Articles

The Fair Housing Act's ban on retaliation applies not only to prospective members who claim to be victims of housing discrimination, but also to anyone who helps or encourages alleged discrimination victims to pursue their rights under fair housing law. Those provisions protect employees from adverse employment actions—such as being fired, demoted, or harassed—for opposing discriminatory practices or advising aggrieved residents to contact fair housing agencies.

If your association is considering amending or passing a lease restriction bylaw, be sure that there's no possible discriminatory reason for the passage of the bylaw. A valid reason can include concerns about property values, since members tend to take better care of their units and common areas than renters do, or because lenders are sometimes reluctant to offer mortgages to new buyers buying into a community with a high rental rate.

Facts: A condo association filed a construction defect lawsuit against its developer. The developer asked the court to move the lawsuit out of court and order the association to arbitrate the claim. Arbitration, a form of alternative dispute resolution, is a legal technique for the resolution of disputes outside the courts, wherein the parties to a dispute refer it to one or more persons or “arbitrators” by whose decision they agree to be bound.

An association in Oregon has filed a $3.2 million lawsuit against the federal government and other previous owners of the military camp that preceded the community, citing asbestos contamination. The association says it discovered asbestos material in a six-acre site where demolished military buildings were buried. The government purchased the site in 1942 for use as a U.S. Army combat engineer training camp.

Recently, a Montana mixed-use condominium association board voted to amend its governing documents to specifically prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries in the community. The association had sent out a survey to its members regarding medical marijuana in February 2010 asking the owners of the association how they would like to address medical marijuana and its place in the community. In that survey, 73 percent responded, with 72 percent in favor of prohibiting medical marijuana dispensaries in the community.

In last month's issue (Aug. 2010), the Insider explained how to identify when the brick façade on your building needs repointing work. Repointing work is the chiseling out of old, worn mortar between bricks and having it replaced with fresh mortar.

Facts: An association board had determined that it would be in the association's best interest to completely restate the association's covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CCandR) to bring the documents up to date with current law, delete obsolete developer references, and clarify ambiguous provisions that had caused confusion.

A civil rights trial against an association in Plymouth County, Mass., accused of discriminating against three Jewish members has ended in a settlement. A jury awarded the members $600,000 for the violation of their civil rights and an additional $150,000 for nuisance. Together, with interest, the judgment is in excess of $1.2 million. The families claimed they were subjected to anti-Semitic acts, including hate mail and the painting of Swastikas on their garages.

Automatic fire sprinkler systems with antifreeze solutions have had more than 60 years of successful use in residential and commercial buildings. However, a grease fire in a kitchen where a sprinkler system deployed with a reported 71.2 percent concentration of antifreeze raised concerns about the safety risk of antifreeze solutions in residential sprinkler systems.

On July 6, the final amendments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) rule went into effect. These amendments added new requirements to the relatively new rules that went into effect in April of this year and were discussed in detail in the May 2010 issue of the Insider.