A friend of mine lived in an unconscionable one and managed to turn it tolerable by running for President on a platform of vowing not to enforce any rules. Stayed in “power” for quite a while.
It's had mixed results. The neighborhood is surrounded by a brick wall that had a gap below (why??). The mortar is failing in several places. But the entry ways are kept pristine (developer is a big one in the area and has been slapped by lawsuits for not holding up their end before).
I suppose essentially that's just living in a society, i.e. as anywhere without a 'HOA', but codified.
I just meant that you could also deliberately have rules (as opposed to come into office after them) and you do intend that people follow them, create new ones, update them, etc., but they're just not enforced, and everyone knows that.
As in just codifying some social expectations that would probably exist in roughly the same form anyway.
Also keep in mind that getting together to organize a set of common standards and restrictions is the basis for all exclusive communities. That's OK if you are on the casual compliance side of the rules, or if you get to write them to suit your preferences. But it is discriminatory. Similar covenants have been used to keep out ethnic minorities (because of the way they live, like animals!).
Being for or against HOAs is like being for or against laws. It's meaningless without context.
Some HOAs are traffic lights. Some HOAs are civil forfeiture.
An HOA can morph from tolerable into unconscionable. Deny the HOA the right to exist in the first place, and it will never go bad. This is an appealing tradeoff for many.