Trash Collection and unpaid dues

MY HOA is thinking of adding trash collection for the community, but we have about a 12% delinquency rate. We can't really direct the trash company to not take the trash of non-paying residents as it turns into a hazard for all of us. But I have reservations about footing the bill for non-payers. Can anyone who has this service included provide advice on how to handle this?

How is trash service handled now? If everyone makes their own arrangements or the city or county takes care of it (and people pay for it through taxes), it might be best to keep things as they are Until the delinquency rate goes down.

Actually, I think that may be the best option because it's too risky for responsible homeowners to suffer because of the deadbeats. There's a community down the street from mine that has a common water meter, and a few years ago, They nearly lost it because the delinquency rate was over 50%. People came home one evening to find disconnect notices on their doors and all help broke loose.

They had to cough up the money to the tune of several hundred dollars per house within two weeks or so. I don't know what happened after that, but I suspect people found out who the deadbeats were and a lot of them ended up losing their homes.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. Right now, each homeowner selects and pays for the trash company of their choice. I think the board president feels pressured to provide more services to the community, since the perception of the neighborhood is "we pay dues but get nothing." Which isn't true, because several common areas are cared for and we have a playground. Plus we are aggressively funding a reserve fund due to a community center that will be built.

This is accurate.

If owners feel like they get nothing for payment of their assessments, help them understand what their money is going toward. I previously created a breakdown for owners that showed what every dollar of their monthly assessment went toward. Breaking it down like that makes it more tangible and understandable in my opinion.

Depending on community size and proximity of homes, there are definitely some positive aspects of having all owners on the same schedule for trash/recycling pickup as well as likely significant savings or all if a single trash hauler is utilized. However, since it isn't currently setup that way, making it that way could be challenging (will need to do the above). And then there is still the issue of delinquent owners still not paying their fair share.

I agree with Augustine. You can't just add services in a HOA. It's like adding pest control services. That is all and good to provide it for the common areas like clubhouses but not necessarily individual member's homes.

This service has to be part of your provided services the dues are to pay for. The HOA is ONLY funded by it's members for it's members. This has to be agreed upon to be something everyone pays for with their dues. You ALWAYS have to factor in the coverage of people not paying. We usually factored in a 10% in our overall budget.

Plus it's time to set up a policy of when the HOA liens/forecloses for unpaid dues. Ours is 6 months we lien. 1 year we CONSIDER foreclosure. Foreclosure is a stop the bleeding act not a money making one.

We added trash pickup in my community. In my view, the main reason for doing it was as a service to the owners, since the per-home group rate charge was noticeably less than the individual charge. The other advantage was that trash collection occurs only one day a week rather than multiple days (depending on how many companies in your area provide service).

As noted, the disadvantage is that you'll have less leverage over the delinquent owners. We don't have much of an issue in that area, but it always annoyed the heck out of me when I was on the board. If delinquencies are an issue in your community, I would recommend not going that route since the association itself benefits little from the change (wear and tear on streets would be the big one if your streets are private).

Our trash collection (single family homes) is done weekly by one company on the same day and is paid for by each individual owner. Owners can also, at no charge, bring their own trash to county recycle company. I could not see us adding paid for by the HOA unless we raised dues which I doubt would pass.

While I understand the potential rationale, I do not believe adding a service like trash pickup, requires a change in CCRs.

In my opinion, you should think about the decision to cancel trash/recycling services a lot harder. Understood that docs may not indicate it's HOA's job to provide trash pickup; however, that is how it's always been done. As I alluded to and as other posters mentioned, having one provider service the entire neighborhood has several benefits:
- Reduced cost for each owner (usually significantly reduced).
- Less wear and tear on your streets, less noise and disturbance, less oil and hydraulic fluid leaks (all these trucks leak) because only 1-2 trucks each week as opposed to 1-2 per trash company.
- Pickup is on one day as opposed to potentially every day of the week (there will always be trash/recycling bins lining the streets).
- Trash/recycling bin uniformity as opposed to every different company's size and color bins.
- Only a single company to deal with when problems arise as opposed to several.

Budget reductions are great . . . but trash/recycling pickup is something that just about everyone needs. HOA would be cutting the $11k bill, bit it would be transferred directly to each individual homeowner and will likely double. Owners will be double-annoyed because you're canceling something that's always been that way and worked (I presume) and then their overall bill is going up.

Our CC&Rs and Bylaws already provided for including utilities in the monthly assessment. Water was included from the get-go (because condos), so adding another utility didn't require any changes.

Also, our Bylaws include a statement that including utilities in assessments may provide an unfair advantage to some unit owners and an unfair disadvantage to other unit owners. That's certainly the case with water, where people living alone subsidize the families, but not so with our trash pickup since it's a flat fee per unit. But I think if you're going to change your CC&Rs to allow inclusion of utilities in assessments, you should include a similar statement just to cover your bases.

Our docs state. "To pay for water, sewerage, ............ and other utilities and expenses as shall be designated by the Board."