Emergency building repair – building refusing to pay for it – advice?

Please remind me: are you on the board?

Otherwise, if a homeowner took it upon themselves to have common elements repaired, that homeowner may have an interesting time since that person has no authority to authorize such a repair. At the very least, the association's insurer may have Thoughts and Opinions.

In that homeowner's shoes, I'd be thinking more along the lines of throwing myself on the board's mercy and hoping that they agreed with me that the issue involved a genuine emergency - eg. a pipe burst in an upstairs area.

I did not send the demand letter certified mail, but I have already received a response, so I have proof it was received. Is that sufficient?

What do you mean “printouts of emails typically are not enough,” please? It’s not like I’m bringing (or relinquishing) my computer to the court, so printouts are all I have. If I can’t use printouts, what do you recommend I use?

That's right; you are not bringing your computer to court. What the courts require to prove authenticity of emails is much more involved and expensive. The reason for this is it is too easy to alter a pdf file or what have you that is supposedly a printout of an email exchange.

Just delete nothing from your server.

You can google on the topic of:

"emails" "evidence" "court"

and get some understanding of what is involved. I will say that emails (for one) as potential lawsuit evidence has resulted in a powerful weapon to harass. Today one of the first letters an attorney, close to filing suit, writes to the adverse party (the HOA in your case) is to do xyz to preserve all emails //on the server//. If the HOA does not preserve all emails, and the plaintiff can prove it purposely did not do so, it's big trouble for the HOA. It's complicated.

I do not know what proof you have of receipt, so I cannot opine (as a layperson who reads a lot) about its sufficiency if this goes to small claims court.

Given your HOA size, to whom did you send the bill and your request for reimbursement? I assume a director? Would it make sense to send another--certified mail- to a different director?

I live in a condo building too so also know how quickly water intrusion must be handled, so you did, imo, the right thing. The other three unit owners should be thanking you!

We've seen here that Terri has a lot of expense with small claims court. But perhaps your board will vote to reimburse you at its next meeting.

There's a big difference between damage to pool/deck, and damage to residential units's interiors. Liz says her action deterred damage to their units.

I agree it's a common area problem so the "association" is responsible to correct it. But, according to Liz no board members were home. If her building is like my condo building, only the Fire Dept. or the Water Dept. can turn off the main valve from the City to the units. Liz wrote it needed to be "fixed immediately," so we can assume water was flowing fast, not trickling. Interesting question, though. How was City water turned off, Liz?

Again if this was a water leak, then she should have contacted the water department or whomever is responsible for shutting off the water. Once that is done, THEN you work on addressing the repairs necessary. You STOP the emergency. It is going to be an inconvenience until a decision can be made. However, it is NOT up to you to decide for ALL what that is. No one is at home, then that means NO ONE IS HOME to make a decision. It may mean you have to go to a hotel till they come home to address the issue. If that is the case, then you can ask for hotel stay to be reimbursed by insurance or HOA.

One day I woke up to find my power line from my house hanging low across the street. I called the Utilities department to come fix. It turns out they disconnected the power line from my house completely. Wound it up and hung it on the pole. Told me I had to get the issue fixed and inspected on my side before they would reconnect. It took me 2 days to get with my insurance company. Another 3 days to find a contractor. It was 14 hours of work re-wiring my house. Mind you it was 100 + degrees, 4 dogs, and no power for a week! This was an Emergency repair.

Emergency happen. You prevent the damage making it worse. After that you have to deal with the ramifications like it or not. Plus in a HOA your NOT alone dealing with it. You alone can't make the decision for many. You all have to take the time to figure it out together.

I can see the rest of your HOA dragging their heels in paying. Mostly because you did take the situation into your own hands. Did not give it the time for them to respond. It's like someone crashed into their car while they were out. You decided to call a tow company to remove the car. Send them the bill. Who asked you to move their car? Plus they may know someone who has a tow truck. The point is that you don't jump into action in a HOA without consideration for others. Which from all your posts seems you really don't have that for others.

Perhaps I should have said "assume email is forever".

That's the point: email account holder doesn't control the action and can't rely on deleting their emails or even their accounts. It will depend on what actions the ISP takes after this, and when. I am deeply skeptical of law enforcement's ability to track stuff onto the dark web. But just because you have no evidence that your data has been stolen doesn't mean that it hasn't been (it probably has and is being sold and resold by the bad guys).

Being the cynical type, I also believe that the authorities' and experts' success at retrieving emails is directly proportional to the stake they have in the outcome and inversely proportional to the ISP's interest in protecting its turf. Yes, I understand what the law says. Nevertheless...

And lord knows what AI is going to do with it all.

I agree HOA owners, directors, officers and managers should assume that their deleted emails can and will be retrieved if a dispute lands in court.

Avoid long email exchanges.

The emails prove that she attempted to contact the board members for what sounds like a true emergency and that they did not respond.

Cell phone records are often used in a similar fashion.

Exactly Cathy... Follow that logic... Shows that they did not respond. That means there was no decision made on how to handle the situation. Which includes if she gets reimbursed or not for contacting a contractor.

The HOA has a right to make an informed decision whether or not it is on your timeline. You reached out. Mitigated more damage by shutting the water. That is where you STOP. Otherwise you end up in this situation.

Do you have enough details of what the emergency the OP is stating? The timeline? The circumstances? I do not have enough details to judge if the OP had to take the actions they did.

How do we know the board members were not home due to vacation? Work? Out running errands?

That has been what been saying the whole time before people just jumped in with take them to Court and fish for emails.

Even with the emails and records it just proves the HOA did nothing wrong by not immediately responding. It shows why they did not and they did not agree to repairs.

So keep telling the OP they have a case by having them prove the HOA has one against them.

Air rushes over head... The facts presented so far is the OP wants reimbursed for paying a contractor for an emergency repair. The HOA is not paying them back.

For some reason the advice has been to take the HOA to court and find all corespondence as proof the HOA did not do their job.

As far as I know about responding to real emergency situations in a HOA one does not take matters into their own hands. They stop the emergency by example calling fire department for a fire. They do not decide to rebuild the house because no one took a tion in their opinion.

Did you simply notify or get responses of approval?


From the other owners or ????


How quickly did all of this happen?

One day, a week, an hour?

Probably because not giving her the answers she wants to hear. Or we not doing what the good book says ..

That made things clearer. Not sure it was a HOA issue as much as insurance. No wonder the others did not respond. It was just your unit. That did not make it an HOA emergency. It made it yours. Which you stopped some how. Should have called your homeowners insurance company. They would tell you if or if anything fell onto the HOA side. It may been an insurance to insurance thing.

No. It was just your unit inside the others. You own your unit.

Sewage pipes owned by building. Sewage pipes blocked. Sewage backed up into my unit. Sewage responsibility of building.

Can’t make it any clearer than that.

Melissa, you are all messed up. Liz is asking for reimbursement for the repair made to the common area sewage system.

Liz, just ignore her. She digs into untenable, nonsensical positions all the time. She never owns even the most blatant, easily confirmed mistakes and typically continues to make the same mistake.

Melissa's only HOA experience is with SFHomes, so she's generally outta her league when she tries to advise about condos. You did ask he when she was an HOA prez. Let's see iff she replies.

Sigh! It's a four unit condo. The repair was to common property. The insurance that would pay is the condo insurance not individual owners' insurance. The Board should submit a claim to the insurance and get paid then turn around and reimburse Liz.

Have you never heard of this before?

How dare a volunteer take vacation. The HOA money is EVERY members money. It is not just the board. They may write and approve the checks but only on the other members behalf. I am sure if someone else did this you would question it and ask why they get reimbursed.