The Overlooked Land Policy Juggernaut That Controls Millions of Acres in the US: Can HOAs Get Better at Sustainability?

Even if you don’t belong to a homeowners association, you’ve probably heard an HOA horror story or two. News reports, dinner parties, and message boards are awash with impassioned rants about HOA overreach.   

Residents of a California HOA expressed outrage after being cited for flying American flags ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary, for example, while one Reddit user reported being ordered to take down an inflatable kiddie pool because “above-ground pools are not allowed.” HOA battles can often get into the weeds—and not just figuratively. In Maryland, a couple whose HOA fined them for planting native flowers and shrubs instead of a typical turfgrass lawn managed to fight back and change state law, while a Colorado resident said his HOA board cited him for a brown lawn during a historically severe statewide drought in June. And in 2025, in a particularly galling example, a Florida homeowner whose HOA repeatedly cited her for brown grass and other violations was forced to spend a week in jail after missing a related hearing, and later faced potential foreclosure over the accumulated legal fees.

Isolated incidents do not prove a pattern of misbehavior. However, there is one HOA trend that is hard to ignore: “The industry is big, and it’s getting bigger,” says Jake Gold, executive director of the Foundation for Community Association Research.

In 2009, 62 percent of new single-family homes sold in the United States were part of a homeowners association, according to Census data. But since 2020, four out of every five new houses sold in the US belonged to an HOA. In just the past eight years, 5 million new single-family houses built in the US were part of an HOA.

This growing trend among homebuilders has placed an enormous amount of privately owned acreage in the control of homeowners associations—mandatory membership organizations, whose residents pay annual dues in exchange for community benefits, and are bound by certain governing documents.

There are about 373,000 community associations across the US—a tenfold increase since 1980—home to more than 78 million residents in 29.6 million homes, according to a 2025 Fact Book published by the Foundation for Community Association Research. Municipalities tend to welcome community associations, Gold notes, because they “take on some things that the local government doesn’t have to fund themselves,” from sidewalks to snow removal to streetlights.

Of those nearly 30 million association homes, an estimated 58 to 63 percent are in an HOA, as opposed to a condominium complex or cooperative; the average density among the largest HOA communities is two to four units per acre. Some back-of-the-envelope math, then, suggests that, in the US, about 4.3 million to 8.7 million acres of land—an area at least the size of Hawaii and potentially as big as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined—may be under HOA management, for better or worse.

In terms of environmental sustainability, it’s often been the latter—but it doesn’t have to be. “Community associations represent one of the largest collective models of land stewardship in the United States, yet the scale of their environmental impact is often overlooked,” Gold says. “With tens of millions of residents and millions of acres under management, these communities are uniquely positioned to advance practical sustainability efforts at the local level.”

‘My HOA Won’t Let Me’

As in many HOAs, most of the common grounds at the Rhondda Townhome Community in Chester County, Pennsylvania, are covered in a carpet of green turfgrass. Most, but not all—not anymore. A quarter-acre meadow now blooms with an array of native flowers, from golden Alexanders in the springtime, to purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans in summer, to goldenrod and asters in fall.

Unlike turfgrass, those native plants boost biodiversity by providing essential food and habitat for dozens of species of caterpillars and other wildlife. They add more color and texture to the landscape, too. “Next month we’ll start to see the coreopsis and the penstemon, and they look fabulous together,” said longtime Rhondda resident Kathy Tracy, a Pennsylvania master naturalist, in an interview this spring. “It’s beautiful when the wind blows, it’s like an ocean of white and gold waving back and forth.”

It was Tracy, along with fellow Rhondda resident and master naturalist Toni Gorkin, who helped get the association to think beyond a lawn when it came time to dredge its upper retention pond in 2022. “They were just going to plant grass around it, but Toni was on the [HOA] board at the time, and she convinced them to let us put a meadow in there between the road and the pond,” Tracy says.

The duo had already planted a small but popular native pollinator garden; for this much larger project, the dredged sediment, spread around the perimeter of the pond in a thick, mucky layer, did some of the hard work for them, smothering the existing turfgrass and creating a nutrient-packed seed bed.

Aside from a few early grumbles, when it looked like weeds were growing in, the response from the townhome community has been overwhelmingly positive. “They thought it was spectacular,” Tracy says. “I have people from other homeowners associations coming around to see it and to see how we did it… and the people in the community love it, too.”

In nearby Radnor, Pennsylvania, the Inverary Community partnered with the Willistown Conservation Trust to convert eight acres of lawn into a native wildflower meadow. Residents were happy to approve the conversion—especially after they discovered how much the HOA would save in lawn mowing costs each year.

