This blog is going to make a lot of people angry and perhaps a lot of people thinking I did the right thing, but here we go…..
The tragic collapse of the Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida occurred on June 24th, 2021 killing 98 innocent men, women and children. I was there a few days later staring at mounds of rubble and thinking that entire families were buried under there. Little kids. Babies. It was too much.
The following year, The Florida Legislature then went into session and I certainly assumed there would be new safety laws passed that ensured a collapse of a building never happens again. I certainly assumed there would be some legislation passed that would require the funding of reserves as I have begged The Florida Legislature to do in the past. Instead, not a single new law was passed. Nothing. I was absolutely stunned.
The day after The Florida Legislature went home, I drafted an overnight letter to Governor DeSantis telling him that his own party (that controls everything in Tallahassee) threw him under the bus. By not making a single new law, The Florida Legislature spit in the face of the 98 victims and their families and that if another building fell on the Governor’s watch, his political career was finished.
I had the honor of being on Jim DeFede’s TV show and trounced The Florida Legislature for in effect, ignoring the tragedy and ignoring the possibility of future collapses. Of course, we blasted away on the Condo Craze and HOAs radio show.
Low and behold, the Governor called The Florida Legislature back into session, under the guise of fixing the insurance crisis, but the condominium safety laws were created instead. Now we have mandatory safety and inspection laws and finally, mandatory reserves.
I’m not saying it happened because of me. I’m saying that I pushed hard for these new laws because it was simply unconscionable to allow things to stay the same after Champlain Towers.
I know that as a result of these new laws, it will be financially difficult for some people. For those people, all I can tell you is that the dollar figure you were always paying for assessments each month was a fake figure, an out an out lie. To those people who live in a 55 and over condo and thought that it was silly to put away money each month for a roof you may never see in 20 years, you gout unlucky I guess……YOU LIVED.
The truth is……..this is the fault of The Florida Legislature for allowing developers to build beautiful condominiums and sell them with fake budgets that did not include reserves. You were never forced from the beginning to put away money for reserves each month. Had condominium budgets always been required to include reserves we would not be in the financial straits we are in now.
