RESPONSIBILITY of HOA MAINTENANCE of COMMON AREAS & ELEMENTS

Consider this Hypothetical HOA Maintenance Issue: A Home Owners Association has a board member who is insisting that unit owners who choose to, should be allowed to clean their own unit’s vinyl siding. (A former board regrettably had granted him permission to clean a small area on two units which had an accumulation of algae and the cleaning left a noticeable shadow.)

The board has scheduled cleaning for the entire building siding next year but this board member is insisting that the HOA allow individuals to wash their own to save money. The board has denied his/her request, but, he/she is not giving up.

Why homeowners should not be allowed to perform their own maintenance:

If the HOA board decrees unit owners should not maintain building exteriors, that is the way it is. The common elements belong to ALL unit owners jointly which is why Home Owners Associations have the responsibility to do maintenance and repairs, not the individual unit owners. In addition, there are both risk and quality control issues when individual owners are involved.

Whether he/she is convinced or not, bottom line, the board majority has spoken and he/she needs to respect that decision. Part of serving on the board is respecting “majority rules”. If he/she continues to undermine the board, he/she will be ostracized from the process by the other board members and lose his/her ability to make a difference.