JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A local HOA President is warning that legislation moving in the Florida House allowing homeowners to dissolve their HOAs could wreak havoc in neighborhoods across Florida.<\/p>\n
Scott Lara has been the President of his neighborhood HOA for four years.<\/p>\n
He told Action News Jax he understands where the frustration with HOAs is coming from, but he argued that allowing neighbors to dissolve their HOAs isn\u2019t the answer.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cPlaygrounds, ponds who is gonna maintain those? That\u2019s why HOAs are here,\u201d said Lara.<\/p>\n He warned those who abolish their HOAs would likely end up with buyer\u2019s remorse.<\/p>\n \u201cIf HOAs are dissolved, homeowner values will plummet,\u201d said Lara.<\/p>\n State Representative Juan Porras (R-Miami) is behind the bill, which he filed after a major corruption scandal came to light in his own district.<\/p>\n But he argued it\u2019s not an issue isolated to South Florida.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve heard from frustrated homeowners from the Panhandle to the Keys that feel so frustrated and don\u2019t know where to turn to when it comes to dealing with these corrupt HOAs,\u201d said Parras.<\/p>\n And right now, Porras argued, there\u2019s no real recourse.<\/p>\n Even under his bill, dissolving an HOA wouldn\u2019t be easy.<\/p>\n 50 percent of neighbors would have to sign off on a petition, and then 60 percent of neighbors would have to vote in favor of dissolution.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd even if that election were to pass, the homeowners then would have to propose a plan of dissolution in front of a judge, in front of one of these new HOA court judges that we\u2019re creating, to ensure that the common areas are still going to be maintained and certain debts or outstanding leans are taken care of,\u201d said Porras.<\/p>\n Lara said he would like to see some compromise, but he argued that opening the door for dissolution is akin to opening a pandora\u2019s box.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m all in favor of making sure that HOAs are run effectively, that the money is accounted for, and that people are held accountable, but we gotta work together,\u201d said Lara.<\/p>\n Porras\u2019 HOA bill still has two more committee stops in the House.<\/p>\n No identical bill has been filed in the Senate.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\n [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>] <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here<\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here<\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 A local HOA President is warning that legislation moving in the Florida House allowing homeowners…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[344,347,28,348,116,351,118,74608,117,74607,349,350,346,345],"class_list":{"0":"post-154927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action-news-jax","9":"tag-cbs47","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-fox30","12":"tag-jacksonville","13":"tag-jacksonville-fl","14":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","15":"tag-jacksonville-hoa","16":"tag-jacksonville-news","17":"tag-local-hoa-president","18":"tag-northeast-florida","19":"tag-southeast-georgia","20":"tag-wfox","21":"tag-wjax"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}