- Condo Owner’s Rights – Most Condo Boards look more like totalitarian regimes than democratic institutions

#condo #condoboards #builings #Condolaw #ownersrights #condorights

There are condo boards of directors in Alberta that echo and practice similar governance models as the most famous worldwide totalitarian regimes found in places like Russia, Italy, Spain and China. The more time I spend researching and talking to condo owners in the province the more outrageous the problems. There are over 800,000 condo owners in Alberta, most of them are living in oppressive conditions in corporations they own but are completely controlled by a board of directors and property management company.  When you blame a board of directors for governing in a dictatorial manner are those seven people to blame? Or is it like chicken and the egg which came first, the dictators or did the owners gave up. Did the owners give up fighting the dictator who took over the board or did the dictator take over because the owners gave up. It depends on the corporation probably, sometimes buildings run very well for many years until someone gets annoyed with everyone or a new owner moves in and wants to take control and owners follow along or the new board puts up so many barriers owners have no choice but to submit.  A group of people in many too many cases illegally or illegitimately become board members and govern and manage the building in any way they want. There is no accountability because there is no fear of losing an election, they don’t lose elections because there are no elections. In some buildings owners just don’t vote, they don’t vote for their board, they don’t vote for improvements, they don’t vote at all because the board makes the decisions about everything, and this oppressive governing leaves owners feeling powerless.  

Behind these boards are poor property management companies who have ingratiated themselves into the board and the board makes very few decisions or moves without the property manager telling them what to do. Owners in these buildings are basically abused by their board and property manager. They email the property manager with issues, normal issues like someone punched a hole in the wall please fix it and they receive no response and no reply from anyone, and things never get fixed. Typical service from these boards and property manager is to ignore what they don’t want to deal with. When you ignore emails, it solves a lot of problems very quickly because this behavior is intended to teach owners how to behave. Ignoring emails tells owners which emails generate a response and which ones don’t, like Pavlov’s dog they train owners how to behave. When you receive no response to your email you will learn to stop emailing and stop asking and just live happily ever after. Owners learn to conserve their energy because nothing will happen until the property manager decides.

Democratic institutions provide for change -democracy allows its participants the ability to make changes when the majority needs to make change but bad condo boards have turned all the systems to work against owners. There is nothing democratic about these boards and they deny owners from participating in the governing of their own corporation. Attempts to change autocratic boards or remove unethical owners are met with hostility and in so many instances deceitfulness. They block certain rights with impunity.  Owners can’t get contact lists from the property manager. Those are the emails that just get ignored so owners can’t organize which is their constitutional right. I’ve heard about boards that won’t allow, and can you believe I’m saying, “won’t allow” owners to organize and talk to each other. They had their lawyers opine on whether owners could pass “gifts” to each other and basically banned owners from posting signs, passing notices or letters to each other under their unit doors. This is not legal, this is not acceptable and sounds more like a story from Nazi, Germany not a condo building in Alberta Canada.

These buildings have no community or sense of well being and are growing mental health institutions. These are the condo corporations that don’t even bother to follow the law. Their property managers are so poor they allow the corporation to endure not just the issues that occur when you don’t update bylaws but actual fire code violations, building code violations, high insurance rates, privacy act violations and when an emergency occurs due to the lack of maintenance oversite by the board the owners literally pay for their negligence repeatedly in special assessments.  In Alberta, condo boards as of 2020 were required to prepare and provide certain financial documents for the corporation and provide to owners. Many boards haven’t bothered to follow the law because what does it matter, there are no consequences. If boards are even aware of the new legislation most have not complied, these boards only do what they want to do when they want to do it. If it doesn’t matter to them then it’s not an issue.

The only way I believe we can make these boards accountable is for owners to be able to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the board of directors and property manager. If a buyer knew that the board did not hold open board meetings, if a buyer knew that the board was not following the democratic principals, or you are not allowed to enact change. Honestly if you knew what you know now would you still buy your condo? If someone had told you the board has not held elections in 10 years or owners can’t vote at AGMS, or the property manager doesn’t fix things and complaints to the board go unanswered would you have bought your condo? What is true, is that if there were two condos that were similar in aesthetics and one had a good board or a better board you would not have picked the unit with a weak board.

There are two things that will happen when buyers start receiving complete document reviews like Momentum has developed.  First, it will act as a check and balance on the board of directors, something that is severely lacking in the fourth level of government.  A weak board rating should be viewed the same way as a bathroom upgrade. You may lose the sale because the unit across the street has an upgraded bathroom, the bathroom you can see, what you can’t see is how bad the board is but Momentum can. Momentum believes in good governance and can also assist boards with establishing democratic principals. What condo corporations need is a good board where members do their own homework and the property manager explains and provides literature, educational materials on the topics and stresses the importance of the required documents and boards work together with all owners to govern successfully and democratically. Only good boards and we all have to work together to make this happen.