EULOGY FOR HB 657

An Opinion By Jan Bergemann

Published March 24, 2026

HB 657 was a very owner-friendly community association bill, a bill that would have helped many owners of property in these communities deal with the many problems they are facing on a daily basis.

Florida’s House Representatives quickly realized that it would help the owners and voted nearly unanimously in favor of the bill in a vote of 108 YEAS and only 2 Nays (Lindsay Cross [D-Pinellas] and Patt Maney [R-Okaloosa; Attorney]).

If you followed the hearings in the House Committees you may have realized that the normal suspects opposing owner-friendly bills – lobbyists for CAI (Community Association Institute), the Florida Bar and Community Association Management – were absent at these hearings. Sounds to me pretty suspicious since they normally don’t leave out any opportunity to trash owner-friendly bills.

The only conclusion: They had already killed the bill in the Senate behind closed doors, even at the expense of the bills they promoted (SB 822 and SB 1498) and effectively killing SB 1706: “My Safe Florida Condominium Pilot Program”, a bill that would have helped many condo owners, especially retirees on limited income, to save their homes after the Senate in past sessions enacted the so-called Condo Safety Bills, leaving condo owners with huge financial liabilities.

This year’s Florida’s legislative session reminded me of the game the Congress in Washington is playing: The Democrats are voting against anything the Republicans want – and vice versa. Only here in Florida it’s the Republican-led House against the Republican-led Senate. Funny games played to the detriment of Florida’s citizens!

After the bill was killed successfully we now see many op-eds in media outlets where attorneys are speaking out against the bill, trying to claim that the bill was anti-owner, would have made litigation more complicated and expensive. Do you honestly believe that attorneys would oppose a bill that would help increase their profits?

Here is a quote from one of these op-eds, just as an example: “[We’re] going to avoid a lot of unnecessary conflict and chaos that usually happens when bills of this nature get passed without really being worked through....It would be great for attorneys, but I’m not sure it would serve the best interests of the people."

Others claimed that dissolving existing HOAs would have created more chaos: “What to do with all the common interest properties and the amenities?” Well, any attorney who is as smart as these attorneys normally claim they are, would have quickly realized that this option was not aimed at the recently built HOAs with lots of amenities and roads, but at the old HOAs with no roads or amenities, where the only reason for charging maintenance fees is managing the corporation with no real use for the owners. And there are quite a few of them especially in North and Central Florida.

But I understand the reasoning for writing these op-eds. These attorneys are trying to make it look like the bill may have been killed behind closed doors, but the killing was really in the interest of the owners, not the folks specialized in fleecing the homeowners. This is the way it works nowadays in our politics: Always let the public know that it all happened in their interest, even coming up with pretty stupid reasons. They know full well that some folks will believe it, no matter how stupid the claim!