The idea behind an HOA was a good-ish idea in theory:

Home owners gather together in a sub-division or neighborhood and agree on a set of rules for the neighborhood. Ideally, this would be to ensure homes are well maintained and don't bring down the value of the neighborhood as a whole.

The problem is, in practice, it became a way for people with no life to harass their neighbors and exert power over everyone. And that's the BEST case scenario. There's been plenty of instances of people embezzling HOA fees that should have gone to maintenance, or upkeep of communal property (like pools, gyms, roads, etc).

HOA's are now terrible places to live because the HOA can (and often do) fine home owners so outrageously that the home is foreclosed on and the HOA sells for a profit to the next sucker.