The Homeowners Association Act applies to communities and horizontal property regimes requiring homeowners to pay assessments. The law requires governing documents to be filed, provides certain meeting notice requirements and access to association budget and membership lists. The law also requires Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) to collect specific data on HOA complaints, compile and share it with the Governor and the General Assembly each year.
AbstractThis article is based on a year‐long fieldwork in Florida. It examines an institutionalised structure involving the common property managed by a homeowners association where dispute resolution mechanisms are in demand. The ethnographic case materials describe a legend of the resident manager, a legal battle, over the board election, recurrent problems with the limited commons, and mentalities of volunteers. The field research reveals the embedded disharmonies of and ongoing disputes over the management of the commons as viewed from a perspective of legal anthropology.
Under the slogan of 'weiquan' (defending our rights), homeowners in urban China are increasingly prepared to stand up for their rights of ownership, often through non-confrontational actions organized by homeowners' associations (yeweihui). There is also a growing concern for the need to create collective platforms on which homeowners' associations can support one another, muster their collective resources against powerful developers and lobby for status as legitimate organizations. The activists involved in this work are well aware of its political sensitivity in a regime that is antagonistic towards autonomous organizations, which are seen as posing a threat to its hegemony. Based on a case study in Guangzhou, this paper traces the tactics that housing activists have employed to create horizontal cooperation among homeowners' associations to defend their rights and devise 'boundary-spanning' strategies that exploit divisions within the state apparatus. The Guangzhou union of homeowners' associations can be regarded as an experiment in organizational infrastructure which has far-reaching implications. This study sheds light on the complexities as well as the institutional fluidity of state-society interactions in contemporary urban China. (J Contemp China/GIGA)
Performance of Russian homeowners associations (HOAs) could serve as a litmus test for the Russian societys capacity for self-organization. Efficiency of Russian HOAs is gauged in the paper by using the stochastic frontier technique. The variation of obtained performance indexes reflects observed HOA successes and failures. HOA are shown to be a superior alternative to municipal management of common property in residential housing only if there is a sufficient stock of a special kind of social capital - technical civic competence - in the community of tenants. Lack of social capital and insufficient competition between management companies prevent Russian HOAs from fully realizing their potential.
ABSTRACT This case is based on a series of actual events in a local homeowners' association (HOA). Instructors teaching fraud detection in their courses often use historical cases in which the "answer" to whether fraud has been committed is known. This case is unique because it is based on real incidents that occurred in an HOA. The case starts with the inception of the HOA up to the present, at which time the situation is still evolving. Students are required to recognize the conditions that increase the potential for fraudulent activity in an organization. Then they must analyze the activities in this particular association to identify the "red flags" that indicate that fraudulent activity could occur. Finally, students must develop recommendations to mitigate the identified risk areas. After completing this case, students will be more aware of potential and actual incidents of fraudulent activity and be able to address how these incidents can be prevented. This knowledge will benefit them in any area of accounting they choose to pursue. This case can be used in fraud examination, auditing, accounting information systems, and financial accounting classes. Data Availability: Data available from first author.
