(Excerpt published in CAI’s Jan/Feb 2007 “Minutes”)

During my involvement in municipal HOA roundtable discussions with the Rocky Mountain Chapter of CAI HOA Council, I have noted that many boards are in need of a more positive approach to solve HOA issues. A board’s approach to handling homeowner issues can make a difference in a homeowner’s willingness to participate in meetings and community activities. It has long been documented by such notables as Napoleon Hill, author of Think & Grow Rich, Norman Vincent Peal author of The Power of Positive Thinking, and other motivational writers, that negative attitudes affect people in their ability to find successful solutions to issues.

Negative attitudes and the fear of failure can impede the ability of a board to find solutions to homeowner issues. A board’s defeatist attitude only increases the likelihood of problems escalating, meeting attendance diminishing, fewer homeowners getting involved in community activities and even more difficulty in recruiting board or committee members. In his book, Think & Grow Rich, Napolean Hill states, “Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or a greater Benefit”. Although solutions to issues are not always clearly evident, every problem has a solution. A Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) will allow you to see solutions when they become evident. Negative attitudes block the ability to see solutions right in front of you.

Dealing with homeowners and their issues is no easy task and has caused many volunteer board members to reconsider their involvement on their association boards. Dealing with homeowner challenges is only made more difficult when boards project a negative and defeatist approach to homeowners’ issues. Property managers need to avoid getting drawn into a board’s negativism which can easily be projected to the HOA’s owners when they call in with an issue. Once this starts occurring, it is not long before the relationship and attitudes towards the property manager and management company becomes adversarial. Eventually, the frustration will reach a point that board and management company will terminate their relationship.

What can management companies do to create a PMA in a community? Here are just a few suggestions that may help.

• Encourage the board to look at issues as “challenges” and develop a positive “can do” attitude.
• Encourage board members to deal with homeowners in positive ways. For example, if a resident is being fined the first time and shows up for a hearing consider waiving the fine. A little flexibility can go a long way in reducing an adversarial relationship between homeowners and their boards.
• Remind board members that for every problem there is a solution. By having a positive approach, they are more likely to find that solution.
• Encourage boards to have brainstorming sessions with their homeowners to find solutions to community issues. Allowing the homeowners to feel they are part of the decision making process can help reduce the attitude of board members against homeowners.
• Encourage negative boards to talk with positive successful boards. Another board may have more success in encouraging a board to approach issues using a more positive approach.
• In some cases, it may be in the best interest of the management company and HOA to terminate their relationship. Management companies can not effectively manage if a board is not willing to change its behavior and take a more positive approach to its challenges.

(Excerpt published in RMC-CAI’s February 2007 “Common Interests Magazine”)

For years, businesses have used Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) as a tool to help answer consumers’ questions regarding products or services. Community management companies and boards can use FAQs to help reduce the number of phone calls on issues such as snow removal and assessment increases. Boards can use FAQs to reduce the number of residents that show up at meetings with questions that can potentially turn a meeting into hours of complaining.

The community manager is in the perfect position to collect questions from residents through incoming phone calls and emails. Board members can get a sense of hot button issues when interacting with residents on a daily basis. Once potentially hot button issues are identified, the board and manager can start compiling a list of FAQs and answers. FAQs can then be used to defuse volatile issues that could negatively impact the upcoming homeowner meeting. The objective of FAQs is to address the issues before the meeting and head off residents whose only reason to attend is to complain and be disruptive. If you do not have time to mail out FAQs before the meeting, the board president and manager can address these issues in their reports at the beginning of the meeting and take some of the wind out of the complainers’ sail.

At a recent January meeting, following an assessment increase and several back to back blizzards, we were expecting to get hammered with complaints. Our management company had been bombarded by phone calls regarding snow removal. Board members had heard that some owners were complaining about snow removal and the recent assessment increase. These two topics could have potentially brought out a larger than normal number of residents and turn a normally tranquil two hour homeowner meeting into a stormy one.

Several weeks prior to the January meeting, a list of about a dozen FAQs and answers addressing both the assessment increase and snow removal concerns was put together. The FAOs were mailed out about a week before the homeowner meeting. On the evening of our homeowners’ meeting, the turnout was normal and, to our surprise, there was not one complaint about snow removal or questions regarding the increase in assessments. FAQs worked! Instead of a long drawn out volatile meeting with complaining owners, we were able to conduct business as normal. Homeowners who had intended to make a scene regarding snow removal and the assessment increase stayed home.

FAQs need to be tailored to each community, but here are examples of a few we used.

Q. When does snow removal start?

Ans. Snow removal will normally start when there are 3 or more inches of snow on the ground after it has stopped falling. If the storm appears to be large, the snow removal company will start earlier to get ahead of it.

Q. How much does each owner pay for snow removal?

Ans. Our snow removal budget is $25,000.00 per year. Each resident pays $62.81 per year or $5.24 per month. It currently costs the HOA $1000.00 per inch to remove snow. In a normal year, the HOA spends about $18,000.00 to $23,000.00 in snow removal costs.

Q.Since we had a dues’ increase why aren’t we getting better service?

Ans. Dues’ increases are to cover the cost of inflation for current expenditures, needed maintenance, and future projects (Reserves). Increases due to inflation do not necessarily improve or increase quantity or quality of a service or product. HOAs are not immune to inflation; therefore, the cost has to be passed on to its owners.

