Risk Management

The Fair Housing Act may prohibit racial discrimination, but a surprising number of community associations’ deed covenants still contain racial restrictions — and some of your clients could be among them. With civil rights a mainstay in the media since the death of George Floyd in May 2020, associations with such restrictions should take action…

Pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug Administration are hopeful that a vaccine against COVID-19 will be available in the coming months. As that date nears, some of your clients, particularly those with older populations, may start wonder if they can — and should — require residents to be vaccinated. “People aren’t thinking about it…

Short-term rental arrangements continue to plague community associations, with owners and powerful lobbying groups for companies like Airbnb constantly devising new tactics for avoiding restrictions. “With Airbnb and those platforms becoming such a huge percentage of rentals,” says Jennifer Biletnikoff, a shareholder in the Naples, Fla., office of Becker & Poliakoff, “we’re going to see…

When community association boards of directors get frustrated with “bad owners,” some turn to defamation lawsuits to rein them in. But is that an effective strategy? Our experts and two recent court cases — one out of Texas and the other New York — shed some light. Trouble in Texas The Texas case stemmed from…

Community association managers can help prove their worth by prompting their clients to tackle an issue many probably haven’t considered — continuity planning. Almost every association and manager have certain board members they rely most heavily on, often long-standing members with impressive amounts of both institutional and practical knowledge. What happens if one of those…

It’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month — are you, your employees, and your boards of directors aware of community associations’ risks from phishing attacks? If not, or if proper precautions aren’t taken, your clients and their owners could lose control of their confidential information. And the risks are even higher if you have staff working from…

A federal Court of Appeals recently ruled that a community association manager wasn’t a “debt collector” for purposes of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), which strictly regulates the conduct of general debt collectors. But managers shouldn’t take too much comfort in the decision because it left open the possibility that the result might…

We're willing to bet that very few of your clients' budgets are on track for 2020, and figuring out how to adjust and plan for 2021 is complicated. “We’re looking at all those odd pieces, the additional costs associations have borne since March,” says Paul Grucza, director of education and client development at the Seattle-based…

The owners in a Kentucky subdivision came out on the wrong side of a court case over their use of their property for short-term rentals. Although the community association wasn’t involved in the litigation, the ruling sheds some light on the arguments associations can expect when trying to block short-term rentals in court — and…

We're willing to bet that very few of your clients' budgets are on track for 2020, and figuring out how to adjust and plan for 2021 is complicated. “We’re looking at all those odd pieces, the additional costs associations have borne since March,” says Paul Grucza, director of education and client development at the Seattle-based…