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MORE NEW LAWS!
By
Jan Bergemann
Published July 5, 2024
The Florida Legislature enacted this
year lots of bills dealing with community association rules and
living. Everybody is talking about the two big bills
HB 1021 (Condominiums) and
HB 1203 (Homeowners’ Associations), but a lot of
other bills passed – and Governor Ron DeSantis signed every bill
ordered enrolled into law. For a summary of all these bills
please look at
PRIORITY BILLS 2024.
There are lots of serious changes
contained in these bills, so it makes very little sense when the
Legislature enacted a bill (SB
382) that allows community association managers to
forego continuous education if they have a license for more than
ten (10) years. Does that mean that CAMs know all about all
these new laws just because they have a CAM license for more
than 10 years? In all honesty: A lot of the CAMs working
nowadays in community associations seem to know not much about
existing laws considering the way they conduct business or tell
board members how to deal with certain issues.
And then there is another very
important bill for homeowners owning property in homeowners’
association regulated by FS 720 – important because
Floridians have to deal with hurricanes each year:
HB 293: Hurricane Protections for Homeowners'
Associations.
In the past boards have been disallowing homeowners to install
certain hurricane protections claiming
aesthetic reasons: NO MORE! The provisions of the bill
prohibits board or committee of association from denying
application for installation, enhancement, or replacement of
certain hurricane protection.
Looking at all these new bill enacted by the Legislature enacted
this year it looks like common sense finally made its way to
Tallahassee.
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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
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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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