Departments

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.

Twenty-four-seven security patrols can be very expensive and, if your community doesn't experience a lot of crime, you may be tempted to cut corners and use only part-time patrols. But if you do this, stagger security guards' shifts to keep criminals off guard. If you change the shifts your security patrol works every day, it will be more difficult for criminals to anticipate when the best opportunity for them to commit a crime by avoiding the patrol will be.

To eliminate potential hiding spots for criminals on community property and reduce the potential for crime, consider assessing and possibly changing your community's landscaping. Doing so could also help reduce your liability for any crimes that do occur, says attorney and security expert Norman Bates. That's because, if a crime occurs, the victim may sue you for negligence, claiming that you didn't take reasonable steps to prevent the crime.

Before you remove or cover up graffiti at your community, take color photographs of it, suggests property owner and manager Kevin M. Fogel. Your first instinct will naturally be to remove graffiti immediately so that it doesn't send the message that your community is in decline or give the vandals the recognition they want, he says. But graffiti is a crime, he adds. And the police can use color photographs of graffiti to identify, track, and prosecute the graffiti artists responsible, he explains.

Facts: The owners of a custom-built house in a residential development asked the homeowners' association for permission to build a wheelchair access ramp on the front of their home leading to the front door for their disabled son to use. After the owners submitted to the architectural review board several incomplete applications for permission to build the ramp, the association denied the owners' request.

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.

With a constant flow of money coming in and going out, some community associations take shortcuts with their cash management procedures. For example, they might have the same person who prepares the checks also doing the books. But without effective internal controls, you won't know if someone is embezzling from the association.

Effective controls and standard procedures for income and disbursements—that is, payments to vendors, employees, and others—are essential to the sound management of any business, including community associations.

Facts: A community association experienced numerous problems with trespassers entering the interior roads of the community. The unauthorized access resulted in substantial damage to the community's roads by all-terrain vehicles and property damage resulting from campfires, unauthorized parties, and littering. The association constructed a security gate with lights and a surveillance camera at the entrance of the community. To allow each of the community's owners to open the gate, the association provided numeric codes to them without a charge.

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.

If the community you manage is located in a scenic area, like near a beach or lake, or in a city with a famous skyline like New York, Boston, or Seattle, the view that owners enjoy from their units might be very important to them. Owners often buy their particular units because of the views and are dismayed if they're obscured by structures or foliage added later. Owners who have paid for a specific view that they can no longer enjoy or that previously made their unit more valuable and unique than others, making resale easier, could sue the association.