When it comes to the area’s HOAs, Rhondda and Inverary remain exceptions, says Rachael Griffith, director of sustainability for the Chester County Planning Commission (CCPC). But it also proves the collective ecological impact that small changes in these communities could have, given their ubiquity.

Nearly half of the county’s housing units are in an HOA, Griffith notes, along with 18,000 acres of common open space. After the county adopted its climate action plan in 2021, she says, “There was a lot of interest from people in homeowners associations who were saying, ‘These things you’re talking about in the climate action plan are great, but I can’t do any of them, because my HOA won’t let me.’”

That prompted the CCPC to create a series of HOA Sustainability Action Plan templates, inspired by a Sustainable Maryland certification program, to help local HOAs become better stewards of the land they manage. Because while there are many actions local governments can and should take to improve environmental health and sustainability, Griffith says, one of the simplest “is just to let the people who want to do these things actually do them.”

The Covenant

As it stands, many HOA residents who try to adopt even basic sustainability measures—from installing solar panels to simply limiting their use of weed killer—may find themselves stymied by either explicit rules or implicit social pressures.

“It’s not like HOAs are above the law or outside the law,” says Solomon Greene, former executive director of land and communities at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. But unlike municipal governments, HOAs provide public sector-like services under private legal contracts and covenants, says Greene, who now leads the Center for Housing Research and Innovative Solutions at the University of Denver. “That allows them to exert quite a bit of control over their communities.”

A 2022 study published in Landscape and Urban Planning sought to measure whether typical HOA rules were helping or hurting sustainability in the built environment. In an analysis of the covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) in place at homeowners associations in a suburban Michigan county, the authors found that 45 percent of HOAs examined required regular lawn maintenance, and 58 percent prohibited brush piles, which can create valuable habitat for wildlife.

Study coauthor Madeline Carr, now a doctoral student at Michigan State University, said most of the HOA lawn regulations did not explicitly specify excessive water, fertilizer, or herbicide use—yet multiple studies have shown that HOA residents tend to use more water and fertilizer than other homeowners. “Even if it’s not required, people just kind of assume that’s what they need to do,” Carr says. “A lot of it is driven more by norms and expectations.”

HOA rules can sabotage sustainability in other ways, too, prohibiting residents from installing solar panels, electric vehicle chargers, or efficient accessory dwelling units (ADUs)—even in places like California, where ADUs have been legalized statewide. HOA rules that specify or prohibit certain building materials or practices can create environmental impacts as well.

For instance, 45 percent of the HOAs studied only allowed for impervious driveway surfaces, such as pavement or concrete, which can exacerbate stormwater run-off and carry sediment and toxins into waterways. And four out of five HOAs (81 percent) mandated minimum home sizes, preventing residents from building smaller, more energy-efficient homes. Nationwide, the authors note, the average HOA home is about 400 square feet larger than a non-HOA home.

Meanwhile, a quarter (26 percent) of the HOAs studied forbade clotheslines, and almost a third (32 percent) had rules blocking renewable energy, such as rooftop solar panels or wind turbines. That last figure aligns with the results of a Chester County survey of HOA residents and board members, in which nearly a third of respondents said their HOA did not allow solar panels.

“A lot of HOAs are behind the times on solar panels,” Tracy says. “I had to bug my HOA for a year before I could finally get solar panels put on my house.” She notes that Pennsylvania is currently weighing a state law that would override HOA restrictions on solar power, similar to laws passed in Michigan, California, Texas, Florida, and other states in recent years.

An investigation by Sightline Institute found that many community associations in the Pacific Northwest block residents from installing heat pumps—which, because they simply transfer heat rather than burning fuel, operate three to five times more efficiently than combustion heat sources—through aesthetic or noise restrictions, burdensome approval requirements, or de facto or outright bans. Washington State, at least, has passed a law that explicitly protects a homeowner’s right to install a heat pump, as well as solar panels.

While such laws prevent associations from flat-out banning or placing excessive restrictions on solar panels, heat pumps, or other sustainability measures, some stubborn HOAs can still make the application process tedious enough to dissuade less motivated residents.

Overcoming Inertia

Study coauthor Daniel Boyd Kramer, professor of conservation biology at Michigan State University, became interested in HOAs after searching for a site to build his eco-friendly dream home—one that most HOAs deemed too small to permit. “I just kept running into things like, ‘You can’t have solar panels, we don’t want solar panels in our neighborhood,’” he says. “These restrictions got me thinking: How common are HOAs, and what are they doing that might be working against this idea of residential sustainability?”

