USATODAY.com: Municipal duties move to ‘burbs as HOAs must step in
Volunteer boards of homeowners association, responsible for more services, are often hiring national companies to handle day-to-day management.

Michelle Mitchell and Blake Herzog
March 3, 2013

Homeowners associations are taking on traditional local government responsibilities at the same time a growing number of them are being managed by national companies. Once primarily mom-and-pop enterprises of like-minded residents, the privately operated associations are increasingly performing traditional roles of local government, such as recreation, trash pick-up, lighting and street upkeep.
“It’s the most dramatic privatization of local government services that we’ve ever seen,” said Evan McKenzie, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government. Read more:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/03/03/hoas-pick-up-duties-left-by-struggling-cities/1960671/%3E