Senators from both parties and experts from various fields gathered to tackle the Florida condo crisis — but warned struggling owners that there is no silver bullet for rising costs and that deadlines are not likely to be extended.
In fact, Senate Democratic leader Jason Pizzo underlined that owners, including those of the collapsed Surfside building, should not be surprised by the state of affairs. They could even shoulder some of the blame by not tackling issues until it was too late, he told WLRN.
“We went 30 years without doing anything, and all of a sudden we're shocked and surprised that we're gonna have an expensive sort of wake-up call of tough-love measure?” he said at the event in Broward.
Pizzo and Republican State Senator Jennifer Bradley joined forces on Tuesday to host the 2024 Condo Summit, at Florida Atlantic University’s Davie Campus. The event came after the state legislature refused to convene a special session this year to address the issue.
The state legislature passed a series of laws in the wake of the deadly 2021 Surfside condo collapse aimed at making condos safer. These laws in combination with rising insurance premiums have resulted in huge increases in HOA fees and special assessments for condo owners across the state.
The state requires associations to keep financial reserves that could be used for future building repairs, but had allowed HOAs to waive that responsibility. When the new laws went into effect, that loophole closed, and associations scrambled to fill their reserves, leading to rising costs for owners. In response, condo sales have plummeted as owners try to offload their units to avoid higher fees.
Pizzo said that the goal of the regulations is to give owners a clear snapshot of the structural and financial health of their buildings. He also intimated that some of the burden for the increasing costs is on the owners of these condo units.
“I have sympathy, but it doesn't rise to the level of empathy,” he told WLRN. “Surely you had a home inspection because you probably got financing, and it told you about the appliances, and the condition, and the useful life remaining, and all of these things… you did this for the interior of your unit, but you didn't do it for the building that your unit is sitting in?”
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He even invoked the Champlain Towers tragedy as an example of owners who should have done more to ensure their building was safe.
“The 98 people of my constituents who died in Surfside, are they partly to blame for not asking the tough questions that put themselves in peril? Probably. I don't know,” he said.
Surfside is in Pizzo’s district.
Despite Governor Ron Desantis making a public call for a special session this year, the issue won't be discussed in the legislature before the regular session that convenes March 4, 2025.
“Lack of a special session is not a lack of importance of the issue. There was not a game plan, there were no proposals put forth that were vetted,” said Bradley, “This is number one on our mind, and you don't have a special session if you don't have a bill to pass or solutions to implement.”
The summit hosted discussions featuring industry experts from a wide variety of fields who were able to voice their concerns on the state of condominiums in Florida. This included financial advisors, HOA representatives, and risk management experts.
“I wanted every professional from all the different industries across disciplines that affect condos to come and share what's on their mind, what they are seeing on the ground in terms of implementation, and offering solutions of ways that we can do it better,” said Bradley.
Some of the concerns voiced by those experts included the increased frequency of 100 and 250-year storm events due to climate change. Also noted was the Florida Building Code regulating the storm readiness of windows, but not the tracks the windows sit on, which could allow water to damage buildings.
Bradley said that legislative solutions could focus on insurance agencies, claiming that a majority of the cost increases condo owners are facing are from rising insurance rates.
“I think that they solve themselves together. When you harden the building, when you make sure that the building is structurally stable and doesn't have deficiencies, then you will find that your insurance rates go down,” she said.
But any solutions are not likely to include extension on deadlines for reserve funding and structural work. Pizzo said he is not willing to do so because of the safety risks associated with the aging buildings.
“I will tell you that we're doing a disservice — and a dangerous one at that — if we just continue to push deadlines back without justifying why,” he said, “Father time can't be slowed down and mother nature is undefeated.”
Pizzo and Bradley both said that the issues facing condo owners would need continued bipartisan cooperation to be solved.
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