732842]

>But do the HOAs really need financial enforcement mechanisms intended to seriously harm people, and to punish them as judge, jury and executioner?

No, they don't. But to be fair, your local enforcement agencies have the same power to unilaterally fine people insane amounts of money. So in a technical sense it makes sense that HOAs would have the same unilateral power to screw people.

[kstrauser]

Yeah, but:

1) Governments are often much easier to sway. You can get a newspaper or TV station involved. You can show up to open meetings. You can campaign against the incumbents. While you can porbably technically do some of that against rogue HOA boards, it's going to be a lot harder.

2) Governments are usually large enough not to make things a personal vendetta. That's clearly not always true; I'm only talking about trends. Meanwhile, the HOA members are your neighbors, by definition. Get on the wrong side of them and they can easily get involved in everything you do.

[potato3732842]

What I was getting at was the government shouldn't have that kind of power either even if they're marginally less likely to be dicks with it.

[kstrauser]

Ah, got it. You were saying neither part should do that. I interepreted that as HOAs should also be allowed to do that. I see what you're saying now, though.