Honorable Chairperson and Members of Destination Florida Commission.

My Experience coming to America and living in a HOA
By Lars Jettman.

I am 71 years old; I was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and came to Jacksonville 1989 to manage a large construction job. I was lucky to meet a girl from North Carolina, we married and bought a house in a community controlled by a homeowners association. Chimney Lakes Owners Association is an association with approximately 1700 homes.

God has blessed us with 7 children and we soon will have 10 grandchildren. We have them all are coming from locations as far away as Stockholm and Denver, CO to get together at home because our place is large enough to accommodate them. What more can retired parents ask for, with most of our life behind us? We are free to enjoy the time we have left with our loved ones, we thought?

Problems with our homeowners association have brought a serious threat to our financial security.

My story: my wife and I attended our 1994 annual meeting after moving into our new home. We were given a copy of the budget and financial statements. Right away, we noticed discrepancies and when we asked for clarifications, we got no satisfying answers. After that, we decided to get involved by joining some committees. Shortly there after I was appointed to the board and become a Treasurer. In the year 2000, two new members were elected to the board and we changed the Management Company. That was the beginning of the irresponsible handling of the Association’s funds.

It started when we changed the company holding our landscape contract, worth $150,000. One Board member (his profession a Recruiter for the Navy, with no established companies or experience) got the contract improperly. This ended up costing the Association $10,000 in legal fees and other costs due to delays because of objections by other bidders. I opposed awarding the contract to a fellow board member and the BOD removed me as Treasurer. Then the BOD removed all member of the finance committee who also opposed awarding him the contract and dissolved the finance committee all together. The Board continued to violate the Laws, and I soon found out that our Government couldn’t or has no interest in enforcing the laws that we have already in place.

If you are not happy with your management company, you can file a complaint, which I did. The case now is said to have 1600 pages including my 260. There were only two documents taken into consideration when the DBPR made their ruling on the case. Affidavits from the two former Presidents stating that the Management Company followed their instructions and she is off the hook. They have no authority over the board and the BOD’s knows it, so she gets away with her misdeeds. The law requires we have a person with a CAM license to work under. They are to give advice to a volunteer board and tell them if something has been done improperly. Now they have figured out the system and protect each other. Therefore, it is very unlikely, there will be any negative remarks on the property manager’s records, and she is on to her next victims.

Now it is time to retaliate, and she will punish us for reporting her. The property manager is suing my wife and I for damages to the amount off $10,000 plus legal costs. She used a letter I sent to the association attorney tell him our financials was out off order and could seriously hurting the homeowners. It was my fiduciary duty to report my concerns, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the judge.

The BOD rigged the next election with the help of the lawyer. My friends, who also believe in justice, and I filed an Injunction to stop the voting, but the BOD just ignored the court order and held the election anyway. To me that is Contempt of Court, but who cares, the homeowners pay the bill. The BOD spent $1,300 in legal fees to rig the election and later $2,900 to fight the Contempt of Court against us. To continue the fight our lawyer wanted a retainer of $10,000, which we could not afford. In other words, we had to give up.

Now it was time to retaliate again. They came back and sued us to recover their legal cost, not only the $2,900 actual cost but also their cost $1300 to work with the attorney to rig the election. To set a precedent, I was told by one of the board members, that the BOD have to show the homeowner if they try to interfere with them they will pay. So far, I have had legal cost amounting to over $2.000 and all my cases are still not settled.

Sorry to say, there are many more of these depressing stories within our association I can tell, but they will have to wait until we meet next time. One of the arguments to have a HOA is to keep the value of your property up. To me, the problems with associations are they doing more harms then good. 
Our home is not our castle and there is no peace.

I had expected a better welcome to America, but the sun is still shining over us, even if there are sometimes clouds stopping us from seeing it.

Thank you very much for your attention.