Rodney

On the other hand, most large HOAs have at least one nutbag -- often with a clique around him or her -- that just have a hereditary case of arthropodus uppus anus and never stop complaining, claiming persecution, and slandering the board and anybody connected to it.

There was one of these at my mom's development; I was wandering around one day and he and one of his henchman thought I was a new resident and immediately came over to try to recruit me to their clique, with talk of about how terrible everything was around there and how they needed my help to clean things up. When these guys were really a clique of about four against 150 other residents, and never stopped saying terrible things about anybody who disagreed with them including my mother. Nutbags.

Which is part of the reason that most people are loathe to get on the HOA boards. There's a lot of such crap to deal with, and all anybody really wants to go home and be left in peace. Which leaves most of the work to the professional busybodies and, sometimes, the nutcases. When a nutcase gets on the board of a HOA -- or worse, into an officer's position -- that's when things explode.

And frankly, people often buy into an HOA because the house is convenient or affordable, not because they give a shit about the benefits of the HOA. Condos are one things, but planned unit developments -- separate houses along a private road, usually -- are something else.

I live in a small PUD, and we have an HOA because the five houses share a private driveway. The HOA originally came with 50 pages of convenants that the developer had loaded with every possible restriction, for reasons I can't understand (down to color restrictions for venetian blinds). After a couple of years we all agreed to ignore most of the restrictions, abolished regular dues (we pass the hat for insurance and pavement maintenance) and basically run everything informally on a common-sense, play-nice-with-others basis. Works great.