WHAT WEBSITES?

By Jan Bergemann

Published April 28, 2023

 

I guess the Florida Legislature thought they did a great job to assure transparency in condominiums when they enacted bills in 2017 and 2018 [FS 718.111(12)(g)], that required condominium associations with more than 150 units to operate a website featuring all so-called “public documents”.

 

They would have done a great job -- the bills were actually well intended – if there would be as well some sort of enforcement.

 

In the real world we are seeing lots of totally incomplete websites, only showing what board members and CAMs want the owners to see – and otherwise it’s business as usual.

 

The fights over record requests are keeping arbitrators and courts busy – and the attorneys are still smiling at their bank account statements.

 

If the legislators thought that they finally found a solution to end litigation about association records they were dead wrong.

 

Everybody knows that laws without enforcement are pretty useless and all these laws created each year are only laws for the rich, meaning the folks who have enough money to hire attorneys and fight for their rights, given to them by these kinds of laws, in district and appeals courts.

 

Wouldn’t that mean that all these laws, created year for year adding to the community association statutes, are only LAWS FOR THE  RICH?

 

Every other owner who might dare to mention at a board meeting that the board is violating statutes can still be told by the association attorney: “Sit down and shut up. You don’t have the money to sue the association!”


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Jan Bergemann

Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice, Florida 's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group. CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in community  

associations. He moved to Florida in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues for his own purposes. End of retirement!

 

CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in Tallahassee - finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.

 

The organization has two websites to inform interested Florida homeowners and condo owners:

News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.

Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.

   
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all service providers surely have a different interest! We are trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking in Florida !


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