Housing's 800-Pound Gorilla

" 'Homeowners associations enable places to govern lighter,' argues Robert Lang, director of Virginia Tech's Metropolitan Institute. 'When developers put in the infrastructure and homeowners or community associations maintain it and when associations are responsible for trash pickup, code enforcement, and security, local government can provide minimal services — or turn its attention elsewhere. They can have cities of 200,000 with tiny governments,' Lang says.

...For planners and local decision makers, a common-interest approach to development has its merits, primarily because it reduces the costs of new development to the municipality. But there can be problems. Short-term issues revolve around the rights of individual homeowners, "double taxation" (association fees and local taxes), and contradictions between municipal or county codes and the homeowners associations' covenants, codes, and restrictions."