'The worst thing in Florida:' Lee County HOA lost millions, homes unfinished after Ian repair

When Hurricane Ian chewed through Southwest Florida more than a year ago its powerful winds and floodwaters wreaked havoc on thousands of properties. But in Island Park Village, a 55-and-over condo community in unincorporated south Lee County, it was the efforts to rebuild that ripped the neighborhood apart.

More than a year later its homeowners are mired in financial trouble, lawsuits and infighting – and the vast majority of the homes are still uninhabitable.

The 85-condo section stretches across just three streets in Island Park Village. The cul-de-sacs are lined mainly with wood-sided duplexes, save a few standalones. Many front yards boast cheerful decorations: brightly colored flowerpots, American flags, or small, ceramic statues.

But few residents have returned to the once-peaceful community where neighbors had gathered regularly at the former homeowner's association’s president’s house for drinks and bonhomie.

During tours of one street’s homes, two construction experts pointed out incorrectly laid subfloors, some of which were fastened with nails, rather than screws. Others weren’t attached to anything at all. Some of the walls sway inwards when you lean on them; a closer examination shows workers cut the support structures at the base during drywall hanging, and have yet to reattach them.

A hole gapes in a garage ceiling where the floodwaters had lifted the owner’s boat straight through the drywall. An exterior wall peels off the second story of the same house; it is covered only by Tyvek sheeting. The owner, a veteran, drives from his FEMA housing every day to sit in his driveway, waiting for someone –– anyone –– to fix his condo.

Piles of abandoned roofing material fill the front yards and air conditioners lay on their sides. Electrical work had not been finished in some homes, while in others, laborers had covered the outlets with drywall. At least one roof that had been redone was shingled in the wrong color, per the homeowner’s association’s bylaws.

To top it off, all the work done was unpermitted. Although the primary contractor applied for permits, none of them were paid for and the contractor says it’s up to homeowners to pay for them. But, until the work is approved by a local inspector, homeowners have learned no sale can go through.

They’re trapped.

“Our Florida dream turned into a Florida nightmare,” said Island Park Village Section 3 homeowner Mike Riley.

The Rileys, Mike and Becky, purchased their cozy, 1200-square foot bungalow style condo around ten years ago for about $100,000 as a vacation home, that, years later, became their retirement home. Since Ian, however, the Rileys have dumped roughly $45,000 from their savings into their condo in an attempt to fix it, and possibly sell it.

They had put it on the market before they learned of several liens and a notice of commencement on their home, which precedes a lien. Both prevent them from selling.

They don’t know what they’re going to do, Riley said, but he doesn’t think he and his wife can afford the large assessments that are surely coming due to fix what Ian – and the association’s contractors – did (or didn’t) do to Section 3’s homes.

‘The worst thing in Florida’

For this story, the reporter interviewed more than a dozen homeowners, four current and former HOA board members, a representative of one contracting company, and a property attorney, and reached out to representatives of all other contractors, four agencies and two legislators that residents asked for help.

The News-Press / Naples Daily News also reviewed the association’s contracts with all contractors and remediation companies, as well as estimates, work orders, invoices, liens, lawsuits, emails from the association to its residents and emails, Facebook posts and texts and other communications from contractors to residents.

Residents say they feel taken advantage of, both by their contractors and the homeowners’ association that signed contracts that have left them in such a tangle: unable to live in their homes, too broke to fix them.

“Welcome to HOAs; they’re the worst thing in Florida, sometimes,” said Florida House Rep. Adam Botana, R-Bonita Springs, whose district includes the Island Park area.

Legal experts and elected officials say this is not uncommon when it comes to homeowners’ associations. Boards have no road map for best practices when facing disasters like Ian, and are largely staffed by volunteers, not experts in disaster response, mitigation, and reconstruction. And sometimes, they said, the homeowners turn on each other, exacerbating their problems.

Florida has almost 50,000 homeowners’ associations, and while the newly-minted HOA bill of rights affords residents some protections from criminal actions of association board members, the law provides no protection for homeowners whose board members made legal – even if poor – business decisions.

And investigations by multiple agencies into the contractors retained by Section 3 have been fruitless. So far, no authority has ascertained wrongdoing or illegal activity.

In the storm’s aftermath, the former board hastily signed contract after contract with costly remediation companies and inexperienced contractors who took months to carry out work that had to be redone several times and have now burdened the community with millions of dollars in liens and a lawsuit for nearly a million dollars.

The former board president, Cheryl Smith, said they relied heavily on their management company to vet contracts for them, as lawyers were hard to come by in the aftermath of the storm. And, she said, she felt locked in. She was feared if she didn’t fix this, no one would.

“My whole goal here was to look out for these 85 units and people,” Smith said. “I felt a tremendous responsibility. But I didn’t have the background for this. None of us did.”

‘Fat and happy’ versus ‘half-broke’

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From the start, residents say, things were out of control. At least one remediation company hired by the board to remove waterlogged drywall, cabinets, and furniture, charged tens of thousands of dollars for work on some homes that residents claim had already been remediated. The association paid the bill after attempting to negotiate it down, without much success. It came to $3 million dollars.

The board hired Epic Energies, a solar company trying to branch out into hurricane response, to work on the exteriors. A February contract the board signed with Fred Griffin Builders D.B.A. Epic’s construction arm also specified Andrews Land Management, LLC, would take the interiors.

This contract allowed Epic and Andrews Land Management to work under the Fred Griffin Builders license. Griffin himself is listed on Epic’s website as a construction compliance expert.

In liens filed, Epic alleges the association never paid them for their labor and materials, as does the roofing company Epic subcontracted out to. The new board president confirmed nonpayment.

