Your article “Deadly collapse shines light on Florida’s condo politics” (Report, July 12) very clearly articulates the built-in tendency for stalemate within the collective decision-making required in condominium communities.
That persistent tendency to inaction takes on special urgency when the consequences of inaction are dire, but the timeframe for the hazardous outcome lies in a vague future.
That appears to have been the case in the collapse of Champlain Towers South. The chronic stalemate could perhaps be mitigated if a core issue of the underlying financial model of condo ownership is directly addressed — singular unit ownership within a shared physical structure.
Because each unit is separately owned, each owner is responsible for their own unit-based mortgage and property tax payments, in addition to their share of common charges. Common charges are intended to cover ongoing maintenance and routine predictable capital improvements such as driveway repaving or exterior repainting.
As difficult as addressing those matters can be, the model breaks down entirely in the face of extraordinary capital expenses such as the ones needed to avoid tragic outcomes.
Presently the only recourse for a condominium is to assess individual unit owners for their share of the full cost, no matter how great. Contrast that with a co-op building. In the latter case residents own shares in the corporation that owns the building, not their individual units. Faced with an extraordinary capital expense the co-op corporation is able to obtain a mortgage on the entire property to finance the needed work. In essence co-ops can effectively finance major capital expenses at far lower overall cost than can be done when collective capital improvement finance relies on unit-by-unit financing.
New forms of condominium finance alone will not change the perennial internal politics of decision making, but they can go a long way to making the ability to act less costly and, perhaps, avoid more such tragedies in the future.
Elliott Sclar
Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning
Co-Director, Center for Sustainable Urban Development, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, US
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