Assessment Payment – withholding them
Hi Dennis
I am wondering what rights an HOA member may have with regards to withholding assessment payments, or portions of that assessment amount. As I understand it, the association has the right to place a lien on property if payments are not made, but we have a situation that I believe warrants some level of statement to the people in charge. Our words of complaint and our offers to assist on the property tend to fall on deaf ears. We have major leaks in our irrigation system, an issue that has been present for many years. The current landscaping company is on their way out and an new one is to start soon. In the last month or more, the current company has been slacker than usual and has let leaks linger, wasting gallons of water every day. These have been reported by multiple people, multiple times, to our CM, yet they have still not been fixed – one has not even been investigated and it is a major leak! So, we, the owners, are paying in triplicate – we pay the management company, then we pay the landscaper, and we pay an inordinately high water bill – a situation that I believe lies squarely on the CM/Management Co, and, ultimately, our BOD.
So my question is how can the owners make the most impactful statement that we are tired of paying, paying, and paying without putting ourselves in a bad personal financial situation via a lien?
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Rhonda,
NEVER CONSIDER FOR ONE MINUTE THAT NOT PAYING ASSESSMENTS IS EVEN AN OPTION FOR YOU OR ANYONE. Every homeowner is unconditionally obligated to pay their assessments as charged. If you want to challenge the validity of your assessments, you are free to do so in a court of law after the fact. But you must pay your assessments first. The ability of the association to collect that debt is practically unlimited and you could very easily owe more that 10 times the delinquent assessment in no time at all.
If you are unhappy with the way the associations board is handling your finances and the upkeep of your community the most impactful way to address that is to respectfully raise your concerns to the board at either your annual members meeting or any board meeting during the year. The more you have other people in the community express similar concerns the more likely that the board act on those comments. If they refuse to act to address your concerns, then initiate and circulate a petition to recall the entire board. That usually gets their attention, but not always. Work to organize and inform your community of your concerns and of the need to replace the board to finally get action. For any recall effort make sure that you have viable candidates to fill the board positions if you are attempting to recall a majority or more of the board.
Dennis
This is what I thought you would say! Thank you!