In the News

Faced with a growing number of complaints from Colorado homeowners about American flags, access to financial documents, and the right to speak up at meetings, the Colorado Legislative Action Committee of the Community Associations Institute (CAI) is asking the state to investigate the need to license community association managers.

Recent statistics show that homeowners who assume they're safe because they live in gated communities are wrong. Jeffrey Braxton is one of these homeowners, but the full force of his South Florida community's vulnerability to burglary was driven home with the loss of a family heirloom: a pink piggy bank, a gift to Braxton's daughter from her grandmother who passed away.

Prompted by Baltimore County bills passed in September that affect owners of homes in Baltimore's planned communities and their homeowners associations, the Reisterstown-Owings Mills-Glyndon Coordinating Council (ROG) is encouraging the county government to change how it does business. ROG, which meets monthly to discuss community association issues, is comprised of area community association leaders.

Several Long Beach, Calif., neighborhood associations have united to form the Downtown Residential Council (DRC), with the goal of bringing community members together by hosting social events in the downtown area. Ocean Residents Community Association (ORCA), which began about a year ago, is the newest—and most active—association to join DRC.

A member of Bayside Estates, an age-restricted community in south Fort Myers, Fla., won't give up his right to let family, friends, and employees younger than 55 years old stay at his house. The community's homeowners association is just as determined to clamp down on the 76-year-old homeowner. In a letter to the member in 2008, the then-association president wrote that without rules there is “anarchy and disorder.”

The most recent U.S. Census reports that there has been a sharp increase in the number of home-based businesses across the country. According to Census statistics, 51.6 percent of the country's businesses are operated within homes or other noncommercial spaces.

Knob Hill Property Owner's Association in Augusta, Ga., recently denied housing to a retired, paralyzed African-American war veteran. The association claimed that the home would require specialized accommodations and that those accommodations would ultimately lower the overall property value of Knob Hill.

New legislation in Florida, effective July 1, will have a major impact on both condominium and homeowners associations within the state. The legislation will primarily affect procedural and operational issues of the associations. Cooperative associations were, as they have been in the past, excluded from the bill.

The law, House Bill 1195, will amend current laws concerning owner privacy rights, employee salary information, and closed board meetings, among other things.

Retired Marine Mike Merola can now fly his flag on the 20-foot flagpole he erected on his property at the Lakeland Village Community Association in Houston, Texas. In December, Lakeland claimed that Merola was in violation of the community's design rules and ordered him to take down the flagpole. When Merola refused, the association sued.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently charged a Las Vegas homeowners association and its management company with discriminating against families with children by restricting its housing to members who are 55 and older.