July 1, 2025—Forced Perspective
- residentevilhoa
- Jul 1
- 9 min read
In art, particularly photography, there is a game the artist can play with their audience involving a trick of the eye and how the mind perceives what it sees called forced perspective. The audience interprets what it is seeing as one thing, when the reality is much different. As an example, here is a photo of a person touching the shoulder of the famous statue of Pauline Bonaparte, which is part of the collection of the Borghese Gallery in Rome.
The forced perspective is that the person isn’t touching the statue at all. They are actually standing a few feet behind her as the statue is (thankfully) protected from such things by being surrounded by stanchions. However, the alignment of the photographer is in just the right place, and with the help of shrinking three dimensions into two, it seems as though there is no distance between the hand and the statue.
Forced perspective can be applied in many other contexts as well, and not necessarily using visuals. If we are told that a social system must be a certain way, and the majority of people agree and behave according to that social system, it creates a forced perspective of society, culture, religion, government—anything, really. This is not to say it’s a bad thing. It is good when a community of people come together, agree on common practices and customs, and then act that agreement out, hopefully in harmony. Yet as history has shown again and again and again, that forced perspective can be hijacked by self-serving people and groups, and it then becomes a mechanism of manipulation and oppression.
I have been incredibly fortunate in that I have been able to travel abroad three times now. Each time, I have gone to Italy. This most recent time, my worldview included, unfortunately, the experience I’ve had thus far with the HOA Hell that exists in the States and all that I’ve learned about it. I’ve had so many people reach out to me to share their horror stories. I’ve read countless pleas and shocking accounts of what people in the “Land of the Free” suffer at the hands of their supposed neighbors, fellow citizens, and the legal system which is supposed to guarantee everyone justice.
Even before the plane landed, as we were descending over the rolling hills of the countryside outside of Rome, one of the largest cities in the world, a different perspective was laid out before me in fields and hills covered with golden flowers, lush forests, winding roads, clusters of stuccoed, terra cotta-roofed buildings that made little towns and villages—and not one single subdivision.
Americans may not even think of the world beyond the U.S. simply because we just didn’t stop to consider it. And that’s natural. We actually sort of assume that the rest of the world generally operates the way we do, and that’s the way the world is. Of course, travel opens our eyes and hearts to many things. Some which are amazing and wonderful, some which are human tragedies we are glad not to know in the U.S. Every country and culture have their positives, and not one is without negatives. Some are subjective, of course, depending on what you personally would or would not like to take part in. Yet there are some which you see and think, “It’s so simple! Why the heck don’t we do that?”
Seeing an entire country sans suburban sprawl made me feel sad, angry, disappointed, and frustrated for my fellows back home. It made it even more obvious that subdivisions are an invention of the mass manufacturing corporate machine and that we’ve been told it’s generally the only way that housing can be made and that they must have an HOA or the whole thing will go to hell.
I am preparing to record Lecture One: “Inception: And as a Virus It Spreads. How Did HOAs Start and How Did We Get Here?” It discusses how all this came to be. Sure, mass production is an innovation of American ingenuity, and we are right to be proud because it is intended to create and provide more goods to more people in a shorter amount of time and for a lower cost, creating something of an economic equality as compared to the haves and have nots of the past. Of course, that is speaking of it in the context of the early twentieth century. A century later, when mega-corporations have risen to either absorb or eradicate smaller competition and anti-trust laws have been chipped away, we are left with very little choice in many aspects of our consumer existence. Now, of course there are small businesses and there is a lot of movement toward supporting them. And this is also not to say that mega-corporations and industries didn’t exist prior or that they’re all bad. The point I wish to make here is that it has become incredibly hard, if not impossible, to find housing outside of an urban setting which is not in a subdivision governed by an HOA. And yes, subdivisions without HOAs do exist, and amazingly, they can be quite charming and well-kept.
Looking back, of course the housing industry originally functioned to try to provide the American Dream to people, particularly GIs coming back from the second World War who settled back into society, started careers, and raised families as most people did and were expected to do in the Eisenhauer era. People needed housing, and lots of it, fast. Building one’s own home is incredibly expensive and time-consuming. (For a good, fun film which captures that the nightmare of home building today was the same almost a century ago, I recommend Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream Home from 1948 and starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy.) The answer was mass manufactured housing. Come in, clear the land, hammer up houses, lay sod, and boom—instant American Dream.
Yet as the years passed, some developers began to cram more houses into less space (consider the clever marketing ploy of “zero lot lines”), began to use cheaper materials, and it became less about building a community and more about building profits. In order to sell homes at a premium, you need to build a perspective of value. What is desirable and what is not. Playing to people’s egos, particularly in the mid-century when appearances were everything, the symbols of wealth such as pools and tennis courts became selling points to make others envious of your wanna-be Palm Beach lifestyle. Gates and security added to the impression of exclusivity (and, of course, “exclusive” is rooted in “exclude”) and the “specialness” of the residents. They touted impossibly perfect flower beds, and the ubiquitous golf-course-quality lawns around every home. It takes a LOT of money to have these flashy bits of luxury. And if a person couldn’t actually afford them on their own private property, then why not pool funds with the neighbors and have communal spaces for these amenities? Sure. And that works.
