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HOA PROPERTY OWNERS: STEPCHILDREN OF THE LEGISLATURE?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published March 4, 2022
Well, the 2022 Legislative
Session is nearly over and no matter what condo laws will pass
one thing is obvious: The Florida Legislature clearly ignores
the problems more than 2.5 million property owners whose homes
are within mandatory homeowners’ associations (HOA – FS 720).
The problems are huge, but
the Florida Legislature allows dictatorial board members, their
attorneys and CAMs to run roughshod over all these owners,
allowing the CAI-member (Community Association Institute)
“service providers” and William Sklar and his merry band of
“specialized” Florida lawyers to fill their pockets at the
expense of these owners. Instead of listening to the owners of
these properties our legislators are again only listening to
attorneys like the folks from the Becker Law Firm, who are
defendants in lawsuits brought by victims and survivors of the
collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, who claim
that the members of this law firms for many years fought bills
in Tallahassee trying to create more safety for condo-owners.
This law firm was as well the association attorney for the
Champlain Towers South for many years.
Many families are losing
their homes in HOAs because the Florida legislators plainly fail
to protect owners in these communities from financial abuse,
easy embezzlement, expensive frivolous lawsuits and election
provisions that allow sitting board members to stay in power
nearly forever. The whole system of HOAs is a sad joke, that
serves only the financial “welfare” of the service-providers and
cities and counties (double taxation) at the expense of these
homeowners.
This year’s legislative
session was a clear example of the unwillingness of our
legislators to do anything that would help owners living in
mandatory HOAs dealing with the many problems they are dealing
with daily in these “communities”.
Many good HOA bills were
filed at the beginning of the session: From the creation of the
HOA Ombudsman’s office to fining procedures to mandatory board
certification seminars, but not one of these owner-friendly
bills even made it to a second committee hearing. At the end of
the session all these bills will end up with the remark: “Died
in Committee”! What a shame!
With other words: For
another year we will see again presidents with idols like
Vladimir, Joseph, Adolf or Fidel run the show in these HOAs
supported by attorneys willing to tell owners who speak up at
board meetings referring to violations of the Florida statutes:
“Shut up and sit down. You don’t have the money to sue us
anyway!”
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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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