MESSING AROUND WITH OWNERS’ RENTAL RIGHTS!

By Jan Bergemann

Published March 21, 2014

In 2004 then Senate President James King strongly supported a provision that was aimed to protect the contract rights of owners to rent out their units after the Florida Supreme Court took away these rights in their controversial ruling Woodside Village Condominium Association, Inc. v. Jahren. The existing language in FS 718.110(13) was created by Senate staff and then added to the HOA Task Force bill sponsored by then Senator Jeff Atwater with the backing of Governor Jeb Bush.

The language is clear and precise and leaves very little wiggle room for wrongful interpretation leading to frivolous lawsuits and served condo owners well for 10 years.

But obvious the language is too clear for the taste of certain attorneys who would like to change the existing language in order to create more billing hours – also called lawsuits!

With the help of the legislative tag team Moraitis/Ring, whose bills have cost more homeowners and condo owners their homes than hurricanes Wilma and Charlie together, these attorneys are trying to amend the language to make it more open to controversial interpretations – and take away rental rights from unsuspecting owners who will not even know that they are losing their rental rights until they are trying to rent out their unit.

This is the language contained in H 807 – language where the devil is in the detail:
FS 718.110(13) (13) An amendment that prohibits prohibiting unit owners from renting their units or altering the duration of the rental term or that specifies or limits specifying or limiting the number of times unit owners are entitled to rent their units during a specified period does not apply applies only to unit owners who voted against consent to the amendment. However, such amendment applies to unit owners who consented to the amendment, who failed to cast a vote, or and unit owners who acquired acquire title to their units after the effective date of the that amendment.

Sounds harmless, but it leaves plenty of room for fraud and deceit.

Please remember: Amendments to governing documents require the VOTE OF APPROVAL of a supermajority (66.6% or 75%) of the voting interest. No votes or Non votes don’t count for anything. In daily life many owners who oppose these proposed amendments just don’t vote at all. That’s common practice! Actually, proponents of such amendments go around collecting signatures just from owners they know are in favor. Opponents are often not even contacted. With other words, some of the owners often don’t even know that such a vote is being circulated. So, how can they vote “NO?”

And even if owners vote NO on such amendment, who guarantees that this vote can still be “found” a few years later when these owners want to rent out their units? Certain documents have a tendency to get “lost” if the powers to be want them to disappear. That’s nothing new!

This is just another attempt to kill the protection of owners’ contract rights through the back door.

It seems some people are hell-bound to create language in the statutes that creates nothing but confusion – and lawsuits. There are still too many attorneys here in Florida who will stop at nothing to make these community associations their private cash cow – at the expense of the owners!

Despite all this controversy there are still plenty of voters who vote for legislators who are willing to destroy the lives of their constituents – just to please the special interest groups that finance their campaigns. Wake up people: Don’t elect candidates who vote against your interest!

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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