Forget about Big Brother. For a growing number of people, the greatest threat to personal liberty now comes from Big Neighbor — their homeowners association, or HOA. These private, nonprofit groups have many similarities to municipal government in much of the Triangle, though with more invasive powers.

Homeowners associations can dictate their residents’ mailbox style, lawn height, fence color, satellite dish location, porch furniture and even clothes-drying method. In addition to their policing powers, residents in some neighborhoods pay more in HOA dues than in city or county property taxes.

Residents are no more free to let their dues slide than their taxes, although North Carolina law does not allow an HOA to put a lien on somebody’s house, as can be done in other states.

There are occasional stories of HOA turmoil, such as the recently reported dust-up in Raleigh’s Harrington Grove neighborhood. Many others go unreported as the original fight there did. Residents in the Parkway subdivision in west Cary replaced their entire board in 2006 after the board president took a $40,000 annual salary and became a “nit-picking tyrant.” Last year, the Margot’s Pond HOA board in Wake Forest decreed grass must be green, regardless of the drought. Time Magazine in January used communities in North Carolina to illustrate the conflicts between homeowners associations and residents who want to dry their clothes outside in their yards for environmental or other reasons.

Despite the best efforts of homebuyers to read their neighborhood’s covenants before moving in, even the closest scrutiny of rules may not be enough to prepare them for their new government. HOA boards can be unpredictable, particularly in new neighborhoods where there are no established community norms, each new owner has different expectations and boards are elected before neighbors know each other. At changeover, the community board can decide on stricter rules and harsher enforcement mechanisms than even the developer laid out. What a shock that first letter from the board can be for early buyers who spent a year or more living a certain way only to discover they now live under a new set of rules regulating their property and how they use it.

A more fundamental problem with HOAs is the way they undermine civility and common sense. Instead of taking up minor annoyances with neighbors, members call the management company or the HOA board. A letter goes to the offender who then questions which of his neighbors felt so aggrieved by his behavior to report him. What could be resolved with a simple knock on the door and a polite request that builds a sense of community instead builds walls of mistrust and turns neighbors into informants.

In other communities, a designated person or group goes around the neighborhood looking for violations of the HOA rules. Police and government inspectors sometimes issue a polite verbal warning to a person for speeding or irrigating his garden with gray water from the sink. HOA neighborhood enforcers, however, often prefer to skip straight to written notices. Even somebody who has just moved into a home and still has most of his possessions in boxes is not immune to the watchful eyes of the violation hunters.

My wife and I have had personal experience with homeowners’ association disputes. We reluctantly joined our HOA board but infuriated some people with our attempt to handle issues in a neighborly way. One member of the community assaulted me in front of my young children and justified it by saying “the rules of civil society don’t apply.” Even after we were removed from the board by a vocal minority, printed copies of inflammatory e-mails were sent anonymously to my boss and coworkers.

Homeowners associations are sometimes essential to maintain common areas in planned developments. As with municipal governments, however, their powers can be abused. The press cannot track all of them, so it is up to residents to watch out for each other, not put a watch on each other.