In article ,
Hell Toupee wrote:
The HOA has checked with a lawyer and since the HOA pays the water
bill for everyone, it is apparently legal for the HOA to turn off the
water to someone who owes money.

And this is wrong because...?
(Personally, I think enabling deadbeats is wrong. But that's just me.)

Because they aren't turning off the water to the people who the money.
They will be turning off the water to people who rent from the people
who owe the money.

First, this might open the HOA up to considerable legal trouble, if any
of the tenants have children, or are elderly, or are disabled.

Second, suddenly turning off the water can make the units uninhabitable,
so the tenants might have to go spend time in, say, hotels, until the
HOA and the owners work things out. A tenant could quite possibly, with
a decent lawyer, force the HOA to pay for that hotel.

Basically, in dealing with the owner, the HOA has to take reasonable
steps to mitigate damages to innocent third parties (such as the
renters). If they do not, they are asking for a legal reaming.

The claim that it is not legal for the HOA to warn the tenants is bogus.
The only basis it might have is that since the dispute is between the
owner and the HOA, there is a privacy issue in telling the tenant that
the owner isn't paying the bills. However, think about that--when the
water gets shut off, the tenant is going to find out that the owner
hasn't been paying!

The HOA doesn't have to tell the tenant that the owner is not paying his
HOA dues. All they have to do is tell the tenant that the water bill
has not been paid, and that water service will stop in N days. The
tenant can then tell the owner to pay the bill. If the owner doesn't,
the tenant can pay it, and withhold that amount from the rent. (After
checking the exact details of the law for this in his state, of course!).

Net result: HOA gets payment for the water bill, the tenant keeps water,
and the HOA isn't opening itself up to legal action from the tenant.

Since the HOA dues appear to cover more than water, there will still be
some owed by the owner. The HOA can put a lien on the place for that.

--
--Tim Smith

Tim Smith wrote:
In article ,
Hell Toupee wrote:
The HOA has checked with a lawyer and since the HOA pays the water
bill for everyone, it is apparently legal for the HOA to turn off the
water to someone who owes money.

And this is wrong because...?
(Personally, I think enabling deadbeats is wrong. But that's just me.)

Because they aren't turning off the water to the people who the money.
They will be turning off the water to people who rent from the people
who owe the money.
....

Of course, the HOA doesn't know whether the landlord has passed on the
obligation to pay the association fees to the renter, either, so
there's the other possibility that the renter _is_ the scofflaw...

But, I agree w/ your assessment overall -- particularly the "can't
notify" strawman is totally off the wall imo. The HOA can't demand
payment from somebody it has no legal relationship with, obviously,
but the "heads up" can't be based on anything other than a misreading
or overly conservative interpretation of a rule/statute imo...

"dpb" wrote in message

Of course, the HOA doesn't know whether the landlord has passed on the
obligation to pay the association fees to the renter, either, so
there's the other possibility that the renter _is_ the scofflaw...

Nope. The renter has no obligation just because the landlord and he agree.
The member/owner of record is legally bound to pay.



The HOA can't demand
payment from somebody it has no legal relationship with,

Exactly

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:02:48 GMT, Norminn
wrote:

mm wrote:

Why don't you call the city and ask them?


I don't think I could find someone who could answer the question.

But I did post to misc.legal.moderated, and I'm reviewing the one
answer I got so far. It's moderated so it takes at least two days to
et an answer.

If they meant it was a violation of a criminal law, I could call the
prosecutor I guess, but they probably mean it's a civil wrong, and no
one at the city is going to want to answer such a question.

A judge might know the answer, but he'll want to hear both sides of
the case in a hearing with witnesses. But I don't think he would
talk to me at all. His secretary will tell me to consult a lawyer.

I think the customary way to learn how to run a HOA or condo assn. is in
learning from mistakes! Typical board members are those who want to
control every detail to conform to their own idea of what is "right",
and go overboard in rules enforcement...generally are poor planners and
make issues "personal".

We have two like that, at this time counting the management company
rep. The reaosn one is not defeated is that she is also willing to do
work that really does have to be done, year after year after year. I
certainly have other things to do, like read and write to Usenet.

