Rules and rule enforcement

As many of my readers know, among the topics frequently discussed on this blog are the many issues facing resident owned communities when dealing with the Fair Housing Act.

I’ve recently been speaking to community association managers and ROC board members about the importance of properly responding to and evaluating requests made by current

I wanted to post two recent  articles related to the death of Trayvon Martin.

The first discusses the potential liability facing the Retreat at Twin Lakes Homeowners’ Association as Trayvon was apparently shot and killed by a member of that  association’s "neighborhood watch" group.

The second release was published by the Community Associations Institute

It’s no secret that the Fair Housing Act prohibits housing providers from discriminating against individuals with disabilities.   An community association thus must make a "reasonable accommodation" to a disabled current or prospective resident who requires that accommodation to "use and enjoy a dwelling".

We’ve recently been contacted about homeowners in resident owned communities

Based on the responses I’ve received from my recent blog entries and presentations on  fines and suspensions of use rights, it’s clear that these topics are "hot issues" in resident owned communities throughout Florida.

Although the Florida Statutes governing condominium, cooperative and mandatory homeowners associations all recognize an association’s power to fine or suspend

We’ve got a very busy five or six weeks ahead of us with several chances for managers and board members in resident owned communities to hear from us:

  • I’ll be speaking about fines and suspending privileges as well as pet issues at the Mid-Florida ROC meeting at the Molokai community in Leesburg on Tuesday morning,

The very successful and well attended 2nd Annual Dowd, Whitaker & Associates Community  Festival was held in Venice earlier this week.   I was pleased to be one of the presenters at the Festival and had the opportunity to speak to an impressive number of members and managers of resident owned cooperatives throughout southwest Florida.

I

My most recent entry summarized the some of the changes made by House Bill 1195 (which became effective on July 1 of this year) to several provisions of the laws governing cooperative associations in Florida.

House Bill 1195 created three new subsections to Florida Statute Section 719.303 that have the effect of extending to cooperative