I am increasingly convinced that the trend toward privatization of local
government will continue and even accelerate for the forseeable future. Problems that people keep pointing out with homeowner association private government will continue to receive increased media attention. This will lead to increased regulation by state governments in California, Texas, Arizona, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, and other places where over half the new housing in major metro areas is in HOAs. There will also be more fiscal problems in under-reserved associations.

But those who advocate doing away with CID housing, or who think somehow the whole phenomenon will just go away, are wrong, I think. The mortage banking industry is quite happy with CID housing; municipalities and counties will continue to favor it due to fiscal
constraints that are only getting more acute; builders will continue to profit
from it; and most people will continue to buy it. The bottom line is simple:
there's no alternative yet that satisfies all these incentive structures as
well as CIDS. So the only responsible course of action is to find a way to
make it work, unless and until something better comes along--something that is
supported by the mortgage bankers, cities, builders, and consumers.

Right now the Community Associations Institute and other influential groups are trying to fix some of the problems with existing association governance. Whatever CAI does won't satisfy the HOA activist groups, of course, and it shouldn't. The condo
commandos have the potential to be a force for positive reform and they need to have their own agenda and advocate on behalf of the CID homeowner.

But I am increasingly concerned that some of these folks are teetering on the edge of being permanently dismissed by the press as neighborhood kooks and chronic malcontents. When you read the posts on the various newsgroups of HOA advocates, you find people railing against CAI, the Urban Land Institute, lawyers in general (well, I guess that isn't so unusual), politicians, the media, and everybody else with any professional credentials.

Personally, I am just sick and tired of hearing this sort of thing. It's a shame that they can't see what harm they are doing to their own cause, because it is a valid cause. But reading some of their posts reminds me of the one and only SDS meeting I ever attended back in 1968. I heard people screaming about how everything is bad, everybody is corrupt, the whole system has to be scrapped. I left the room just shaking my head in wonderment at the pure recklessness of the entire group. I was against the war in Viet Nam then, but I certainly didn't want to trash the entire country and vilify all it's institutions. But with SDS there was no middle ground. That mindset is very dangerous.

Now, in the debate over CID housing, we are talking about a couple of trillion dollars in home equity representing most families' only significant investment, and more trillions in mortgages. I have no problem with strong criticism--I've done plenty of it myself. But criticism needs to stay within certain bounds or it becomes nihilistic. Criticism should be aimed at making things better, not tearing them down and hoping that whatever arises from the ashes is better than what went before. Critics need to give some serious thought to the stakes ordinary people have in the status quo, and what the alternatives are.
People who want to smash the status quo without much thought to the consequences should read Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France". It was written in 1790, and it is still true today.