Article
Courtesy of The Ledger
EDITORIAL
Published January 22, 2005
A
little-known fact in Florida: Just because a homeowner has homestead exemption,
it doesn't prevent a homeowners' association from foreclosing on the home for
failure to pay association dues.
"I don't want anyone to go through what we went through," Robert
Denson, 42, told The Miami Herald this month. He lost his Boynton Beach home in
2003 when the association foreclosed on a $1,200 debt it was owed.
Denson said he and his wife, Theresa, were behind on their dues when they
separated for several months. He told the paper they had used their $18,000 life
savings to purchase the home in 2000. Once they were back together, they began
paying accumulated bills, starting with the mortgage. "I figured the
mortgage was more important," he said.
Homeowners' associations, however, take precedence. The Densons were mailed
several pastdue notices, association attorney Randall Roger told The Herald. A
lien was filed. Foreclosure came in the fall of 2003. When no payment was
forthcoming, the home was sold.
Such drastic action is not just confined to Florida. In California, a
homeowners' association forced foreclosure on a home that owed a $120 debt to
the association. The legislature passed a bill preventing such foreclosures for
small amounts, but it was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Schwarzenegger called the legislation "overly broad," and said if
homeowners' associations didn't have the power to force payment of dues, those
who voluntarily paid them would be paying higher costs. He added that state
agencies need to refine the practice so "foreclosure only occurs after
every reasonable alternative is exhausted."
Once a homeowners' association takes legal action to collect delinquent dues,
legal fees can be added to the homeowner's bill. Jan Bergemann, head of the
nonprofit statewide Cyber Citizens for Justice (www.ccfj.net),
which tracks association foreclosures, told The Herald that boards can
"bring homeowners to their knees because they have unlimited [access to
pay] legal fees."
In some cases, he said, legal fees can become six, eight, 10 or more times the
size of the bill the association is trying to collect.
But there seems to be agreement in Florida about the power of homeowners'
association. While they need to be able to collect money to operate -- and
depend of the annual payments -- homeowners also need protection from
overzealous associations that charge exorbitant legal fees or bring foreclosure
action over a few hundred dollars.
Dan Shapiro, a partner in a California law firm that represents more than 2,000
associations and management companies, told a reporter last year: "At some
point, the responsibility has to be on the person who's not paying their
assessment. If the law firm or the trustee that is doing the collecting is
following the rules and the person is just not doing what they're supposed to be
doing -- paying -what alternative is left to the association?"
This session, Florida legislators need to give associations an alternative
before the step of foreclosure is taken.
|