I live in a townhouse that is one of 30 on our lot. All of the houses are a part of a land trust program that owners have to qualify in order to buy, a minimum income set to ensure applicants can pay a mortgage and a maximum set by the average income of the city. The houses are sold at cost and buyers agree to sell at that cost, plus a small percentage of equity gain per year lived in the house. Property taxes are fixed to this valuation agreement so nobody in the program is forced out of their home from real estate bubbles.

The HOA is responsible for repaving our shared driveway, external window cleaning, gutter cleaning, ect. On three storied townhouses some of those tasks would be difficult for neighbors to manage themselves and kinda ridiculous for each individual to take care of, when pooling resources is a simpler solution.

Your view of HOAs is entirely skewed by suburbia, which is terrible community planning from the onset.