HOA HOMEFRONT: Take care when selecting board members - Press Enterprise: "Yes, amazingly, no education or license is required to manage California associations and no education is required to serve on California HOA boards. Florida in 2013 began requiring HOA directors to certify they had read the governing documents and promise to uphold them, or to take an HOA certification course. Nevada’s CAI Chapter created a “Dedicated Community Association Leader” (“DCAL”) distinction, in which the volunteer receives about 30 hours of training. That is presently voluntary, but hundreds of Nevada volunteers have already attained their DCAL certification. In 2008, the Community Associations Institute in California sponsored AB 2806, which would have required volunteer directors obtain at least three hours of education. During the legislative process, the bill was diluted from a mandatory to a voluntary education law and then was vetoed by the Governor, who said voluntary laws are not helpful."
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Board members and officers who don't know how to do their jobs--there is so little oversight that nobody has any idea how bad the situation really is.
1 comment:
It has been bad almost since the inception of community corporations.
The "training" is mostly Milgram brain-washing sessions conducted by vendors of the HOA corporation. There is little fallout when management companies or their employees or board members embezzle hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. The management company industry is constantly coming up with creative ways to rip off homeowners and the client HOA/condo corporation. These places are absolutely doomed to fail - there is no "reform" that will fix these places.
I went to watch fallout at an HOA meeting on behalf of a client recently. The "board" had spent over $30,000 in two months just on attorneys fees in their attempt to prevent another homeowner from remaining on the board. That homeowner had gotten on by proxy votes on a platform of reform which threatened the sitting board and their attorney. The sitting board and their attorney were filing suit after suit threatening homeowners with foreclosure and demanding thousands and thousands of dollars to go away. The argument is that the target homeowner isn't carrying their weight and that other homeowners are paying to make up for it. This begs the question as to why anyone should be expected to "share" the expenses. The expenses should never have been allowed to begin with.
At any rate, the good news is after a coup the new HOA board members have terminated the HOA attorney and initiated a petition to remove "foreclosure" from the restrictive covenants.
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