then using the totally not migrant renters as a scapegoat

Wow that is incredibly racist

Their water use didn’t take water out of your house and it didn’t adversely affect anyone or anything aside from a poorly planned HOA water monitoring system

Who do you think pays the HOA? It's not an outside entity, it's a democratically elected board of homeowners. The funds for the HOA come from homeowners. Overusing resources from a common community fund hurts the community.

Like you said, these units are owned primarily by single owners. Why shouldn’t they have individual meters

Well before 2008 it was apartments and a developer bought it up to convert into low cost condos. At that time the apartments had sub-metering, but when the developer bought it he let go of the sub-metering because adding a middle man service increases costs such as service and metering fees. When you pay for services as a group it's generally cheaper as a whole than everyone doing it themselves.

$180 a month is a miserable HOA fee and a high water bill for a single person in a condo alone as well.

$185 a month covered all outdoor grounds keeping, the parking lot, the pool, the club house, the outside building maintenance (siding, shutters, etc), the roof, and the water bill. That's an absolutely phenomenal rate and you don't know what you're talking about.

I don’t know why they’d have to pay for their own meter or monitoring service, that’s never been the case anywhere I’ve ever lived

Well I don't know what to tell you, but it's generally the case for any surprise bills at every HOA I've heard of. It's called a Special Assessment.

I’m positive they saved money in the long run assuming the HOA reflected the change in their monthly dues

The HOA at this point had not raised rates in 5 years and they were due to do so. The water usage issue was further exacerbating the issue. The HOA board proposed either raising rates to $225 and doing no metering changes or installing sub-metering and only raising rates to $200. I can't be certain, but I wouldn't be surprised if it came out as a wash for sub-metering.

shone a light on shitty HOA practices

the only ones doing the fucking over here are the HOA to it’s tenants

Do you not know what an HOA is? The HOA didn't have any tenants, it's an elected board of people who live in the community and make business decisions for them. HOAs are popular in the US because their goal is to take care of communal needs efficiently and to preserve the value of everyone's property. HOAs get a lot of crap because of nosey neighbors and Karens with a god complex, but almost any new neighborhood/condo/community you buy into will have an HOA for the communal benefit. People have horror stories, but they are still the most popular option for new home buyers.

The tenants were because about 35% of the units were owned by individuals who then privately rented them out. This HOA had a restriction that no more than 40% of units could be rented out and no one could own more than 2 units. Most of the landlords were people who had previously lived there and moved elsewhere, not major organizations.

Maybe you're thinking of property management companies?

Who exactly was it working for? Are you worried about the bottom line of your HOA?

Yes, as a property owner living in an HOA community I was concerned about the bottom line of the HOA community fund. If your HOA doesn't have adequate savings and contributions to a savings account they lose FHA compliance and it becomes infinitely harder to sell your property when the time comes. If your HOA doesn't meet FHA requirements your property value will plummet. What do you think an HOA does?