Marijuana Odor

Smoking is allowed in the unit. Therefore, unless she can provide proof that someone is smoking in the common area there isn't much to act on.

We've hd a couple of these complaints abut such odors in our halls. The PM put flyers under the doors that might be involved and requested that the users prevent noxious odors from entering the common areas. We do have a "noxious odor" clause, but a nuisance clause could be used too.

(This is NOT the same as a loud TV that bothers one neighbor.)

How many units does this corridor serve?

Smoking is not the only way to ingest marijuan so to forbid smoking it is not discrimitory.

If the problem persists, the board could make rule that no smoking is permitted at all even in units. This is becoming common in CA and we just made such a rule for our 25-story high rise. Presumably with 15 units, your residents wouldn't have to go so far to light up as our upper floor residents do.

I hope this is the way things are going. I won't buy a condo, rent an apartment or buy a home near anyone who smokes anything. I like a drink now and then so I can understand marijuana users, but only up until any extensive use (call it what it is: addiction) starts impacting the enjoyment of my home. In which case I consider them turds.

OK, so this is a condo, correct?

You don't want to live in a house/condo with an HOA, but you are president to protect your investment in the one you are in?

It's debated ad nauseam. For my money: I know it when I see it. Potheads are addicted. Sorry to offend. Truth to power: I could be the next addict of whatever.

From the New Yorker, January 7, 2019 by Malcolm Gladwell:

As the National Academy panel declared, in one of its few unequivocal conclusions, “Cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk."

Berenson thinks that we are far too sanguine about this link. He wonders how large the risk is, and what might be behind it. In one of the most fascinating sections of “Tell Your Children,” he sits down with Erik Messamore, a psychiatrist who specializes in neuropharmacology and in the treatment of schizophrenia. Messamore reports that, following the recent rise in marijuana use in the U.S. (it has almost doubled in the past two decades, not necessarily as the result of legal reforms), he has begun to see a new kind of patient: older, and not from the marginalized communities that his patients usually come from. These are otherwise stable middle-class professionals. Berenson writes, “A surprising number of them seemed to have used only cannabis and no other drugs before their breaks. The disease they’d developed looked like schizophrenia, but it had developed later—and their prognosis seemed to be worse. Their delusions and paranoia hardly responded to antipsychotics.”

Messamore theorizes that THC may interfere with the brain’s anti-inflammatory mechanisms, resulting in damage to nerve cells and blood vessels. Is this the reason, Berenson wonders, for the rising incidence of schizophrenia in the developed world, where cannabis use has also increased? In the northern parts of Finland, incidence of the disease has nearly doubled since 1993. In Denmark, cases have risen twenty-five per cent since 2000. In the United States, hospital emergency rooms have seen a fifty-per-cent increase in schizophrenia admissions since 2006. If you include cases where schizophrenia was a secondary diagnosis, annual admissions in the past decade have increased from 1.26 million to 2.1 million.

Yes, condo. It was my first time buying a property. When I bought the place, the board was comprised of 3 owners who all lived in the building, and the meetings were well attended. When a board member moved, I was asked to step in and become HOA president, and I was given the impression that it was kind of expected that people take their turn to serve, so I did it. Everything continued to go well, meetings were attended, people were engaged etc. In fairly quick succession, two board members and one of the more active owners sold up, and their units were bought and then rented out. We also have a couple of units which aren't rented, but used as part time properties. We're now in a position where the owners who live in the building are all refusing to serve on the board as they've already done it before, and aside from one, the owners who rent their units out are absolutely disinterested in doing attending meetings, responding to emails etc, and the only two other owner occupiers are completely unsuitable for board membership. The board is comprised of me, and two owners who don't live in the building, one of whom I've never actually met in person.

I'm at the point where I am serving 100% because I don't want the association in receivership. We're in a situation where many of the owners just fundamentally don't understand the idea of a community, and seem to think the board should continue to serve indefinitely, while they shouldn't even need to attend meetings or do anything aside from complain, usually about costs related to limited common elements. So yes, I'm keeping the ship afloat until I can leave, and I won't buy in an HOA ever again.