More than 14 months after the shocking Champlain Towers South condominium tower collapse in Surfside, Fla., many condominium owners lack clarity about the role of condominium associations and owners in preventing future such tragedies.
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Police tape blocks access to a partially collapsed building in Surfside north of Miami Beach, on June 24, 2021. |
Not working
Weighing in with his own perspective is Tyler Berding,
founding partner in the law firm of Berding & Weil LLP in
Walnut Creek, Calif., who believes years before the
Champlain Tower South collapse and the 2015 Berkeley, Calif.
balcony collapse that killed six young people, there existed
abundant evidence that the “cooperative housing model” of
condominium associations was not working.
Simply put, homeowners were uncooperative rather than
cooperative, leading to owner apathy, internal disputes
between owners and associations and unwillingness to fund
future needs. It was and is enough to have Berding asking,
“Can this be fixed, or is the concept inherently flawed?” In
a white paper titled “Were Condos a Bad Idea?” Berding
writes that condos “are ‘cooperative’ because costs and
space are shared. But internal disputes and funding
shortfalls operate to shorten the life of these buildings in
ways few owners understand.”
He points out condo associations often get sucked into
disputes about the color of a unit’s front door or someone’s
view-blocking plants, pulling the association away from its
most essential duty, sustaining the building and keeping
owners safe.
The effort needed to resolve petty squabbles over
comparatively minor concerns consumes time and effort that
boards should be dedicating to their first duty of
safeguarding structural integrity.
A questioner might well wonder why condo boards couldn’t
both resolve disputes and work on sustaining the structure.
Berding notes the volunteers who make up condo boards have
found such a task difficult. Handling disputes often tops
their to-do lists, while the structure’s slow deterioration
may not seem so pressing or obvious a worry.
As was reported to have occurred in Surfside, a condo board
is often challenged to justify to cash-strapped residents
the high cost of needed inspections, maintenance and repair
that can help prevent even costlier remediation later.
“Directors must leap hurdles to increase regular
assessments,” Berding writes. “Imposing large, unexpected
special assessments for major repairs can be political
suicide. Unfortunately, few owners realize how deadly
serious proper maintenance is until there is a Berkeley or a
Surfside, and everyone is stunned by the loss of life and
property. While those are extreme cases of faulty
construction, inadequate maintenance, natural causes or all
of the above, they will not be the last. We know that
because experts have seen precursors to those same
conditions in other projects.”
Flawed model
As it stands now, if damage is found in a condominium’s 35th
year of life, it is owners who own in year 35 — not those
who paid artificially low assessments in earlier years
before selling – who must fund remediation. Berding believes
the answer to the deterioration of structures lies in more
intensive inspections earlier in condominium buildings’
lives, as well as possibly higher assessments to address
ongoing decay.
The model of unit-owner-managed, voluntarily funded
condominium projects likely was flawed from its inception,
but as the older buildings approach 60 years of age,
reversing course is impossible.
“Many are already reaching the end of their service lives,
with no plan to deal with that,” Berding writes. “The
present system is not staying even with the deterioration of
many buildings. And that is just not safe anymore.”