Yet somewhere, it got twisted.
Somehow, the group interests began to involve personal property. People in these better-than-thou groups also decided that they were better than the municipalities which have code on the books to fairly and legally deal with negligent persons or other issues of the sort. They also felt that in order to get people to comply, it wasn’t enough to take away their rights to swim in a fetid pool of their neighbor’s body filth and kid pee, they wanted the right to take someone’s home.
They wanted the right to absolutely eradicate anyone who didn’t conform to their expectations.
Think about that for a moment. Somehow, many of us have bought into the idea or at least had to submit to the idea that if your personal property doesn’t align with someone else’s arbitrary Leave It to Beaver ideal of what property should look like, you deserve to lose your home, your equity, and that you deserve to suffer the retribution of someone given this power with no necessary qualifications and with no oversight by an actual governing authority. We have been told “That’s how it works.” We have been forced to accept this perspective.
Yet it isn’t real, and it doesn’t have to be.
We created this system. It is completely invented. It is what is known as a social construction. There are many of those in our world and all are arbitrary. Sure, there are reasons for them. Sometimes the reasons still stand. Sometimes they are holdovers from history that we still follow for some reason. Sometimes we need to look at them and say, “Wait a minute. This isn’t what it was supposed to be,” or “Wait, this no longer serves us anymore.” And we do have to be very careful of these things. Again, history has shown us extensively that any system of power is subject to corruption, and it happens very, very easily. It’s just human nature. Some of us are compassion-centered people; some of us are power-driven people (See Lecture 3). Unfortunately, power-driven people are willing to do things to others which compassion-centered people would never dream of doing, and that allows them to defeat and dominate others.
From what I have found in my research thus far, the American HOA system is by far the most draconian and unchecked. For those who can’t picture communal living without an HOA, here are the options experienced by others who do not have to fear losing their homes, retaliatory fees, selective enforcement, harassment, lawsuits, and the other horrors visited upon people in HOA Hells.
Common property, such as green spaces and pools, are managed by the municipality. So think of the pool and tennis courts at the entrance to your community being run by the Parks and Recreation department. If maintenance is needed or other issues arise, you can report to that department to someone whose job it is to attend to it. And if they do a bad job, you have a legitimate chain of authority that you can follow to get results.
Common spaces in condos or apartments are maintained by a property management company, that does NOT have authority over residents’ private spaces. The owner of the building or the residents together hire and pay for the company. Another option is that residents naturally take care of common space around their home. For instance, cleaning their section of a communal hallway just as part of housekeeping. This does create something of a homeowner group, but again, they do not have any power over each other’s private spaces. Any complaints that have to do with negligent neighbors are referred to the building owner or the municipality. Just because a home is in the same building with other homes in condos or apartments doesn’t change the system. It would be just as it works in a development of single-family homes.
There are generally no squabbles over aesthetics and such because functionality and cleanliness are what are upheld over aesthetics. You can do what you want with your own property, and though there may be rules or expectations established by the municipality and with respect for others around you, you are free to live as you wish. Isn’t that refreshing.
I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea that not only do people in the States accept the HOA system without question, I’m really trying to figure out why there are people who have no problem with terrorizing other people. This goes for the attorneys that work for the boards rather than the residents who pay their salary, the companies that collude with boards to inflate prices and hide money, the individuals who freely take from HOA funds for their own personal gain and pleasure, the lobbyists who fight to not only keep this system in place but to further strip rights from their fellow citizens, and members of the legal and justice system who defend and side with abusive authoritarians rather than the people they are charged with protecting.
The closest answer I have is the power- vs. compassion-centered personality types. I guess I’m still a bit naïve or still have a shred of hope left for the potential of humanity. I don’t see why it’s so hard to just be nice, to treat others with respect, to not act selfishly and out of greed, that if you hold a position of power and responsibility that you must set aside your own desires and treat everyone fairly and with respect. Perhaps our economic system has taught us that we need to be selfish or that amassing wealth and goods is the only way to validate our existence and be safe in our world. I don’t know. But what I do know is that despite all of the selfishness, greed, and cruelty that humans can exhibit, there is a lot of love, compassion, generosity, kindness, and beauty that we are capable of as well. Why we can’t all aim for the latter is beyond me, but those of us who believe in it can still stand up to preserve it.
And that’s a perspective that doesn’t need to be forced.
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It's all about the "bottom line" for the HOA industry.