(Excerpt published in CAI’s November/December 2006 “Minutes” as “War Stories:Reform A Problem Board”)

When a board and community hit rock bottom they have no where to go but up. The rebuilding of a board and community can be very challenging in a community where most residents have given up.

Living in my community of 398 townhomes for almost 20 years, I rarely attended a homeowner meeting and spent many evenings with other residents complaining about the poor state of our community and ineffectiveness of the board. Our community was on a fast downward slide. Owners were leaving in record numbers and rentals were increasing. I had two options, move out or get involved. I chose the latter and soon became a regular at the poorly attended monthly HOA meetings.

After attending a few meetings, it was clear that board infighting and the board’s inability to work with the property manager were contributing to our community’s downfall. Bad boards make it impossible for a management company to manage. With the board and management company infighting, this community was easy prey for predatory contractors who did little more than submit invoices for jobs they did not do. Since I was one of the three residents who bothered to attend the monthly HOA meetings without a complaint, I was invited to join the board. Although reluctant, I realized that this was my opportunity to try to a make a difference in my community. After joining the board, I quickly realized that many of the board members did little more than occasionally show up for meetings and the board president was so overwhelmed with disgruntled residents, lawsuits, contractor problems, indifferent board members and maintenance problems that he was ineffective. I immediately started taking on tasks to help him out and successfully completed a number of them.

Within one year of being appointed to the board, I was elected as its president at the annual meeting. This was the first time I had ever served on a HOA board let alone serve as its president. I immediately laid out a plan to turn the community around and sought out community management educational opportunities which I found through CAI. Board members with negative attitudes were replaced with volunteer board members who wanted to make a difference and were willing to take on tasks. Within the first three months of becoming board president, monthly meeting attendance went from two residents to over twenty per meeting. We began receiving more compliments than complaints. By the end of my first year it was not unusual to have fifty or more residents attending a meeting with very few complaints.

We started having community events like block parties, game nights, homeowner appreciation dinner, etc. Residents began planting flowers and spending money upgrading their units. The rental rate has started to come down as more units are being purchased by people who want to live here. The atmosphere of the community over the last few years has changed from a depressive one to a very positive one with many residents taking part in community activities.

Contractors who did not perform were given an opportunity to perform or be replaced. Within the first year over half of our contractors were replaced with contractors who actually wanted to work.

I joined CAI and started taking educational classes. Eventually, I got a CMCA certification, a rarity for a volunteer board member. Several other board members, also, joined CAI and we all attend educational events on a regular basis. It is not unusual for board members to get compliments on a regular basis from residents and be thanked for all the work being done in the community. This turn around could not have been accomplished without dedicated board members, support from the community, the property manager, the management company’s staff and educational opportunities offered by CAI. Below are a few ideas that we used to turn our community around.

Don’t Be Afraid Of Failure. One thing for sure is that every event will not be successful. Residents would much rather have a board that tries different things than one that doesn’t try because of fear of failure. You just might be surprised at how much support you get.

Deal With Disgruntled Residents Before Meetings. One of the biggest turnoffs to residents who attend meetings is listening to the resident who comes with an agenda to fight and argue. Boards and their management companies need to deal with disgruntled residents before the meetings so they do not dominate the meeting. There is nothing that poisons a meeting more and reduces your attendance than to have an angry resident take control of a meeting.

Advertise, Post Notices, Mail Fliers, etc. Advertise, advertise, advertise….you can never advertise and publicize enough. No matter how much you do, there will always be those who will claim they did not know.

• Post notices on mail houses and bulletin boards
• Advertise in your newsletters
• Distribute fliers
• Use banners

Make Meetings/Events Exciting - Thinking Outside The Box. As a board, you need to try and get a sense of what makes your residents tick. This can be done through surveys or by trying different events to see what type of response you get from your residents.

• Don’t be afraid to ask your professionals to come and speak to your residents.
• Try to get residents to chair community events. This will give them a sense of empowerment.
• Combining your board meeting with an educational event like one of the following:
  1. Financial meeting - Invite your Management, Investor, Insurance Agent, etc…
  2. Safety and Security – Invite the Police, Fire Department, Security Company, etc…
  3. CCR, Rules Meeting - Invite your attorneys
  4. Invite your vendors to speak with the residents
  5. Contact your local home repair or garden shop to discuss home repair issues such as tiling, painting and gardening.
• Some community activities you can try are:
  1. Garage Sale
  2. Game night
  3. Community Cook Book
  4. Pot Luck
  5. Block Party
  6. Community Craft Show
  7. Magic show for children
  8. Single night, etc

Serve Simple Food. You do not have to spend hundreds of dollars, but serving simple items at your meetings can make it more enjoyable for residents to come since most meetings are held around dinner time. You may serve:

• Finger sandwiches, submarine sandwiches, pizza, etc
• Egg rolls, etc.
• Veggie, fruit plates
• Cookies, candies, etc.
• Non-alcoholic drinks, water, sodas, coffee, tea, etc.

Time Management. Everyone’s time is valuable and residents respect boards that effectively manage time. By keeping meetings productive and within a two hour time frame makes it more desirable for an owner to become part of the board. Here are just two suggestions to help reduce the time you spend on issues and the number of meetings:

• Using emails to conduct board business can reduce the amount of time spent on discussing issues at your meeting.
• Most Bylaws do not require monthly meetings. Conducting business via email can reduce the need for monthly meetings. Fewer meetings will encourage owners to join the board.

Meetings and community events can be a fertile ground to recruit future board and committee members.