Article Courtesy of NBC
Channel 6 Miami
By Alyssa Hyman
Published February 12, 2022
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WATCH VIDEO |
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Neighbors who live in the Hammocks, a large southwest Miami-Dade community, are
up in arms. They say their monthly association fees will increase
astronomically.
“They’re basically
pricing people out of their homes,” said resident Alan
Chevel.
Chevel and his Cedar Landing neighbors are bracing for a
major monthly hike in their HOA fees.
“We have a budget and if I cannot pay it, I might lose my
house,” said Sara Faroy, another Cedar Landing resident.
Their subdivision is in the Hammocks. And starting March 1,
the Hammocks Community Association will be increasing their
monthly fees by about 300% from what they’ve been paying.
"This is more or less
a working-class environment,” Chevel said. “People making
ends meet. And to do something like that, to strap all the
residents here. It’s not only unfair, it's unscrupulous.” |
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Association Attorney Hilton Napoleon, Esq.
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The amount does depend on which part of the Hammocks you live in.
For Cedar Landing residents, for example, they’ve been paying $84 a month.
Starting March 1, that will increase to $340 a month.
“They didn’t raise the
association fees for seven years, so they’re basically
catching up to where they should have already been,” said
Hilton Napoleon, who represents the Hammocks Community
Association.
“The increase, number one, is to make sure the association
is maintained,” Napoleon said. "People were complaining
about the maintenance of the association.”
He says that includes everything from landscaping and tree
maintenance to maintaining all of the recreational
facilities on the 3500-acre property.
He says the Hammocks directly manages about 18 of its 44
sub-associations. So communities like Cedar Landings, he
says, saw both the neighborhood and mast assessments
increase.
“You can’t get a sub-association and a master-association
for $80 a month, that’s not feasible. They had to increase
it,” Napoleon said.
Yudany Fernandez, who also represents the Hammocks Community
Association, also sent NBC 6 a statement regarding the fee
hike. |
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Chaos ensued after residents who showed up at The
Hammocks community association office to vote were turned away. NBC
6's Marissa Bagg reports.
WATCH
VIDEO
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"Assessments are the only source of income for the community, and as living
expenses increase, so do assessments," Fernandez said in a statement in
part. "Additionally, the high number of delinquent owners compounded with
the increase cost of living, resulted in this increase. Unfortunately after
reviewing the cost of services required to maintain the association, the
Board of Directors had no choice but to make this challenging decision in
order to meet the obligations of the community."
There’s still a trust issue for some in this community.
“I’m very concerned with how the voting went down,” Faroy said.
It comes after residents say they weren’t allowed to vote in the board
elections earlier this year.
“The election monitor wrote in his report that it was chaos outside, so much
so, that people were banging on the door and making threats,” Napoleon said.
"And that point in time, the board made a tough decision to halt the
election process and count the ballots that were already cast.”
Napoleon says residents were encouraged to vote by mail because of the
pandemic. He says COVID protocols caused the in-person voting to move slowly
that night and says some residents showed up with the intent to protest.
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