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Dear Poliakoffs,

This is the second senior condominium I have owned and in which I have resided during the past 16 years. I have faced the same impending issue in both, that being extreme difficulty finding enough qualified people both willing and able to run the community. 55+ has turned into 85+ for the most part, with people's life expectancy now exceeding what was considered the norm when this concept originated. As people age out and develop health problems, they no longer have the desire or capacity to fulfill the legal requirements to administer an association. When they do die, they are replaced by more of the same. This leaves a mere handful of younger seniors to do all the "heavy lifting", recycled year after year. Then, they, too, age out, burn out, and develop medical problems, creating crucial vacancies which cannot be filled.

Most of us seniors moved into condominiums to make our lives easier and less stressful than we experienced in our single-family homes, but this is not the case, as the few of us who can and will step up to meet the legal mandates are continually confronted with increasingly complex issues.

I am one of such seniors. I would like answers. I have been looking for such for many years, having found none. I hope you can help.

Signed, K.P.

Dear K.P.,

As I’ve discussed in previous columns, in my anecdotal experience what you have described (a community where only a very few owners are willing to serve on the board of directors) is the most common situation in shared ownership communities. I would say the next most common are communities where either the exact number of candidates run for the election as there are open seats on the board; or where one or two additional candidates may exist. The least common situation is the one that I think most people imagine when they think about a condominium, cooperative or homeowner’s association—a heavily divided community with a dozen or more candidates battle it out on a yearly basis over a handful of board seats. That type of election is, in the real world, uncommon.

You are in a very difficult situation as your community is aging in place, and so increasingly fewer of your owners are in position to assist on the board. This situation is unlikely to get better anytime soon. Sometimes, a slew of younger owners (in your case, 55+ again) will begin to buy up units in the condominium, and it could be that in the future there is a large new base of younger owners willing to govern the condominium. But, in the meantime, you have few real options, as there is no way to force people to serve. But, service is an essential element of shared ownership communities—and so there is an unavoidable conflict where you have a shared ownership community largely made up of owners who are unfit or unwilling to serve. Frankly, a privately-owned condominium unit may no longer be the best lifestyle option for many of your neighbors.

There is a reason that there are trained, licensed professionals who manage condominiums. It is a hard job and takes a tremendous amount of work. If you are in one of the many communities for older persons that does not have a manager and where the board manages and maintains the community on its own, that may be a big part of your problem. When a community is well managed, a board really should not have to do much more than prepare for and attend regular board meetings—and since board members can attend and participate remotely (including by telephone), nearly any board member of any age can continue to serve. The president may have more frequent contact with the manager, but an occasional call and perhaps a once-a-week meeting are really all that is required. Instead, and even when a condominium hires a professional, licensed manager, what I often see is directors and officers who are so intent on running the show on their own that they may spend hours every day in the management office directing and overseeing their licensed professional. That, in turn, discourages others in the community from serving on the board, as they assume that kind of oversight is required.

So if in your community you either don’t hire a professional manager, at all; or if you have a professional manager but your officers are habitually micromanaging them, that may be discouraging otherwise interested owners from serving on the board. Either hire a manager or encourage your officers and directors to pull back and let the manager do their job; and show the community that board service is not an insurmountable responsibility.

Ryan Poliakoff, a partner at Backer Aboud Poliakoff & Foelster, LLP, is a Board Certified Specialist in condominium and planned development law. This column is dedicated to the memory of Gary Poliakoff, pioneer of the community association legal industry, tireless advocate, and author of treatises, books and hundreds of articles. Ryan Poliakoff and Gary Poliakoff are co-authors of New Neighborhoods—The Consumer’s Guide to Condominium, Co-Op and HOA Living. Email your questions to condocolumn@gmail.com. Please be sure to include your location.

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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Board service presents challenges in community for older persons