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EXPECT HEATED BOARD MEETINGS!
By
Jan Bergemann
Published August 25, 2023
The media is already full of reports
about heated or even chaotic meetings of condo boards. The
reason: Much increased monthly maintenance fees and/or
special assessments.
When
SB 154 the so-called
CONDO SAFETY BILL was enacted at the end of the
last legislative session, we predicted that condo owners will be
upset once they realize what the provisions of this bill will
mean to their finances: Many condo owners will be unable to
afford their homes any longer and have to either sell or face
foreclosure.
As the media reported, some of these heated
board meetings have already taken place with the predicted
results.
And it will get worse once the
mandatory fully reserve-funding has to be added to the budgets
at the end of 2024.
This provision will hit certain
hi-rise condo buildings very hard, especially the ones where
owners voted down reserve-funding year for year.
Many owners are already blaming board
members for the financial hardship and that is absolutely
wrong.
The blame goes a long way and all
parties involved are to blame for the financial disaster many
owners are facing now. Starting with the developers who kept the
monthly maintenance fees artificially low in order to sell
units; the owners who voted down mandatory reserves year for
year. Blame as well the Florida Legislature allowing owners to
vote down mandatory reserve-funding despite being told by many
interest groups that this will backfire one day. The Legislature
must as well be blamed for not protecting these reserve
funds owners voted down reserve-funding because board members
just used existing reserves to pay for everything but the
intended purpose.
When the building of the
Champlain Towers
South in Surfside collapsed, costing the lives of 98 residents,
the Legislature had to act and SB 154 was the result.
Pictures shown in media reports make
it obvious that many of the older buildings are not very well
maintained others already had to be evacuated after being
deemed unsafe.
Maintaining a condo building is very
expensive and it shows that the slogan used to sell units to
buyers Easy Living was absolutely wrong and the sellers must
have known it all along.
This chapter of CONDO CHAOS
hasnt been closed and we will see where this is going in the
future.
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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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