By Rich Pollack
Condo associations in coastal south Palm Beach County and their residents could soon see a temporary reprieve from costly, state-mandated deadlines if Florida legislators meet before the end of the year and revisit legislation some say was passed too quickly.
Following the lead of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a couple of local state representatives say something must be done soon to ease the burden of legislation that was quickly passed in the wake of the June 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers condo in Surfside.
“We did the best we could under duress and now it’s time to revisit it,” says state Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman. “We need to create a new set of guidelines and timelines.”
In addition to addressing the looming deadlines, Gossett-Seidman and Rep. Mike Caruso say there might be a limited amount of money available to help condo associations through another round of the My Safe Florida Condo program, which was piloted with $30 million last year, to help with hardening against hurricanes.
They also believe that it might be possible to get Florida’s Division of Condominiums involved in helping association leaders navigate a complicated set of regulations and to help eliminate rampant confusion.
“We took an 80-year-old problem and tried to fix it in a year and a half,” Caruso said. “Now tens of thousands of fixed-income seniors may be at risk of being homeless due to large assessments from condo boards.”
While there has been some skepticism among leaders in the Republican-dominated legislature that lawmakers could be brought back to Tallahassee before the end of the year,
Republicans Gossett-Seidman and Caruso are optimistic.
The two have been discussing the issue all summer with their mostly Republican counterparts whose districts include many condominiums, said Gossett-Seidman, who represents Highland Beach and Boca Raton.
Perhaps the biggest challenges facing condominium associations stem from two pieces of legislation enacted after the Surfside collapse.
“We might have reached too far in our attempts to safeguard Floridians,” said Caruso, whose district includes South Palm Beach, Lantana and most of Manalapan.
Both pieces of legislation have deadlines at the end of the year.
One requires buildings over three stories that are more than 40 years old to complete milestone inspections that examine structural integrity.
Required repairs from those inspections have proved costly and have led to increased assessments for many buildings already wrestling with astronomical insurance rate increases.
One fix Caruso said he would like to see is a prioritization of repairs so that condos would have more time to fix problems that are not considered urgent.
The other challenging legislative mandate is that condo associations each complete a reserve study by the end of 2024. That study looks at projections of when repairs will need to be done on major items — a roof repair, for example — and how much it will cost.
Associations that don’t already have all the reserve funds to cover those costs will be required to include those items in their 2026 budgets and have at least a portion of that money set aside before the end of that year.
For example, if a condominium roof will need to be replaced in five years at a cost of $1 million, the association will need to have at least $250,000 set aside for the project by the end of 2026 and then collect at least $250,000 a year for the remaining three years until the replacement is needed.
Caruso says that could translate into assessments that crush seniors on fixed incomes, and it needs to be changed.
“The laws have got to be adjusted because people just can’t get the money available in these time frames,” said Emily Gentile, president of the Beach Condo Association of Boca Raton, Highland Beach and Delray Beach.
Although the ideas that are surfacing are welcome, Gentile would like to see the state provide low-interest loans to residents and associations to help cover the costs.
“An older building with people who bought into it to retire is going to need money because its residents don’t have money to rebuild the building,” she said.
Low-interest loans from the state are unlikely because of the large amount of money that would be required, which Caruso says the state doesn’t have.
Instead, he is suggesting an increase in the My Safe Florida Condo funding to as much as $500,000 for repairs beyond hardening.
Caruso and Gossett-Seidman say that getting the state Division of Condominiums involved to support condos could help eliminate some of the confusion boards face.
“Right now there’s nowhere for condo boards to go if they have an issue, questions, worries or misunderstandings,” Gossett-Seidman said.
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