Homeowners associations (HOAs) are private, yet quasi-public, organizations that govern planned housing communities across the United States. Such common-interest developments (CIDs) are created by housing developers at the point of construction and sale for the purposes of collective service delivery, aesthetic regulation, and security, with homeowners paying monthly fees to fund such actions. While academic literature on HOAs has covered their impacts on pricing, their role in public service substitutability, and their effect on residential segregation, we still know relatively little about these organizations and their place in American housing. For instance, how are HOAs’ rules structured and what actors do they privilege? Are CIDs located in some places and not in others? How are they governed in practice as private entities?

Using a three-essay approach, I examine the HOA phenomenon from a variety of interconnected angles. Firstly, I use a collection of covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) in Orange County, Florida to probe the cultural/ideological element of HOAs, their on-the-ground rules and regulations, and intrinsic power dynamics. Secondly, I use private real estate listing data in Fulton County, Georgia and housing submarket definitions from the Atlanta Regional Commission to assess the spatial distribution of new CID listings in the core part of the Atlanta metro. Lastly, I use public data from the state of Nevada’s Real Estate Division to track the changing and consolidating relationship between HOAs and management companies over time. This dissertation contributes to the literature on HOAs along four main lines. Empirically, it helps to deepen understanding on the diffusion of HOA institutionalization amidst variety and increasing regulatory attention. Theoretically, it posits that such micro-level societies with intense governance capacities are not ceding any time soon, so grasping their quasi-public role helps to clarify the political economy of modern housing in practice. Methodologically, it uses a variety of unique approaches to creatively analyze HOAs, from text analysis and CC&Rs as data to GIS mapping to network analysis and visualizations. HOAs’ governance of tens of millions of Americans and their integral place in modern urban politics means study of their existence and their relatively little (yet growing) oversight is important to understanding how such a unique form of housing shapes our policy, practice, and society.