What is in it for me?  That is a question we often hear and in the case of mandatory membership HOAs, the answer depends on who is asking the question.  In the case of local municipalities, the answer is “free tax dollars” by shunting their responsibilities onto the private sector they don’t have to maintain the infrastructure.  For developers, they won’t have to satisfy local municipal building codes since municipalities will not be assuming maintenance of the infrastructure so can cut corners.  For the homeowners?  Absolutely Nothing!  Nothing at all.  However, the ever-helpful attorneys, for a fee, of course, make sure that the board members and the managers and committee members and whoever else has a position of power has plenty of enabling legislation to back them up and allow them to do pretty much as they please.  And then the homeowners try to wrestle back some of the rights they once had and so the annual shuffle continues. This year is no exception.  

Jan Bergemann, founder and president of the Florida based Cyber Citizens for Justice  joins us On The Commons to discuss this year’s legislative agenda he is working on for Florida.  It is always worth listening to what different states have done or are doing as the issues, problems and new bills magically seem to get duplicated around the country.  (I wonder how that happens??) In a way this is the closest thing we have to a national homeowners’ organization.  There have been some worthwhile ideas that have come out of Florida in the past and we look forward to following their lead in the future.

Share your stories on  From the HOA Trenches