Almost every American suburb has an hoa just like condos, cities make the HOAs take care of common ground like street lights, roads, minor water features, etc so they don’t have to. My HOAs is responsible for our road, sidewalks, retaining walls on the hills surrounding the subdivision, the creek running through our subdivision, streetlights, and a bunch more. So the city collects our tax dollars as residents but spends very little on infrastructure we use. And I guess technically it’s my land, I consider it as belonging to the bank until I pay it off in another 27 years lol