You have the freedom to buy an HOA home, or not. What else do you want?
In theory.
In practice, what happens when it turns into a tradeoff between buying into an HOA, or buying into a depressed area? Seems like it's a pattern that feeds on itself.
Jim The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry