It is getting almost impossible to get through an entire day without being accosted by bad news.  Sometimes there really is nothing we can do about it.  Natural disasters are out of our hands.  Try stopping a tsunami, a hurricane or an earthquake.  You can’t.  Chances of people losing their homes in any of those scenarios are pretty good.  But other “disasters” are preventable.  I am thinking of the seemingly daily reports of condo and homeowner association fraud, embezzlement, theft, mismanagement and abuse that can also result in the loss of peoples’ homes.  These are man made disasters, enabled by the government.  Instead of protecting their constituents against these wrongdoings, or redesigning the HOA and condo concept structurally to prevent the abuses, they mandate them and turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the problems.  They facetiously mock you for having “agreed” to the “rules”.  

Jose Pazos joins us On The Commons.  Jose, an award winning community manager in Florida, is not cut from the same cloth as many of his colleagues throughout the country.  Jose and his business partners, own a management company with a difference.  Transparency and accessibility seem to be high on their list of ” must haves” for their homeowner clients.  We’ll find out how they do that. (it really is quite simple). We talk about laws that are unique to Florida and how those laws enable the taking of private units from their rightful owners.  We will also find out about the many ways owners and associations are robbed and swindled out of their assets and rights.  We’ll hear all about his idea for a condo fraud task force, how it would work and how it would be funded. We also find out why he considers himself the “condo police”.  In his spare time, Jose also maintains a web page called Condo Receiver.  If more people in the condo and HOA business had the integrity and honesty of Jose, we might actually get through a day every now and again with having to read about bad news.