Cars kill grass by of course blocking the sun and likely they'll be leaky and that leads to permanent dead spots and soil/water contamination. Rodents think it a hotel too and any water that pools gives you mosquitoes etc

I'm a homeowner and the home I'm in is in an HOA and was a significant investment. I pay my dues, follow the rules, and mind my own business. I don't go around nosing into other people's lives or whatever. Anyone that has made the kind of investment I have should reasonably want to protect that investment. There is a level of shitheaddery that will drag property values down and depending on the severity, make selling more difficult should it ever come to that. That's just a fact. Luckily that's not a factor and in part because I'm in an HOA.

Is it also just annoying that the guy across from me regularly has 6+ huge vehicles parked in front of his house and congesting the street like some frat house used car lot hybrid? Yeah. Yeah it is fucking annoying since he signed the same line I did and presumably read the rules. But more importantly, it's just in violation of the rule they agreed to follow. Those same dipshits likely run to reddit to whine about how big of a scam HOAs are and how they're always getting hounded and blah blah blah. Clean the fucking ping pong table and beer bongs out of your garage and park your car in there like an adult. But maybe more importantly - just follow the rules you agreed to follow, or kick rocks.

If you don't want to cut your grass or you have to park your old Camaro that "you're totally going to fix up" in your front yard or just in general have a problem with following some really basic rules, do the rest of us a favor and stay out of an HOA. Buy some land, park an RV on it, and eyesore to your hearts content.

What if I back out of a parking spot carelessly and drag my front bumper all the way down your passenger door. Your door still works fine, but now there's this huge scrape down the side. Would you care? Your car still drives fine; it does all the things that a car needs to do to be useful.

No, you would not be ok with that. Why? Because you don't want to look at a big old gash down the side of your door every single time you get in and out of your car, and it greatly decreases the value of your car.

It's the same thing with neighborhoods. You can park an old dead El Camino in your front yard and my house still does everything it's supposed to do. It keeps me warm and the rain off of me just like it always did. But I don't want to look at that dead El Camino with weeds growing up through the engine compartment every time I go in our out my front door, and it reduces the value of my house.

I guess it's a NIMBY (NIMFY? NIYFY?) thing to not want to live near unpleasant things. I don't know what to tell you if that baffles you.