Entire HOA board resigns after outrage over vote ordering each homeowner pay $60K assessment in Florida

Residents of a homeowner's association in Florida forced the entire board to resign after they voted to make each townhome owner pay an extra $60,000 special assessment.

The HOA sent letters to residents of the Villas of Carillon in Feather Sound telling them that they would have to come up with $60,000 in order to fully fund the maintenance accounts required by the state.

'There will be a lot of people that lose their home ...'

Florida has increased funding requirements after the harrowing collapse of the Champlain Towers in Surfside in 2021 in order to make sure multi-family residential complexes have enough money to pay for proper maintenance.

However, there is a dispute about whether those requirements apply to Villas of Carillon and whether the HOA board needed to make such a massive request from the 165 townhome owners.

"There is a difference between being 100% funded and funding your reserve requirements for the upcoming fiscal year 100%," said Patricia Staebler, a certified reserve specialist based in Sarasota, to WTSP-TV.

"I've been doing this for 15 years. In my entire reserve specialist career, I have not seen an association which is 100% funded," she added.

According to her reading of the law, the HOA was not required to demand 100% of the funding up front from the owners.

"Nobody needs to be 100% funded, that is overkill. And again, that is not the intent of the law," explained Staebler.

In addition to that confusion, the new rule applies to buildings with three stories or higher and may not apply to the townhomes at Villas of Carillon, which are only two stories tall.

On Thursday, more than a hundred owners filled a Hilton ballroom and forced the HOA to postpone the vote for the assessment based on a technicality in the rules.

That evening, they received an email indicating that the entire HOA board had resigned.

Had the assessment been voted in, some owners said they might have had to sell their homes.

“There will be a lot of people that lose their home either they have to sell or they can't make these payments. They'll have a lien put on their house, foreclosures. I'm concerned about the overall community,” said Tammy Rodeffer, an owner, to WTSP.

Feather Sound is a census-designated area in Pinellas County of about 3,600 people.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!