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LAST CHANCE?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published May 20, 2022
Next
week’s special session will be the last chance for Florida’s
legislators to get things right -- a chance they totally missed
during this year's legislative session.
Property
Insurance and Condo Safety Reform should be on top of the list.
The homes of many families living in Florida’s homes and
condominiums are at stake when the debate over these much needed
reforms starts in Tallahassee on Monday.
Hurricane
season officially starts on June 1 – and many folks are not sure
if their insurance policy is still covering their property with
many insurance companies dropping tens of thousands of policies.
Others have received annual bills from their insurance companies
they will be unable to pay. I have heard from increases of 400%?
The looming question: Who will pay if there is any hurricane
damage to homes or condos where the insurance questions haven’t
been settled yet? What are owners going to do who received
policy cancellations? It looks like finding a new insurance
company isn’t very easy.
We all
know that condo safety, especially in old hi-rise buildings,
comes with a high price. And the fact that many of the owners in
these buildings voted down reserves year for year is now coming
back to haunt them. The money needed to make necessary
structural repairs to guarantee the safety of these buildings
isn’t there – and the few banks still willing to make condo
loans to avoid special assessments owners can’t afford are very
picky when it comes to approval of these loan applications.
Legislators have to be walking a tightrope to find a middle way
to create laws that will make condo safety a priority without
pricing families out of their homes. I think many folks regret
now that they pushed in 2010 for removing mandatory reserve
funding from the condo statutes FS 718. For many associations
fully funded reserves would come in handy now, considering that
they already dealing with much increased insurance premiums!
Let’s
just hope that we voted minimum some legislators with common
sense into office, because these reforms will decide the fate of
many families!
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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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