Homeowners Associations in Historical Perspective

Abstract

As Barbara Coyle McCabe describes, the rapid spread of homeowners associations (HOAs), along with condominiums, the other leading form of collective housing ownership, has been remaking the character of urban local governance in the United States. Th is new private governance substitutes in many areas for the old local governance in the public sector. Private neighborhood governments diff er in signifi cant ways from traditional local governments, including the manner of creating the government, the political and administrative structure, the conduct of elections, the procedures for changing governing rules, the manner and extent of regulatory control, and the form of local “taxation.”