https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/07/texas-hoas-housing-section-8/
State lawmakers passed the law after a North Texas homeowners’ association barred landlords from renting to Section 8 tenants. Most of the affected tenants in that neighborhood were Black.
Only affluent, white owners get federal assistance?
You must discriminate against owners who don't get federal assistance?
Just kidding, discriminate away?
It's Texas, who knows? ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯
Based.
My wife and I went out of our way to buy a non-HOA house, cause fuck’em its my property.
They are valuable in shared community situations, such as townhouse communities (wherein one home abutts another) and condos. In these situations, there are shared elements which need to be funded and enforced somehow (would you want to live in a townhouse where your neighbor has rats? Would you want to live in a condo with no funding to maintain the building?).
I'd be pretty okay with banning them outside of those sorts of circumstances.
They definitely do. HOAs can literally foreclose on people's homes even if they're just a few hundred dollars behind in their payments.
Seems like a fairly convenient political punching bag if you want to score some easy wins. I feel like it's underutilized. Both parties (in the us where HoAs are actually common) could use this strategy pretty easily.
This is a victory against which essentially appears to be Redlining 2.0.
Very surprising coming out of Texas.
Having acknowledged the positive in this, the cynic in me can't help but read in between the lines of how this maybe reveals what revenue streams in Texas wield power versus what doesn't.
Ban water breaks for construction workers = lucrative contracts for my industry cronies.
Ban Section 8 discrimination by HOAs = not an industry that can make me money as a politician, so screw them.
not an industry that can make me money as a politician
But home rentals are. I know here in Canada, many federal politicians are landlords. It seems to be the thing that either supports them in running for office in the first place, or what they do spend their MP's salary on once elected.
Yes, which is why I think this law passed because home renting (being a landlord) is one iteration of a small business and the pursuit of capital. Hence HOA isn't the money-making industry.
I think because of how HOAs operate in the U.S., there is rarely ever any collaboration between them as a lobbying force versus how landlords could potentially band together to influence policy. Even in this story, it's realtors as a collective showing support for banning this kind of discrimination, not other HOAs defending the practice.
Usually the people who are involved in HOAs aren't paid, or they're paid something nominal. The only people who get rich from HOAs are the treasurers and they get rich because they embezzle the HOA funds. Also, although all the officers of HOAs own homes, they're not all landlords. So the HOA as an organization may countermand what an homeowner within the HOA wants to do with their home, such as rent it out to Section 8 recipients.
Most HOAs in the U.S. are characterized as being controlling and troublesome to deal with by homeowners within the HOA, and are overwhelming staffed (voted in) by the most bored busybodies who want to tell you how to live your life.
The New York ban just got rolled by the supreme court. We'll see how long Texas lasts. Either it will get rolled too, or basically be unenforceable.
"That proved too hostile to low-income tenants even for the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature."
I didn't think such a limit even existed for Republicans. Especially considering they're usually the WASP types that want to keep minorities out of their neighborhoods.
It’s about $$. Don’t stand between corporate landlords and their opportunity to make a profit.
They very occasionally can surprise you. Our ultra-Republican legislature in Indiana also got rid of textbook fees for grade schoolers.