What to do about HOA Board (Los Angeles, CA) that is not holding meetings and violates CC&R and Davis-Stirling?

Hi,

We are an association of 48 townhomes (condo) located in Los Angeles, CA.

For over 2 years (basically since I purchased my property) our current Board is not holding any type of meetings (no board meetings neither annual meetings), violates CC&R, By-Laws and Davis-Stirling. We’ve tried to call a special election through petition but failed to get quorum (we got only 40% out of 50%+1 required, only 19 homeowners out of 48 sent their ballot or showed up).

Interesting enough it is not possible to get a quorum because we have an “evil circle”, that is we have currently 2 board members that won’t show up, another 3-4 homeowners that have “special privileges” (get “discount” on their dues etc.), few previous board members that are afraid of their own violations too, so we have coalition of about 9 homeowners (that is already 20%) that are involved in illegality one way or another. And as most of you already know activity overall is low, so basically getting a quorum I would say is not possible.

I won’t get into details of big violations like spending over 5% of our budget on single repairs w/o event having a board meeting and notice, but will say that I personally sued them in Small Claims court for not releasing records and won the case and got judgment. Additional to that I filed a complaint to Department of Justice Attorney’s General Office too.

Now my question is…
How can responsible homeowners (I am not the only one concerned) actually resolve this issue and get new board elected?
I’ve heard that we can ask judge to remove quorum requirements?
Isn’t there some government agency (state or federal) that can actually get involved and help us?

Please note that talking to board is not an option simply because they didn’t pay their dues for a long time and if change happens they will owe a lot of money, so holding elections is not in their interest.

Any advice will be highly appreciated.

Thanks

Board members must be in good standing... Which means they have to be current on their dues. If they are not, they are likely no longer officially Biard members. You should check your CC&Rs for Board duties/requirements. Do you have a property manager? If so, they should be enforcing CC&Rs and Davis-Stirling.

I am also in Los Angeles (South Bay). We had the same problem. We took the HOA to small claims court to get records. We were able to get some records, but not all.

I wrote this article.

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/cms/story/detail/constitutional_condo_conundrum/11328/

We eventually moved and they still haven't fulfilled judgment.

I'd like to see a bill formed and passed that would put the government in charge of prosecution instead of requiring members to foot the bill. It was very expensive and they still didn't have open meetings.

I'd really like to start a campaign on getting the legislature to pay attention. No one should have to go through what we went through.

If you won a judgment there are other papers you might need to file if they don't release the documents. You can contact me via the Pasadena Weekly.

JJM

Had same problem with a previous Board at my complex. The problem was if I didn't foot the initial legal bill to go after them in court then I couldn't do anything. I tried everything I could including small claims and basically I was just ignored. One the claims I won in small claims they claimed their property manager wasn't authorized for certain things that the judge ruled on and said take us back to court if you want. The only way it was resolved was when the president short-sold his home and the VP moved off the property. We then spent over a year and 10K fixing things that went wrong on the property.

This needs to be a legislative resolution that requires boards to meet etc... at least every 3 months. If a Board member misses any 2 they are immediately removed from the Board by law and can't serve on future board for 1-2 years. Just one of my many ideas to clean up roque boards.

How can you have 48 homeowners and no property manager. How does anything get done? Painting, trash, grass, roofing, leaves!
Our P M does everything but wipe our noses , of course, it costs, but saves neighbourghly battles

We have 130 homeowners and no property manager.
Things get done because there are dedicated volunteers.

Hay

Well, things like trash, grass etc. are easy, company does it.

Statements like this are a renter mentality. Sorry, but this statement shows you may have little to no understanding of how things operate other then you do not like how they are done.

David...would you be interested in trying to get the legislative bodies to do something? I have written emails to all my reps, but have yet to receive a reply.

I also wrote an article. I think something needs to be done, but the more persons making noise together, the more likely we'll get attention.

Anyone else interested?

David

JM posts enought links to her newspaper, articles, agenda, etc. Easy to figure out who she is and contact her. Even I know her name and how to contact her.

JM10 - I just request friends through FB - we can have private conversations if you want to continue the discussion.

ScottP9 - I will really appreciate your help.

Based on the feedback on the forum I will be sending letter to DoJ Attorneys General office (which I already did and got a letter form them asking for more details), will Cc it to BOD as well as association attorney. Then I am thinking to wait untill DoJ responds, which is usually 30 days after they send letter to me and to the board. If there are no actions taken by the board I am thinkin about taking BOD to Small Claims Court again and asking judge to grant $500 for each violation (so far at least 8 I can count) and removal of whole board. Does this sound about right?

