MORE LAWS – NO ENFORCEMENT!

By Jan Bergemann

Published July 29, 2022

 

Let’s face it: The recently enacted CONDO SAFETY REFORM BILL (SB 4-D) is definitely well intended, trying to avoid another catastrophe like the collapse of the Champlain Towers South building that cost the lives of 98 people, but it has two serious flaws:

  1. It comes many years too late and will cause financial hardship for many condo-owners. Safety comes with huge cost, especially for owners in buildings that have for many years voted down fully funded reserves. In my opinion we will see many “emergency-sales” and foreclosures for unpaid maintenance fees and special assessments.

  2. It’s adding more laws without any real enforcement. The Legislature again put the enforcement of the provisions of this bill in the hands of the Division of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares and Mobile Homes. We all know that this is just another totally useless government agency that has for years failed to do its job. Many condo-owners, filing complaints with the Bureau of Compliance, have received “form-letters” after a certain period of time, saying that no violations could be found. But the wording of these “form-letters” showed that the “investigator” never looked at the documents that accompanied the complaint, nor did he contact the witnesses listed as proof for the validity of the complaint. They all said that they were never contacted by anyone from the Division. Because of the known lack of enforcement many unit-owners voted down fully funded reserves in the past, because these reserves had the tendency to be used for pet-projects of board members or even worse. Remember: Florida’s condos are listed as the No.2 Ranked State when it comes to scams and embezzlement as various statistics show.

With other words: The bill contains many ambitious laws with again no enforcement. Will that really help? Boards and their attorneys are already looking for loopholes in the wording of the bill in order to circumvent the “safety-provisions”.

 

In my opinion the bill was well intended, but due to the lack of enforcement many boards, CAMs and attorneys will try their best to ignore many of the provisions.

 

THE NO.1 PRIORITY FOR NEXT YEAR’S LEGISLATIVE SESSION: CREATE SERIOUS ENFORCEMENT WITH SERIOUS PUNISHMENT FOR BAD ACTORS!


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Jan Bergemann

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  

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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