Article Courtesy of The Tampa Bay Times

By Alexandra Glorioso

Published  January 29, 2025

TALLAHASSEE — The state Legislature continues to defy Gov. Ron DeSantis’ call to amend a condominium safety law that is putting financial pressure on condo owners and homeowners associations, prompting one Republican ally to the governor to predict elderly owners on fixed incomes will become the “next wave of homeless people” in Florida.

During an unprecedented speech Monday, House Speaker Daniel Perez, a Miami Republican, said legislation like the condominium law in question — passed in response to the deadly 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside — was too complicated to take up during a special session, even though that is how the original law was passed in 2022.

The law, which took effect at the end of last year, requires condominium associations to fully fund their building maintenance reserves — a rule that some condo owners and associations have blamed for escalating maintenance fees and hefty special assessments. It is a departure from the previous law that allowed associations to vote to waive funding reserves, causing repairs in some older buildings to build up over decades, ballooning costs that may now be unaffordable.

“The tragedy of the collapse in Surfside is a painful reminder of what happens when we don’t get the law right,” said Perez, who sponsored the post-Surfside condo legislation in the Florida House.

He added: “And the truth is I dislike special sessions because they inhibit the very thing the legislative process should encourage: the push and pull of meaningful conversations that lead to the development of good and better ideas.”

Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton, a Wauchula Republican, quickly had their chambers gavel in and out of “Special Session A,” which they constitutionally had to call to respond to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proclamation on Jan. 13 for the Legislature to convene this week. DeSantis initially said he wanted the Legislature to work urgently on a wide range of issues, including condominium relief, though he quietly pared back his ambitions and limited his proposals to immigration and citizen-led ballot initiatives after the leaders balked.

Perez and Albritton then had members immediately gavel in for “Special Session B,” which the leaders called themselves Monday to focus solely on immigration, with which the new Trump administration has urged states to assist. Perez said Florida had to “quickly align with President Trump’s directives.”

Rep. Mike Caruso, a Republican DeSantis ally from Delray Beach who filed 10 bills mostly centered on immigration for the governor’s special session, said elderly residents in condominiums will be soon foreclosed on because they “could no longer afford the triple reserves or the quadrupled dues” caused by legislation that went into effect at the end of last year requiring full funding of maintenance reserves for buildings.

“It’s sad, and we’re not going to address it here in the Florida House,” said Caruso, noting that his district includes tens of thousands of condominium units. “I’m shocked by it.”

Ronni Drimmer, the condominium board president of a 55-and-older association in Clearwater with 70 units, sat at a roundtable with DeSantis in September regarding the financial stress she and others were under. She expected the Legislature to change the law after that event through a special session.

Her association just passed its required structural inspection known as the “milestone” with no substantial problems reported, according to a document she shared with the Times/Herald. But she said she just had to pay $7,200 for her part of a new roof required by insurance. The cost of insurance also went up by $25,000 over the association’s 2025 budget.

And now, thanks to the newly enacted law, the association’s HOA fees are projected to go up by $100 a month on average for 2025 for building maintenance, a different report she shared showed.

Drimmer said she and other unit owners won’t be able to afford the monthly increase.

“Feels like a freight train has run over me,” Drimmer, 72, said. “I have no idea what will happen.”

Sen. Randy Fine, a Republican from Melbourne who sat in on his chamber’s Jan. 14 condominium discussion on the status of the law, in part because his father lives in a condo, also said a special session wasn’t appropriate to address issues with the law.

“A special session that’s five days long, everything has to be pre-packaged so you can push it through,” said Fine, who has publicly feuded with DeSantis. “And so, to do a special session for five days on four topics with no bill, the whole thing was always a stunt.”

Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, agreed with Fine and Perez that special session wasn’t the right place to address the condominium crisis. He said the current law, SB 4D, was jammed through during a special session nearly three years ago after the Legislature couldn’t find consensus during the regular one.

“If you rush through half-baked policies in a special session, there’s going to be unintended consequences,” Guillermo Smith said.