This is amazingly oddly similar to what we our plight. I have yet to figure out a way to convey our very complex situation, in a concise way. We purchased our condo in 14 unit building in 2003. A couple of years into living here we knew that things were suspicious with the HOA, but didn't have the information or time to investigate. Over the years we have endured many leaks and numerous toxic mold problems. In 2011, we helped over throw the board. We didn't have the time to serve on the board, but we befriended a new resident who agreed to play the role of president. She (the new board president) handed over all of the documents that hadn't been already destroyed by the old dictatorship (to us). She didn't know what she was doing, and we ended up doing most of the work for her. About 2 years later she became power hungry and corrupt, and decided to sue us. Recently we decided to run for the board and this is the letter we sent to our fellow homeowners. The letter better encapsulates or conflict..

"Dear fellow homeowners,
I am writing to inform you that I am a candidate in the upcoming Homeowners Association election. I feel compelled to run for the board, given the numerous grave issues facing each owner in this building. A number of you are new to our building, and may have been surprised by the Special Assessment's recently levied to fix a range of issues (plumbing and electrical...etc). I am sure that many of you have not been informed that these problems have been ongoing, for the past 22 years. Homeowners have been charged thousands of dollars to fix the same issues, only to have the same problems reoccur.
We were largely uninformed as to the scope of issues until we were sued, last year, by some who claimed to constitute a board of directors but have since disappeared. We have lived here for almost 13 years. Throughout this time we have had more specialists in our unit than you could imagine, trying to assess the sources of leaks and black toxic mold. In August 2014, the source was found to be a cracked building pipe in the common area which serves multiple units, and was not properly maintained. In the upcoming weeks, we will be sending you additional details about this lawsuit. We will also share information about a building defect lawsuit that we recently discovered. In 2001, the HOA received a hefty settlement, which was to be used to fix the building’s myriad of problems. It was in the process of preparing our defense that we became acutely aware of how systemic and ongoing these problems have been. Past boards failed to adequately address building issues, which has imperiled the long term value of the homeowners’ assets.
The reality is that past boards shifted the responsibility to pay for repairs from the association to homeowners. These homeowners were blamed for common area defects, and unfairly made to pay for those repairs. We passionately believe, that enough is enough! If elected, we agree to not be involved in decisions related to the lawsuit against us. We should collectively demand a board that is willing to address ALL building issues in a thorough manner.
I have researched the entire history of our building. Amongst the many things we have concluded is that the most important issue is that we have an actualized communal plan, and NOT the same old self-serving cronyism and pocket-lining that has plagued us for years. We would love to join forces with our fellow neighbors to actually remedy all of our fundamental issues. We want to be a board that prides itself in honesty, diligence, and transparency. We vow to act in the long term benefit of ALL homeowners.
We encourage all of you to consider voting for us. Feel free to call us and ask us any questions, large or seemingly small."

Needless to say, we haven't had a board meeting to vote for an actualized board in over 3 years. The two other prior board members have soiled our reputation by stating that we are crazy, and have been instructed not to speak to us. Our attorney recently quit, and we need someone to help us. These rogue HOA's need to be stopped! We would love to connect with anyone that can please give us insight.

Yes, Izabelle, but please make your post much more succinct.. We do have a couple of fine folk here who reply to l-o-n-g posts like yours, but some of us just don't have the time to to read them.

Hello,
Having major problems with our current BOD doing what they want, creating rules as they go along. - just doubled the yearly fees, for instance!) I will sign and contact anyone to bring a legislative changes to end the dictatorial permissiveness of HOA BOD!
Michele
in Shasta County (up North, lol)

Michele,

There are several things you can do, but I agree with Tim that you will need other members of your community to support you in order to succeed.

You can indeed take them to court individually in case if they create rules that go against your CC&R, By-Laws and Davis-Stirling. More, usually such boards tend to do many more violations, like not holding elections properly or not providing financial statements on time etc. But in general this road is kind of long and won't be very productive, though you can keep suing them and even getting them fined.

So the best thing is to get together with other homeowners that are not happy (I guess there should be plenty when their fees are just being doubled and request a special meeting of the membership to recall the entire board. Davis-Stirling clearly regulates this and you can get more information using following link:

http://www.davis-stirling.com/MainIndex/PetitiontoRecall/tabid/1353/Default.aspx

If you will need an assistance I will be more than happy to help you out and provide sample petition.

Hope this will help you to resolve your issues.

Hayk