I would NEVER approach an owner to ask about overdue fees or
assessments, no matter what .. that makes it personal. Your management
company can send a letter, certified mail, whenever there is a

That's how we do it.

delinquency or rules violation. The cost can (or should) be added onto
the amount due. That matter should be in your bylaws. A HOA is not a

That's how we do it.

club, it is a business. In Fl., condo associations are "corporations
not for profit" (usually) and are governed by rules pretty close to
those for corporate boards in business.

There is very little HOA law in Md. Last I looked maybe 8 pages, and
that included the annotations (case decisions). The rest of it is
standard corporate law.**

If your units have water meters, why is the HOA collecting the fees? If

They don't.

they don't have meters, why not get them?

A lot of money to install them after the fact. Digging up, cutting
into plumbing. Residents don't want to be without water. Putting in
new grass and maybe repairing sidewalks because many valves are under
plates in the sidewalk. None of this applies when the houses are
under construction.

In addition, and probably most important in fact, the agreement 29
years ago was that every unit pays the same. That includes the
apartment building, where no one has a yard to water and fewer people
on average per unit than the average house. So less water used for
everything.

Even though I don't water my lawn, and I live alone, I only pay 11.66
a month for water. I gather that is very cheap. If I had a meter, I
would pay more, plus all the wasted effort reading about 400 meters of
all the units involved. (The water bill is going up this summer,
because Baltimore City is going to charge Baltimore County 15 or 20%
more for water. It was in the paper.)

It's like when there was a draft, the army couldn't force you to have
surgery so you wouldn't be 4F anymore. But if you chose to have the
surgery and ended up 1A, you might be drafted. A lot of people
postponed their surgery until they were over 26.

Then the city can collect and
shut off the water if not paid. Too many other things to **** about
than to go for years with unpaid bills )

I was sleepy today, but this week I hope to check on why placing a
lien and foreclosing hasn't collected all t he money owed.

It's not because the Board is nice to people. I think they are
usually verging on heartless, so I'm getting more and more curious why
they never afaik foreclosed. Generally just starting to is enough to
get the money. Or telling them about the one house that was
foreclosed on.

Not even because some people don't know they need to move to someplace
cheaper, and aren't willing to sell their house, but because there are
thousands of dollars of extra charges when the court does it.


**(The HOA once had a lawyer who once gave me an answer based on condo
or coop law, but he called an hour later to say he'd made a mistake.
No harm done. I had called him on the phone, so he was not in our HOA
mode. It's not like he was at one of our meetings and forgot we were
an HOA. Next time I call someone, if I ever do, I will remind him
that we are an HOA, but this time I had just called to remind him when
our big annual meeting was, and meant only to talk to the secretary,
but I got him instead and he asked me something and I ended up asking
him a legal question. That's was the basis on which the other board
member accuse me of "illegally going to their lawyer" This is
probably libel, and accusilng someone of a crime, in NYS at leaset if
not in Md, iirc entitles one to damages even if he can't show actual
damages. But I didn't sue anyone. I didn't even bother to tell him
what he had done wrong. I only asked him if he was accusing me of a
crime.

When I had called the lawyer's office, it's true that I identified
myself as a board member, but that was accurate. I didn't say the
board had asked me to call. I wanted to know a detail about the
proper format for an election proxy (if it had to name the candidates
to be voted for if it could be blank and the proxyholder decided who
to vote for at the last minute.) I think it is not out of bounds to
ask that question of the HOA lawyer, but that isn't why I called him.
I called him to remind him to come to the meeting, which he himself
had insisted on doing, but it turned out he had the wrong date. I
wanted him there to make the election run right, but I only intended
to talk to his secretary.

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:05:59 -0400, "Brian V"
wrote:


I would be VERY cautious doing this. Here is MA it is illeagal for water
or electricity to be shut off if there are children, elderly, terminal or
special needs people in the homes or properties. If any of these apply to

I should have asked about this last night. Certainly no assurances
were made that no one was in this situation. Kurt, they are sending
one more letter, certified and regular, to the 7 and maybe even to
people who only owe as little 115 or 230 for more than 3 months. (and
they must be still applying the liens or you're right, people who
stand to get away without paying a thousand dollars or two would just
do without water for a couple weeks until they can sell the house and
skip.)

(They don't want to be a paper tiger anymore, so I said they should
send different letters to people who owe a lot and those who owe a
little, because surely they won't disconnect people who only owe 115
dollars, but maybe that's what they plan to do.)

