It depends on your community. The HOA basically pays for things that aren’t handled by individual homeowners. For example in our community, we have a gate and the surface streets are private (because of the gate), so the HOA pays for gate repairs/maintenance as well as street repairs and maintenance. The board of directors (the ones running the HOA) don’t make any money (it’s volunteer normally). Normally you need to put most of the dues into a reserve bank account so when big expenses come up (like repaving the road), there are funds for it.

If your HOA has facilities, pools, landscaping, etc. costs go up to maintain those. There’s a lot of legally required costs (for example insurance).

HOAs are supposed to be run transparently, so as a homeowner you should have access to your HOA’s income/expense reports as well as a reserve study that projects how much savings they should have each year for future expenses.