Bill was introduced in Sep/25, but I only got a whiff of it in the last couple of weeks
See House Bill HB1878: https://fastdemocracy.com/bill-search/pa/2025-2026/bills/PAB00038963/
Are there any other states/countries taking similar initiatives?
Summary:
Pennsylvania homeowners deserve the right to choose native plant species they desire for landscaping around their homes. However, work is needed to remove bottlenecks for homeowners to select native vegetation for their desired landscaping.
This legislation will prevent homeowners associations (HOAs) from unreasonably prohibiting the use of native plants for landscaping on private property. This ensures homeowners residing within an HOA the same ability to choose native landscaping as other homeowners.
Native plants provide many beneficial functions that many homeowners desire. These include being aesthetically pleasing and providing habitat for pollinators while being adapted to the site and typically requiring lower maintenance than non-native plants. [...]
HOAs are such a fascinatingly American thing. They seem to cause no end of annoyance for those living in them, and have few to no positive effects (at least, we don't hear about any positives), yet they persist.
Can those who are adversely affected not do anything about their local ones, or is it actually a case that they're not too bad for most people most of the time?
HOAs have a lot of applications that aren't horrible, you just probably dont hear about them. Neighborhoods with HOAs are often centrally planned, so there will be common areas that require upkeep like pools, clubhouses, parks, etc. They essentially take on a form of government role. In a lot of neighborhoods that are not part of an incorporated city, they do things like trash collection, road upkeep, snow plowing, etc.
I've lived in 2 places with an HOA, and in the one, all they did was the landscaping, even around all the yards of the houses. In the other, they handled the park/pool/clubhouse, and they did trash collection.
The down sides are often because the people in charge are just retirees who hunger for power, and there isnt much oversight from real government. Most people dont care enough to try to oust the bad leaders, so they stay in control, and they often do things that are illegal, but no one calls them out on it.
I grew up, and have been living in apartment buildings all my life, so that's what I'm used to. It has always been a neutral to positive experience, but nobody really talk about those.
There's very little people can do. In order to fix things you usually need to get on the board, but the people who run HOAs are usually retired nimby assholes and they hold meetings while most in the neighborhood are at work so nobody can oppose them. They then reelect themselves to the board and the cycle continues. HOAs are usually a thing set up by the builders to make their lives easier for some paperwork and stuff. They absolutely suck 99% of the time.
Native plant garden bans aren't just an HOA thing. Many counties or cities ban them too. Much of it stems for chemical manufacturers selling the white picket fence image after WWII to veterans receiving funding to buy a home. The chemical manufacturers pushed hard for that image so they could keep making as much profit as they made manufacturing for weapons during the wartime.
This means that trying to fight your HOA on yards is useless, you have to go higher and it's a big big fight
Builders are encouraged by the local government to set up HOAs because it lets said government shirk its responsibility to maintain infrastructure and services.
If your subdivision is gated, its streets are private and the homeowners are responsible for repaving them, for instance.
(Of course, that's only a motivation cities caught onto relatively recently. The original reason for HOAs -- at least for neighborhoods of single-family houses, as opposed to condos that have legitimate shared maintenance -- was to help keep black people out.)
Good input. I was definitely doing some "draw the rest of the owl" for brevity about their history and impact.
Thats why you dont dight the HOA, you sabotage them with geurilla gardening.
I'm always down for conscious rebellion but that's a great way to get a lien on your house if you're caught for those who don't know.
Growing any food in our front yard is illegal in my city. Guess who's currently growing sage in the front garden.
Man none of that is true.
You make a compelling case
I made my case in a different comment because responding to a user that claims board members can reelect themselves completely disqualifies them from having an actual conversation about the topic. Everything they said is made up from someone who has read too much online from other people that have no clue what they’re talking about.
All they had to do is qualify with some hoa's do that... There's a million different types of them, each state will have different limits.
I've heard horror stories about some, I'm sure a lot of them are fine... I would never move somewhere with an HOA personally
Exactly, maybe 1 in a thousand is as bad as they say, but they literally would not exist if they were that bad across the board, because HOAs are pitifully easy to dissolve.