Even when it's not explicitly illegal, I think people and an HOA can
be liable. One of the things I've found surprising about tort law is
that it's not quite covered by the Constitution's exclusion of ex post
facto laws (which is [mostly or entrirely] about criminal law anyhow).
That is, there is a law that people, are responsible for their
negligence, but courts decide after the fact what is negligence and
what isn't. Because there is an endless number of ways to be
negligent and no one could list them all in advance. Even though
normal people can disagree about what is negligence and what isn't, a
respondent is stuck with what the jury or judge decides.

any of the tennants the HOA could be in for a whole world of hurt.
Was it a written vote? If not, I would demand a written vote just to
simply cover your own bacon.

That's a good idea. It wasn't a hand vote, but the secretary is very
diligent about writing down who voted nay. She won't even eat during
the meetings because she'll miss something. I'm positive she has the
count, and pretty positive she has my name, but I will call her and
make sure my no vote, and the other guy's are specified.

I highly doubt that the HOA would have the authority to turn off a
tennants service regardless what the lawyer says. Their purpose is to "make
the community a better place" not act as a jail keeper. Why not contact the
local water company, building department etc and ask them? Once they flip

I think that's a good idea in that it would be a lot easier to get an
answer than from the water company than a judge. Because, they'd
probably disagree with me but i think the water company must have
fewer issues and fewer legal issues.

Well, I called the water company, and even though I started with the
Baltimore County number, I got referred to another number and midway
in the conversation I found out she was giving me Baltimore City rules
and didn't know about Baltimore County (which doesn't overlap the city
at all.) so she gave me to her supervisor, who said they could not
disconnect an individual house. They only disconnect where there is a
meter, and we all share one meter. Even though there are individual
valves. So she didn't know anything really about this. She did say
that multiple homes sharing one meter is not unusual at all, and
sometimes they arrange to bill based on the number of people living in
each house. I would save a little if they did that, but then we
would have to have a PPHMC, a Person Per House Monitoring Commission,
and that would be bad.

the valve without the proper due-dilagance ramifications could be huge.

The board has XX and YY insurance (Negligence and Malfeasance? No,
something that sounds nicer than that), which they called upon 20
years ago when I sued the HOA. I was pro se against a real lawyer but
did pretty well anyhow.

But in an extreme situation, the damages might exceed their insurance.

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:29:49 GMT, Norminn
wrote:

clipped

I also stopped meeting or at least remembering neighbors and I know a
lot of my favorite people moved away. But I found tonight that one of
the nicest people, who I get along with enough to call her a friend,
was on the board most of the time I wasn't. I'm going to ask her
about this.

Monthly meetings in a HOA of that size are likely a waste of time,

I guess so, but under the current system, I think the president is too
unchecked. Of course she was unchecked under the monthly system too,
but we found out about it sooner.

unless the board members like ****ing contests over rules violations or
adding amenities. If you don't go to meetings and/or take your turn at
being a board member, you are part of the problem )

I don't think that people have a duty to either go to meetings or be
on the board. Those who do serve on the board have a duty to do their
jobs right, if it doesnt' require excessive time. Most chores require
about the amount of time one would expect.

The best solution is to acquaint yourself with owners who might be
willing to be on the board and recognize the function as a business
operation, not an opportunity to control everyone and everything. In
Fl., board members can be PERSONALLY liable for ignoring their fiduciary
DUTY as board member! If you have years and years of delinquent water
bills, the board has been negligent...it is their duty to collect funds
owed to the association.

We have never stopped trying. We have a lawyer, who is admitted to
the bar and empowered to go after them. So the Board has not been
negligent. If anything, I think they are too invested in getting the
money back. Maybe a couple have pressing financial needs, but I think
it is more their personalities.

In article ,
mm wrote:
people who only owe as little 115 or 230 for more than 3 months. (and
they must be still applying the liens or you're right, people who
stand to get away without paying a thousand dollars or two would just
do without water for a couple weeks until they can sell the house and
skip.)

Isn't it going to be hard to sell a house without water? A sensible
buyer is going to want to try all the sinks, flush all the toilets, turn
on the shower, run a cycle of the dishwasher and the washing machine,
etc.

And if the seller explains that the water was turned off due to lack of
payment, the buyer is going to wonder

(1) if there is any lien on the property due to this, and

(2) if the seller has also neglected other payments, like taxes.

--
--Tim Smith