Living in a condo community means dealing with a board of your peers who are not professionals
Who is to blame when the board is out of hand? When buying an industrial loft or condo, your lender will want to see the books to ensure the building owners’ operations are on the up and up. The rules and resources of the community board provide the insight you can use to ensure your condo or loft purchase is going to be a good move. Look carefully at the minutes and interactions residents have with the board members. A Smart building board will hire a professional property management company to handle the day-to-day operations and budgeting of funds for repairs and operations.
A condominium, cooperative, or homeowners’ association elects a board for a specific purpose: to manage the community’s day-to-day business, oversee special projects, and draft and uphold the rules and regulations that keep life orderly and harmonious. Don’t forget these are just regular people with no special skills or experience. Once elected, they gain life and death powers, as seen in the recent Florida condo collapse tragedy. In fact, the board has an inflexible fiduciary duty to act in the community’s best interests as a whole. The question of whose best interest is being acted on leads to most of the conflicts seen in litigations and disputes among stakeholders and residence of a community-owned building.
This means that boards have an obligation to stay consistently on the side of good, advocating for residents and promoting neighborly well-being – and most boards do just this. Unfortunately, however, boards are made up of humans, and humans are wildly fallible. Having sampled even a morsel of power, some find themselves starving for more; oftentimes, other less malicious folks simply make mistakes, and rather than correct them, keep on stumbling down a wrong path. #entarlovesyou
Once the board crosses over to the dark side, it can mean serious consequences for not only its members but every owner or shareholder in the building or HOA. Infighting, backstabbing, loss of funds, declining property values, and even legal consequences may well ensue if the ship isn’t righted. Attorneys caution that it is better to be proactive rather than litigious with your board, a court case would be expensive to prosecute and yield uncertain results. #industriallofts
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In the sad and gruesome tragedy of last week’s canine emergency in which a pit bull attacked a small dog in the elevator of Lincoln Heights condominium building Alta lofts, an adorably lovely little pooch suffered a broken jaw and loss of an eye. #altalofts #pitbull
No puppy deserves to experience the living nightmare of a pit bull attack.
While the pup is expected to survive, the horrifying puppy screams shall not quickly be forgotten by the writers of the L.A. Loft Blog. Some residents of the spacious loft building have attempted to sweep the matter under the rug, while a few have called for banning pit bulls and similar breeds, labeling them fighting beasts that are not fit to be pets (they’ve said similar unkind things about the owners of pit bulls). Others have reacted by attacking the victim and the messenger. The purpose of this post is to discuss the dangers, and thus help end up with appropriate solutions so that little loved ones are protected, gentle giants are given proper attention, and dangerous animals are handled with appropriate precautions. #hoa board
The easily preventable recent mauling happened after the L.A. Loft Blog warned of the looming danger a year ago (read Pit Bull Lofts article from March 6, 2018). The pit bull owner, homeowners and their HOA board responded incorrectly then, ignoring or attacking the messenger instead of taking preventative action.
Most condominium associations do not allow pit bulls, and many prohibit all large dogs over 50 lbs. Virtually all condominium homeowners associations prohibit large dogs with aggressive behavior problems and a history of dangerous activities by the dog or its owner. Some members of the Alta lofts HOA homeowners association board have downplayed the urgency.
Regarding the proven danger and extreme legal liability of injurious pit bulls at the normally nice Alta lofts: It’s very interesting that Alta HOA CC&Rs specifically require indemnification. Usually, there is usually no indemnification without a signature specifically agreeing to the indemnification. And even with a specific signature authorization, indemnifications are often tossed out in California court. One board members dismissed the idea of a prompt solution by calling it “complex.” But for every other condo building in the area, it’s not so complex. For Alta lofts, “Dangerous” is a much better representation of the truth. Based on L.A. Loft Blog research, there is every reason to believe that Alta HOA insurance simply DOES NOT COVER PIT BULL INJURIES. Indemnification will not protect Alta homeowners from the guilt of injuries/deaths. Indemnification most certainly will not protect small pets and children. Indemnification will not protect Alta homeowners from all large damages involving pit bull owners with shallow pockets. The fact is that the homeowners and HOA board have been dragging their feet for more than a year on this safety issue. After a serious attack, immediate action is absolutely appropriate. The board members are not acting in homeowners best interests when they fail to disclose liabilities, and then attempt to obfuscate and keep the homeowners unaware of the extreme risks of this very unusual and precarious situation of living with actively injurious offending pit bulls in a California condominium building.
Unfortunately for owners of the stylish industrial conversion live/work residences at Alta, the mauling of a puppy by a pit bull is only the latest bloody icing on the deadly cake. The three most tenured HOA board members were recently subjects of a very rare recall vote after they were accused by many residents of breaching fiduciary responsibilities. The subject board members were then accused of throwing the election by ordering their chosen ballot company to stop accepting votes before a quorum of votes could be received. This unheard of drama came on the heels of a homeowner petition that successfully reigned in the three board members after they concocted a pro-harassment rule for the purpose of increasing legal threats against Alta homeowners in a community already beset with excess litigation. The three clinging board members have squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars of homeowners money to prop up their own paltry power rather than having proper safety rails built onto the hazardous rooftop where two young ladies nearly fell to their deaths.
Upon any crisis, there are almost always new opportunities to learn, heal, grow and prosper for those who are eager to do so. While dog owners have primary responsibility, homeowners and their HOA boards often face ultimate liability for damages that relate to their rules and lack of enforcement. When board members chant that all woes are the fault of others, even a pit bull attack is somehow an opportunity for the three to attack the victims and the messenger. Until Alta lofts community experiences a big change, no healing can be felt.
The three board members still attack, defame and litigate against their critics while ignoring and obfuscating the most dangerous conditions of any condominium in L.A…. a never-ending construction site around homeowners doors, windows and walkways; a blind eye to a rooftop with the extreme deadliness of double unprotected 6-story drop-offs, and a set of active, injurious puppy-munching jaws roaming Alta lofts today.
Let’s hope that this article encourages the simple changes that can turn around the “complex” situation for Alta lofts residents. Residents who own small dogs are counting on the community to exorcise the demon of “Might Makes Right.” Leading area loft real estate specialist Corey Chambers shares his opinion on the subject, “We expect all dog owners, homeowners and HOA board members to respect and protect ALL residents, no matter how ‘small’ they may seem.” Chambers is a long-time resident and small dog owner at Alta lofts.
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