Departments

In August 2013, a Florida condominium association and its former management company agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a fair housing claim alleging that they enforced occupancy limits that discriminated against families with children.

Q: Like many associations, the association I manage performs a comprehensive annual audit. Is it okay to have a board member do it?

Community association managers today have to keep up with ever-changing technological, financial, legal, and management trends. But one thing largely stays the same: the language in many associations’ governing documents and other materials. Typically, this language hasn’t been updated in several decades, despite a drastic change in membership demographics. And that can create frustration among members whose cultural understanding of certain terms is at odds with the meaning the terms were originally supposed to convey.

Facts: After purchasing undeveloped townhome lots, a residential property company refused to pay assessments to the association as required under the community’s restrictive covenants. The company asserted that the assessments for water and trash collection for its lots was arbitrary because the empty lots didn’t have houses yet that would require trash collection or water.

Facts: An association sued a general contractor because of drainage issues that became apparent in the community after construction had been completed. The drainage plan developed and installed by the contractor during construction but before the association had taken ownership of the property was inadequate, which caused standing water to collect in the common areas between the units. The members of the association brought the drainage and resulting flooding problems to the attention of the contractor.

Facts: A planned community consisted of 124 single-family homes. In addition to these homes, the same developer built three waterfront condominium buildings nearby. The association tried to treat the unit owners from the area nearby as if they were association members that were subject to the association’s fees and rules and regulations.

A Pine Canyon HOA must allow “For Sale” signs in the community, the Arizona Court of Appeals recently ruled, despite deed restrictions that ban them. The ruling trumps restrictions, and squelched the association’s argument that its pre-existing ban on such signs can remain despite a 2009 law to the contrary.

Internet access is no longer an optional amenity for most Americans—it’s a necessity. Members of your community may use it to run home-based businesses, socialize online, shop,  pay bills, or watch TV shows and movies. With such high demand for Internet access, should your association provide this “amenity” for members or leave it to members to arrange for service individually?

Luxury resort condominiums crumbled into a massive sinkhole a few miles from Disney World, displacing dozens of guests at the Summer Bay Resort in Clermont, Fla., some of whom had only a few minutes to escape the cracking building. The building that fell into the sinkhole is one of several at the private community, which is governed by a homeowner’s association. 

Facts: The employee of a general contractor was hired by an association to do work in the community. He was injured after he separated a two-part extension ladder owned by his employer. Using the part of the ladder that didn’t have traction feet, he gained access to a roof. On the way down the ladder, which was neither secured to the building nor being held by another person, he slipped and fell.