I am strongly against land covenants, and support the Jeffersonian maxim that the Earth should belong in usufruct to the living. If you want to control how a property is used in perpetuity, the proper way (in my opinion) to do so is to never sell it, not to carve away slices of ownership rights at every sale.

The fact that land covenants were overwhelmingly used for racist purposes is just the largest strike against them, not the only one.

Nobody is forced to purchase HOA property, but everybody has to live somewhere, and pay for that out of their income. If you pin a map wherever some member of the household has to be at some time every weekday, and draw 30-minute isochronic lines for the commute time from each pin, and then sum all the household incomes and multiply by 25%, you can find the intersection of the isochronics, filter out housing that exceeds the rent/mortgage budget, and possibly find that everything that remains is HOA controlled, or that there is nothing left. You can draw new isochronics for longer commute times, or you can choose a property that is not perfect, by virtue of being encumbered by covenants. That "live somewhere else" mantra favors the rich over the poor, simply by virtue of having options available that are more expensive than some people can afford.

I don't believe that community standards should be codified and given the force of law. The standards should be voluntarily upheld by the community. And that requires actually building a community first. Of real people. And that is not a profitable activity for suburban cookie-cutter subdivision home-builders. So the HOA is set up beforehand by the developer, to resemble the sort of community that they imagine people with plenty of house-buying cash might like. Oh la, this vision somehow always includes grass monoculture lawns. And a few of those people can move in during phase I and set themselves up as the HOA overlords. The developer continues to advertise and sell, and then automatically bails when the lots sold cross the percentage threshold, leaving everyone to the mercy of the busybodies, whom they have invested with contractual authority.

Some of us just want to live at a location, and generally be left to our own devices, without being subjected to intrusive assholes all the time.

It's easy to say "just live somewhere else". It's not so easy to live anywhere that isn't spoiled in some way by a negative externality in one form or another. Don't like coal plant exhaust? Live somewhere else! Don't like noise pollution? Live somewhere else! Don't like the smell of rancid livestock manure? Live somewhere else! Don't like a jerk threatening you with foreclosure because you didn't pay the HOA tax and your grass is 10" high? Live somewhere else! Don't like it when people erect TV or radio antennas and paint their front doors purple against the standards of the architectural committee? Live somewhere else!

It is better (in my opinion) to prevent those negative externalities from spoiling people's enjoyment of their own property. Barring some legislated community standard that does so, the only truly effective way to keep your neighbors from screwing up your lifestyle is by effectively not having any. Move to the center of your own square mile.