re: Anyone else have horror stories involving an HOA harassing them or their tenants?

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Louisiana is full of neighborhoods with cars parked in front yards, trash and shite strewn all over the place, and every financed toy proudly displayed in the driveway. No thanks

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Did you just drive through my neighborhood before posting this?

In our case we were provided a copy of the bylaws/convents when house shopping but weren't asked to sign anything at closing. As first time homebuyers we thought nothing of it until we later learned that the HOA was never actually formed, and the bylaws document we were shown was practically garbage. I thought "oh cool, frick a HOA" but that sentiment was short lived. None of the below issues were really prevalent when house shopping but in hindsight, I wished we'd have purchased elsewhere.

Not long after moving in the guy directly across the street bought a mid-90s project Mustang. Since he didn't have room in his garage since his $40,000 giant lifted ATV was in there he parked it on his front lawn. It sat there for nearly a year on flat tires until he traded it for a non-running Jeep, which promptly took the Mustang's spot on the lawn. They eventually moved out and took all their junk cars with them.

A few houses down is a house that's rented, but the owners are pieces of shite who rent to the first assholes who will sign a lease. Their first tenant was no doubt selling drugs, throwing massive parties, but they refused to do shite because the lease was in the grandmama's name, who didn't even live there. After enough complaints, calls to the cops, they agreed not to renew their lease after a swat team showed up at 3am to arrest the guy who lived there. They trashed the place before moving out. They then leased it out to a dude who does construction work, who will regularly have trucks/trailer/etc parked on the front lawn. On days he doesn't need his excavator he simply unloads it off his trailer and leaves it parked on the lawn for days. He recently showed up with a school bus for frick knows why and parked it across the yard. Nearly 20 neighbors reached out to the homeowner and got ZERO response/help, finally someone pulled some strings at the city and the tenant was told to move it or have it towed/be cited and it disappeared but the construction trailers soon took its place.

Yea this isn't some hood of $500k+ estates but is still a subdivision of $250k custom homes in Lafayette. They built a DR Horton copycat neighborhood next door and that place is better kept most times than ours.

Stuff like this is negatively affecting home values as well as the gap in $/sqft inches ever so closer to the neighboring DR Horton hood.

Our next house will be on 50+ acres.

TLDR: You'll hate HOAs until you need HOAs.