A lot of those unhelpful rules can be chalked up to simple inertia, Kramer says. “For the most part, HOAs get their bylaws and their codes, covenants, and restrictions from the initial builders, so whatever they inherit typically sticks,” he says. Changes to the CC&Rs often require approval by a supermajority of homeowners, so they can “shape HOAs for decades.”

But in cases where an HOA does change its rules—or starts out with intentionally sustainable language in its CC&Rs—it can make a big difference.

In a follow-up study, Carr conducted front-yard surveys at Wisconsin HOAs to determine whether “pro-environmental” landscaping clauses—for example, restrictions on overall lawn size, or requirements for a minimum amount of native plant cover—made any difference. She found that these clauses had a tangible real-world impact: Homes in the admittedly few HOAs with such pro-environmental clauses in their CC&Rs had about four times as much native plant cover in their front yards as other homes (29.5 percent vs. 6.9 percent), on average, and far less lawn area as well.

What surprised Carr was that, in some cases, it was the builders themselves, not activist residents, who had implemented the sustainable landscaping rules. “The two HOAs that had the most extensive native plant requirements, those actually were put in place by the developer,” Carr says. “It wasn’t like the residents led the charge on it. The developer wanted to have prairie neighborhoods … and they paid for shared management of that whole prairie area. They would have [prescribed] burns and things like that.”

Abutting conservation land, the Noll Valley HOA in Wisconsin embraces its prairie landscape.

In more typical associations, Carr says, the CC&Rs often read like boilerplate text copied from a previous development. To that end, Carr has been drafting a more sustainable set of model CC&Rs that developers could draw from when forming a new homeowners association.

Incorporating sustainable rules and practices at the outset, during the development stage, is “the most important opportunity,” says Gold. “Once those CC&Rs are recorded, it can be kind of difficult to change them, so getting them right at the beginning is very critical.”

Developers should leave room for flexibility and avoid the use of “outdated restrictions in the covenants themselves,” Gold says, “like requiring turfgrass everywhere, for example, or limiting new technologies like solar or EV charging…. Just allowing communities to be able to adapt to things that are changing all the time, without having to amend those CC&Rs every time.”

Learning About Landscapes

While many homeowners associations across the semi-arid Southwest have now embraced low-water xeriscaping and abandoned requirements for residents to maintain green lawns in drought-prone areas—The Grand, outside of Phoenix, for example, no longer allows new turfgrass installation—HOAs nationwide still have a reputation for homogenous landscaping.

Beyond governing what people can or can’t grow in their yards, most HOAs also maintain significant common area landscapes. “The land that is held as common open space in HOAs is typically the undevelopable land, but that is the land with all the natural resources,” Griffith says, “where there’s a stream or steep slopes or forests or something like that.”

People often assume it’s best to let nature take its course in these areas, Griffith says, but such landscapes can require more active management—removing invasive species and protecting stream banks from erosion, for example. Northeastern forests now struggle to regenerate, she adds, as deer devour the native understory but ignore invasive plants, allowing harmful species to choke out the trees. “You can’t just let the forest go, you should really be getting in there and managing things to improve its health,” Griffith says. “It’s just not knowledge or skills that a lot of people have, so there’s a huge opportunity for education in these communities.”

In Rhondda, Tracy says the pollinator garden and wildflower meadow create conversations and opportunities to educate fellow residents, many of whom stop to chat while she’s gardening. She even brings some fresh cut flowers to the local town offices and police station each week, and encourages the recipients to scatter the spent flowers in their home gardens to spread the seeds.

Some lessons are harder to convey than others, though.

While residents love the meadow in bloom, Tracy says, “a lot of people want to cut it down as soon as it stops flowering. Instead you’re supposed to leave everything over the winter, because the seeds that are on all these flowers drop over the winter, and reseed themselves,” she says. “Plus the birds eat them, plus it gives the bees a little area to tunnel down into the ground.”

In fact, even many professional landscapers are relative novices when it comes to managing native plants and shrubs, and are quick to mow down pollinator patches they mistake for weeds.

“We did have a little bit of a setback last year, because they were supposed to cut the grass around the lower pond, and somehow signals got crossed and they cut the whole meadow down,” Tracy says. “That happened the year before too.… We finally found a natural plant contractor who’s going to cut it down the right way next year in the early spring.”

Griffith says the yard care industry needs to catch up to consumers who are concerned about the chemicals landscapers use on their lawns. “People see the signs, ‘Please keep your kids and pets off the lawn,’ and they start to wonder, ‘Why do I need to keep my kids and pets off?’” she says. “There’s a huge demand for more tailored land management and lawn care practices, but that demand is not being met in the landscaping industry.”

