SURFSIDE, Fla. – Deadlines are looming for hundreds of thousands of South Florida condominium owners. Skyrocketing association fees, a result of the 2021 Surfside collapse, are about to come due.
The new state laws, designed to prevent another older condo collapse like the one at Champlain Towers South, are enforcing inspections and the reserves to pay for maintenance.
There is only one more month until those bills come due on Dec. 31.
“We can’t afford it, we’re gonna go broke,” a local condo owner said.
No frantic pleas, not even a call by the governor, will speed any movement before the lawmaking session in March.
“It’s not that we are not listening and it’s not that we don’t care,” Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami-Dade, said on “This Week in South Florida”. “But we do have to understand it is not government’s role to bail out private property owners that are in this position.”
Perez said there will be no reprieve on the deadline or life-safety requirements.
This tough love stance is echoed across the aisle by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jason Pizzo of Broward.
“When our kids are born, we start saving for college,” Pizzo said. “When there is a maintenance issue with our cars, we take care of it and save for it. But for an entire generation, people did not put money away.”
The new laws were written from the hindsight unearthed after Champlain Towers South buckled under the weight of decades of design flaws, damage, and deterioration, and the owners who, for too long, postponed charging themselves to address it all. On a horrifying overnight of June 24, 2021, it became too late.
“We’re going to have that discussion,” Perez said. “Where we end up, we don’t know.”