Saturday, July 14, 2012

Tenants face losing water if owners don't pony up for bill | Local & Regional | KATU.com - Portland News, Sports, Traffic Weather and Breaking News - Portland, Oregon

Tenants face losing water if owners don't pony up for bill | Local & Regional | KATU.com - Portland News, Sports, Traffic Weather and Breaking News - Portland, Oregon: Many people rent the town homes and pay their share of the water to landlords. Ultimately the bill is supposed to be paid by the homeowners association.

The owner of Leanette’s unit says she is paying her bills, but some other owners aren’t.

HOA members will not disclose who the deadbeat landlords are.

“I feel very disappointed about the situation happening over here,” said resident Jesus Amaro. “Some of us are paying our water bills and some are not.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the problem with permitting the HOA to be an intermediary between the residents and the utilities. The residents have the same problem when they pay the HOA. HOAs are not utilities and should not be permitted to act as a "middleman" between the residents and the utilities. The utilities are regulated as utilities, the HOAs are not and should not be permitted to act as utilities. Even if all the residents are paying, there is no obligation for the HOA to apply their assessment monies to the water bill! All too often the residents put their money into this "common hat" only to have the hat taken by other parties whether those parties are board members or HOA management companies. Sub-metering and direct billing would resolve this problem immediately.

Anonymous said...

"Even if all the residents are paying, there is no obligation for the HOA to apply their assessment monies to the water bill!"

People should think about that. So should our legislators.

Instead, they believe crap like this example of the industry's idea of "consumer protection" for homeowners :

"SB 187 would establish the Ohio Planned Community Act, giving Ohio’s homeowner associations a statutory foundation, similar to Ohio’s condominiums. The Act will provide Ohio homeowners with the consumer protections they deserve by protecting their investment through statutorily organized associations creating strong neighborhoods and communities. This includes the ability to amend a declaration, permit spouses to serve on the board, and affirm the association’s right to file a lien."