Common-interest development (CID) is one of the fastest growing types of

housing Housing refers to a property containing one or more Shelter (building), shelter as a living space. Housing spaces are inhabited either by individuals or a collective group of people. Housing is also referred to as a human need and right to ...

development scheme in the some parts of the world today. They include condominiums, community apartments,

planned developments A planned community, planned city, planned town, or planned settlement is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed on previously undeveloped land. This contrasts with settlements that evolve ...

, and stock cooperatives.

Benefits

A CID's ownership benefits are having rights to an undivided interest in common areas and amenities that might prove to be too expensive to be solely owned. For example, an owner would like to have a pool but cannot afford one. When buying a

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership regime in which a building (or group of buildings) is divided into multiple units that are either each separately owned, or owned in common with exclusive rights of occupation by individual own ...

with a pool in a CID of one hundred units, an owner would have use of that pool for basically one-hundredth of the cost due to sharing the cost with the other 99 owners.

Timeshare A timeshare (sometimes called a vacation ownership or vacation club) is a Real property, property with a divided form of ownership or use rights. These properties are typically resort Condominium (living space), condominium units, in which mul ...

, or vacation ownership, is the same concept. Buying a second home for vacation purposes might not be financially possible; buying a week or two can be when sharing the overall costs with other participants. Within the United States, when a CID is developed, the developer is required to incorporate (in a form) a

homeowner association A homeowner association (or homeowners' association OA sometimes referred to as a property owners' association OA common interest development ID or homeowner community) is a private, Incorporation (business), legally-incorporated orga ...

(HOA) prior to any property sales. The role of the HOA is to manage the CID once the control is transferred from the developer. The HOA governs the CID based upon the incorporated covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) which were recorded when the property was subdivided. The CC&Rs will outline the financial

budgeting A budget is a calculation plan, usually but not always financial plan, financial, for a defined accounting period, period, often one year or a month. A budget may include anticipated sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities including tim ...

guideline for the HOA in determining the dollar amount in maintenance fees for assessing the owners. In a wholly owned CID, maintenance fees would normally be assessed on a monthly basis.

Growth

The following table shows the spread of Common Interest Developments in the United States. According to the

Community Associations Institute The Community Associations Institute (CAI) is an organization that represents homeowners, condominiums, and other community associations around the world. Based in Falls Church, Virginia in the United States, the CAI has more than 60 chapters o ...

, between 22 and 24 percent of the entire U.S. population in 2017 lived in community associations. The two leading states with CIDs are

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, where around 9,327,000 people lived in a CID, and

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

, where about 9,753,000 lived in a Community Interest Development.

Criticisms

In his 2019 Devane Lecture series at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, Professor

Ian Shapiro Ian Shapiro (born September 29, 1956) is an American legal scholar and political scientist who serves as the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He served as the Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center at Yale Univ ...

identified three primary threats to American democracy posed by the spread of CIDs.

Undemocratic boards

The CID Boards are often undemocratic. HOA board members are selected prior to the construction of the development and are only very rarely elected to their positions. However, in their communities, they take on the responsibilities and functions of

municipal government A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...

officials.

Effects on homelessness

"As seen in Albert O. Hirschman's '' Exit, Voice, and Loyalty'', there are problems here about ''entry'', because if all of the housing in parts of the country are built in these developments and can pick he type of consumers they willserve, what about

homeless people Homelessness, also known as houselessness or being unhoused or unsheltered, is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. It includes living on the streets, moving between temporary accommodation with family or friends, liv ...

? Where are homeless people going to wind up? They're going to wind up on the streets of

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

or somewhere like that. Because if you want to buy into one of these residences, they don't want you unless they can ensure you can pay. You're going to go through financial screening. You're going to have to prove you can afford to live in the place. People who can't are going to wind up not getting served. If you try to do housing through this type of

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market *Marketing, the act of sat ...

, there's going to be a

market failure In neoclassical economics, market failure is a situation in which the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not Pareto efficient, often leading to a net loss of economic value.Paul Krugman and Robin Wells Krugman, Robin Wells (2006 ...

that's probably going to be quite costly for governments."

Segmented democracy

" Douglas W. Rae has an essay titled ''Democratic Liberty and the Tyrannies of Place,'' which points to the fact that we're becoming an increasingly segmented democracy. That is, people tend to spend time around people that are like themselves. Of course, CIDs greatly facilitate that because people will sort by income or go to the ones in Florida, often by

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

- into these relatively homogenous certainly financially homogenous, groups. We know from Cass R. Sunstein that like-minded people, if they talk to one another, tend to become more extreme. So if we get an increasingly segmented democracy of people only hanging around people who look and talk like themselves, this will reinforce a lot of the divisions contributing to the polarization of the electorate. This reinforces the "out of sight, out of mind" mentality about people not like themselves."

References

{{reflist Condominium Living arrangements Real estate in the United States