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Posted By CathyA3 on 11/14/2022 1:13 PM
I believe that when governing docs allow non-owners to be directors, these non-owners have some kind of (semi) professional connection to the community. in other words, they're serving because of their knowledge or professional position. For example, some years back we had a poster from NY who said that his community's PM sat on the board.
Speculating here, but I would imagine that whoever drafted the governing docs had something of this sort in mind. It's a whole lot different from allowing some rando who walks by to be on the board. In addition, a girlfriend would likely have the same conflict of interest issue that spouses would - girlfriend's interest here is her romantic partner, not the well being of the community. From the point of view of the association, she has no skin in the game and can walk away from her romantic partner at the drop of a hat.
It would make more sense to allow tenants to sit on the board - they've at least chosen to live in the community. But I haven't heard of any association that allows this (some do allow them to sit on committees, but not the board).
When we re-wrote our governing documents myself and the VP included the ability for a non-owner to be on the Board. Our reasoning for wanting this was unique to our situation. Our residents where on average close to 70 years old and we had many that were over 80. My neighbor was 98! They had no interest in serving on the Board and on 2 occasions we came close to not having the minimum amount of Board members needed. Our fear was that we would end up in receivership at some point. Many of our older folks have been there since the beginning which was 1981. As sad as this sounds the only way they left was by ambulance when they died.
We included the non owner clause to give future Board members a way of staying out of receivership. Both of us had mixed emotions on this but felt that it was needed especially for the next 10-15 years. Our units rarely went up for sale and it's going to take a long time for new younger buyers to change the demographics.