If you like videos, you should definitely watch Climate Townś "America's Dumbest Crop" when you have the time:
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=KLYMjPNppRQ
Your link doesn’t work for me, but in any case, none of what that person says is true. Maybe they have had anecdotal things happen like that, but the majority of it makes no sense. HOAs are built with boards, residents can vote out those boards. If those things actually happened the boards would get voted out and the HOA dissolved. HOA boards can’t reelect themselves (this should have been the first sign that what that user was saying was bullshit).
You hear about the shitty ones, tbh.
Mine covers the community pool, a few small playgrounds, gym, community garden, etc. Thats it.
No getting approval to have your door be blue instead of white, no measuring your grass height, or any of those shenanigans.
HOAs offsets the cost and maintenance of roads and other civil services, so many counties love them because it keeps costs down for the government while charging the neighborhood. It keeps taxes down overall.
HOA benefit to have their own fiefdom, that allows them to weld near unchecked power because the turn out for board elections are even lower than most local elections.
Homeowners have the ability dissolve their HOA but they don't because people don't vote.
Dismantling them would require somehow introducing a vote to abolish the hoa, and a lot of people involved in hoas are ancient NIMBYs that have nothing better to do after retirement that be in other people's business. The purpose of an HOA is to ostensibly preserve property values, and only homeowners are allowed to vote, not any poor suckers that are renting and actually living there.
and like most things that are bad about the us, they exist because of racism
If you want to see the positives of HOAs, Google "What are the legal options for dealing with my neighbor Reddit."
Most people have a significant portion of their wealth tied into their property. Getting a new drug addicted neighbor three years before retirement could lead to unintended financial consequences. There are good HOAs, it's just that nobody complains about them.
My god your comments are idiotic. Not only are you racist from other comments I've seen, but now you tell us you think drug addiction is a common issue in neighborhoods... hint, it's not.
Honestly if you just ignore anyone with a new user flag on the threadiverse your experience will be better imo. A lot of them seem to want to being the reddit bullshit onto here and its just not worth getting into it with them. Trolls leave when you ignore them and all that.
I don't see flags on usernames on the Connect app. Maybe I should switch apps.
Highly recommend summit. Just had a redisgn and even before it was my favorite looking app.
You just can't handle all the freedom.
They were made to harass minorities as far as I'm concerned.
The purpose of an HOA (in theory) is to divide the costs of land maintenance across land owners.
In practice, HOAs are routinely abused for rent seeking and stigmatization of minorities. But that's not a problem specific to the legal arrangement. It's a consequence of the managers and members.
Check out the HBO show "Neighbors". A great look into the mind of a land owner.
To add to some of the other replies (road repair, etc) the one we used to live in also offered access to a full pool area with life guards. This included a lap pool (with certain adult only times), toddler shallow pool, a medium (standing/walking) depth that had some fountains in it and a splash pad. A decent sized play ground. There was also a larger event space with a kitchen that you could rent (price was free, just had to schedule a slot and sign a damages waver). The fee also included “beautification” things like all the flower beds and landscaping/grass maintenance in all the public areas, which included a 2 mile loop running/walking path with the various body-weight workout stops. Tennis courts, community events with food/games/etc. It’s about $880 a year now i think, and the only rules were really just keep your place looking decent. We didnt have any issues because i always mowed the lawn and trimmed the bushes anyways…there’s also guidelines for not painting your house crazy colors or building really weird structures, but it was pretty easy for your average lifestyle all things considered.
I guess really like an apartment complex, but you have your own house you can do whatever you want to with- for better or worse. Im no advocate for HOAs, not even this one. I will never live in one again…but not all HOAs are equal is my only point. Some are $1000 year with literally nothing to “give back”. Eff all that.
Or sooner move into a pile of feces than into a house with a HOA
You end up with what you put up with
They’re fine to terrible depending on where you’re at. In our neighborhood they make sure no junky cars (cars on blocks) are left outside and that you don’t leave massive oil spills in your driveway and that your house is painted when it starts to peel. They also have planted a bunch of native gardens and maintain them and the dog bag dispensers and poop bins. Would just be better if the city did it, but whatever.
Pretty much nothing of what that other user said is true. HOAs host meetings at night usually, anyone can come, yes people don’t come and vote but that’s usually because people are fine with their HOA. They can’t vote themselves back in. If they sucked 99% of the time they wouldn’t exist, because getting rid of them is dead simple, literally show up and vote.