Are HOAs a manifestation of cultural localization or a rebuke to existing governance structures?

This is quite outside my sphere of deep content knowledge and so commenting only in a vernacular sense. From The Property Rights of Private Communities by Alex Tabarrok.

The U.S. housing market has seen a major shift in the past 30 years: the rise of the community association. In 1970, only 1 percent of U.S. homes were community association members; today, more than half of new housing is subject to association membership, including condominium buildings.

I have a post coming up on some research I did trying to assess the degree of locality in the US system of government as it pertains to citizen self-association. In other words, the bulk of all government services, and a large part of the taxation of citizens occurs primarily at the city or county level, some at the State level, and (in terms of day-to-day services) very little at the Federal level.

That being true, how does that influence some of the ideology driven conversations regarding identity such as race? It is true that Americans self-segregate by age, class, income, religion, profession, race, etc. in a quite complex mosaic of communities. In that analysis, I discovered that approximately 70% of African Americans live in counties, states or towns which are minority majority. In other words, they live in communities over which they have electoral control. To me, that is an interesting insight in that it contravenes the established narrative of all minorities as being prey to a majoritarian system.

The research was sparked in part by conversations with European friends who usually have very little concept of the profound impact of the 10th Amendment and the localization of power in the American system of government and the degree to which the federal republican structure of the government with its inter-branch checks and balances (legislature, judiciary, and executive) are all predicated on protecting the rights of the individual (and the minority).

Tabarrok's comment is interesting because it brings in to focus a further dynamic I had not really considered. It does not take a great leap of imagination to see the rise of community associations as yet a further taking back of localized power to self-selected communities of individuals from the next level up (towns or counties). What Tabarrok is discussing is not only the legal but the governmental implications of mass localization as evidenced by community associations. We think of these community associations as simply the rich and wealthy gating themselves off from the hoi polloi but the reality is much more plebian.

From just my anecdotal knowledge in my own city, many, if not the large majority, of these community associations are not gated at all. Usually only one or two points of ingress and egress, but not gated. And their nature is highly varied in its self-selection. I can think of community associations that are self-selected by white and black, old and young, elderly and mature, each one of the income quintiles, etc. Each self-associating and exercising local control over many services and functioning as an additional voice of citizens in the complex web of governance.

What the full implications might be, I am not sure. As I said, beyond my field of deep content knowledge. What I hear in the background conversation and national narratives is not much about community associations at all, and when discussed, discussed in pejorative terms of the wealthy being exclusive or in terms of racial exclusion. But in terms of the data, I don't think that's right at all. What I suspect is being missed, or at least I am missing the discussion, is that there is a sixth level of self-governance that has been brought into being without great note or comment. Before we had Citizen - City/Town - County - State - Federal Government. Now we have Citizen - Homeowners Association - City/Town - County - State - Federal Government. From Wikipedia, it appears that some 20% of the population elects to live in a homeowner association community (a more restrictive form of community association).

Never having lived in a homeowner association, I have little sense of the respective benefits and challenges of an HOA. But it does seem to me that HOAs are a manifestation of America's deep individualism/localism and that the rise of HOAs is likely a form of rebuke to the existing governance structure. Whether that rebuke is a sign of strength or weakness, I don't know but I am guessing that it has significant implications in the long run.