Become the Board

Many HOAs are managed by boards composed of volunteer residents, who therefore have outsized leverage on communal land use decisions. It’s one thing to simply be allowed to plant natives in front of your townhouse or to install solar panels on your own roof—but charting a more sustainable course for an entire community can make an even bigger impact.

Board members can change bylaws, harness the HOA’s collective purchasing power to procure sustainable equipment or services, and even amend an association’s CC&Rs if residents vote in favor. The CCPC maintains an action plan menu with over 100 steps an HOA can take to improve community sustainability across a variety of contexts, from energy and efficiency to resident education to woodlands and tree canopy management.

Dee Rapposelli, a master gardener, retired medical writer, and somewhat reluctant HOA board president, can attest to the many opportunities available to residents who get involved.

When Rapposelli was house hunting several years ago, it was the backyard that attracted her to her townhouse in an over-55 association near the Connecticut coast. “There was a beautiful garden in the back, and then there was a little pathway that led to a clearing,” she says. Upon moving in, she set about cleaning up the rubble-strewn clearing, “pulling rocks out of the ground like I was harvesting potatoes,” she says, and lining paths with them. “Then I began trying to identify what was there, cleaning up what I didn’t want to be there, so that it’s a registered pollinator pathway now.”

Neighbors took notice of her proactive efforts around the grounds, and she soon found herself “volunteered” to serve on the HOA’s board; later she was named vice president, then president. She’s tried to implement more sustainable and native-friendly landscaping practices while still respecting residents’ expectations about open space. The HOA board decides what kind of shrubs can go in front yards, for example, and Rapposelli has led the effort to encourage native species and discourage aggressive introduced species such as the popular rose-of-sharon.

“Everyone wants to have their green lawn,” Rapposelli concedes. “So in my head, there are certain areas where there’s cultivated turf, and other areas where there’s flora, and areas where there’s space for native plants and wildlife and for native insects. My intention here is to have a balance of that where people feel comfortable.”

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How to Change HOA Practices  

Depending on the size and organizational structure of a homeowners association, changing the rules can be a challenge—especially if board members or residents resist such efforts. It helps to get neighbors on board with your vision, to thoroughly research local or state laws and successful examples, and to keep exchanges courteous and in writing. For HOA residents and boards who do want to adopt more sustainable practices, the Chester County (Pennsylvania) Planning Commission compiled a list of over 100 suggested action items touching on resident engagement, partnerships, and other levers of change. Among their suggestions:

• Locate your community’s bylaws and covenants and conduct a sustainability audit to identify barriers to implementing sustainable practices.
• Ask your utility provider to conduct an energy audit for common spaces and facilities.
• Use a solar calculator tool to estimate what your HOA could save by installing solar panels on common buildings, and present this information to the HOA board.
• Amend HOA covenants to allow native wildflower meadows in common areas, and to explicitly permit native plants, vegetable gardens, and composting in private yards.
• Ensure your HOA’s rules permit residents to install stormwater management features on their own property, including rain gardens, rain barrels, downspout planters, and pervious pavement. If they do not, amend the document to permit these practices.
• Install bike racks near open space or common recreation areas to encourage cycling.
• When reviewing applications for garage renovations, encourage applicants to install an EV charger, or adequate electric service for future EV charging, as part of the project.

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Even in an HOA, there are ways to design a native landscape “that looks ornamental,” Rapposelli says. But, echoing what Tracy and Griffith found in Pennsylvania, she admits it can be challenging to find an affordable landscaper who understands that approach and how to maintain it. She hopes to change roles in the coming year, from president to director of grounds, which would put her in closer contact with landscaping contractors.

Either way—and despite the added responsibility of the role—she’s grateful for the chance to improve the natural environment around her HOA. Rapposelli suggests sustainability-minded HOA residents volunteer to serve on their board, or simply ask to form a committee.

“You can say you want to start a gardening club, or you want to have a landscaping committee,” she says. An HOA board will often accept such requests, Rapposelli says, grateful for any kind of community engagement besides the typical complaints about services.

From there, infectious enthusiasm goes a long way. “Get on committees, get on the board, and instead of wagging your finger, ‘You shouldn’t do this’—make it hip,” she says. Native gardening can be framed as a hobby, solar power as a technological wonder that, paired with an EV charger, converts sunbeams into road trips.

“Be enthusiastic, and you’ll see people do get interested,” Rapposelli says. “If you want change, you have to be that change.”

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Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 

Lead image: Irrigation sprinklers watering neatly mown green lawns. Credit: Bilanol/Getty Images.