> You can very easily run to be part of your HOA leadership

Yes, and then you find out just how petty petty politics can be.

The inconvenient truth, at least for HOA advocates, is that a community of 20-30 people, or even a hundred or so, does not need to be governed at the level of the community. Most people are reasonable and will respond to reasonable requests from neighbors if there is an issue, without having to drag in a higher authority at all. Those who are not reasonable, are not going to be magically made reasonable by having an HOA--indeed, as you admit, they're precisely the ones who are going to end up running the HOA. On balance, you're better off not having "governance" at all until you get to a larger population, like a town or a city.

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derektank an hour ago | parent [-]

You definitely need that level of governance if there are common elements which need to be funded and maintained (pools, parks, the building itself for condos)

	▲	pdonis 42 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You need an organization to manage the common elements, yes. But the only "governance" that's required for that is...to manage the common elements. Which isn't really "governance", it's just management, and oversight of whoever is doing the managing. There's no need at all for the rest of the intrusive rules and regulations that HOAs impose in the name of "governance".