After Hurricane Ian, many towns and cities in Florida were left severely damaged. And while each homeowner was responsible for repairing their own home, many communities' public spaces were also wrecked.
But one townhome community HOA refused to act, and no repairs have been made. A frustrated tenant took to Reddit, asking for advice in r/HOA.
"All community amenities were badly damaged or destroyed including pools, landscaping, sprinkler system, landscape lighting, pavers and sidewalks, community drainage and retention ponds," they wrote. "The association has already levied significant assessments to all homeowners and has so far completed no repairs to any of the community."
But the worst part, they continued, was the HOA's vagueness about how it was spending time — and residents' money: "Requests for financial reports, budgets and meeting minutes have been ignored. The community resembles a war zone and now it floods when it rains. Property values have been affected."
In short, they concluded, "It's all very sketchy."
And while the poster has paid for the assessments up to that point, they asked for opinions on how to avoid paying another obscure fee when they had seen no improvements. Unfortunately, the answer wasn't what they hoped to hear.
"Short answer: you can't," one person said.
HOAs are notorious for acting against the very residents they're supposed to support. Whether they're restricting (or ripping up) home gardens, denying the use of a simple laundry line, or even going as far as banning indoor plants, it seems HOAs often try to be antagonistic.
These seemingly backward policies often lead residents to question the purpose of their HOAs. It didn't surprise the poster that the HOA couldn't help with individual home repairs. "What IS a surprise is that they had no insurance to cover any of the common areas or amenities (like the community pool)," they wrote. "So now rebuilding all the common areas is a huge assessment cost to the homeowners."
And for residents of hurricane-prone states such as Florida, the formula isn't a good one. Currently, 30% of Americans live in an HOA community. And with storms becoming both more common and more intense because of climate change, millions of people are going to face similar situations. They'll just have to hope their HOAs took out insurance.
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