Neither Fred Griffin Builders nor Epic returned calls for comment.

Andrews Land Management Owner Nicholus Andrews, a serial entrepreneur, told a reporter he has “years of experience in the trades” in North Carolina. His resume shows dozens of years of work across the tech, sales, and the blockchain industries, but none in construction. He did not respond to questions asking for more specifics about his work history in construction.

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Andrews incorporated Andrews Land Management just days after Ian made landfall.

Andrews charged the association millions of dollars for work that has had to be stripped out and redone at residents’ expense, homeowners claim, citing repair receipts, texts and emails. He then sued them for even more after new board president Ron Martin fired Andrews without notice and without a state-mandated opportunity to fix the problems, subsequently withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks.

Although Andrews’ lawsuit alleged breach of contract and misappropriation of funds, Martin says he’s just taking the time to do what should have been done in the first place –– run things through an attorney.

In addition to Andrews’ lawsuit, Andrews, Epic and roofing subcontractor American Builders and Contractors Supply Co. have also placed liens against more than 70 of the 85 condos or the Section 3 association saying they’ve not been paid.

Too, Riley said, residents of Section 3 feel like they got the short end of the stick. Other section associations in Island Park Villages chose to disseminate their insurance monies directly to homeowners; those homeowner’s engaged contractors themselves. Most of them are back in their homes already, Riley said.

“Those people are in there, fat and happy, and they don't owe anybody any money,” Riley said. “We're all either half-broke or can’t even live in our homes right now.”

A number of residents blame the board for the financial burden and stress they’re under, but many also blame the contractors the association engaged, citing poor workmanship and repeated re-dos of things like plumbing, electrical, subfloors, drywall and even painting.

Andrews says it’s normal to have to re-do work multiple times after a disaster – and instead, blames the residents for being too impatient to see the project through to its finish.

“That happens, when these houses are torn apart from floods and you have to rebuild them from scratch, sometimes things don’t go back together the way they were before,” said Andrews. Current and former board members estimate his company was paid roughly $5 million over the course of his contract. He’s looking for about $900,000 more, per his lawsuit.

“Sometimes things have to be finished a few times,” Andrews said.

The dozen or so homes that have been finished are ones whose homeowners engaged their own contractors. They tackled the work themselves; some, like homeowner Amber Redfern, paid up to $100,000 out of their own savings.

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Oftentimes, a contractor under whose license someone else is doing work claimed to be inadequate will step up and pay out of pocket to fix the problem. It can benefit the primary contractor to keep the customers happy, and by extension, keep their reputation intact.

But residents say neither Epic nor Fred Griffin Builders has offered to do so.

Dozens of complaints

The financial drain and unfinished repairs have changed the neighborhood. Residents complain of hostile board meetings and say online bullying and in-person shunning have soured their community. Some are afraid to step outside, lest they see a neighbor who hates them.

Furthermore, many residents say the stress has led to diagnoses of a variety of health conditions: anxiety, depression, trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, drastic weight loss, strokes, and heart attacks. One homeowner has been diagnosed with Long COVID, and says dealing with claims, repairs and stress has repeatedly left him bedbound.

Carmella Deckert, a Chicago resident who owns a home in Island Park Village, has personally filed half a dozen complaints about the contractors with local, state, and federal agencies, but to no avail.

Multiple agencies, including the DBPR and Lee County’s fraud investigators, investigated and closed complaint after complaint with the same message to homeowners: You, as a homeowner, have no status here. Your association created this problem. Now, they have to fix it.

So far, the association has not filed any complaints.

“It’s hard to explain how eight and a half million has gone down the drain, but we don’t have proof of wrongdoing, so we can’t make accusations,” Martin said, when asked why the board has declined to do so yet.

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“I could not be more disappointed in the way the recovery of Ian has been handled,” Deckert said of the state’s response. “The lack of state involvement has allowed for too many people being taken advantage of.”

Botana, the state representative, visited the community in late November. At first glance, he said, “this seems like it’s on the HOA and on the contractor who’s done shabby work,” but added that he wants to investigate more closely before making a final judgment.

“We will be seeing these types of situations play out for the next three to five years,” said Fort Myers-based attorney Joseph Adams, who has nearly 40 years of experience in condominium law.

“I see this every day,” Adams said. “You have panic, pressure, huge money, and you add all that up with volunteer (board members) and overwhelmed management folks. It’s almost predictable.”

Adams said associations face huge challenges in navigating major repairs in the wake of a storm like Hurricane Ian. Chief among them, he said, is the need to take enough time to assess contractors and potential contracts before signing on the dotted line. Billions of dollars in repair costs draw everyone from legitimate contractors to storm-chasers to scammers.

As of September 2023, one year after the storm, the DBPR had seen over 700 unlicensed construction cases stemming from Hurricane Ian. Roughly 160 were still in the works and hadn’t reached final actions yet. And complaints keep coming in.

Adams urged boards caught up in the next hurricane damage cycle to take the time to vet contractors, have their board attorney look it over, and to understand all parts of the contract, including the termination process, before signing.

Relying on a management company can be a mistake, he said. Those positions typically don’t require anything more than a high school diploma and a certification.

A smashed toilet, a missing bathtub and hundreds of thousands of dollars

On September 28, 2022, Ian roared into town, a ferocious, slow-churning storm that brought with it winds in excess of 155 miles an hour, and more than a dozen feet of saltwater storm-surge.

The area was about to explode with calls to contractors. Mile upon mile of homes had been flooded, their roofs torn off, their windows and sliding glass doors smashed in by heavy storm surge. And they needed people to fix them.

In the days and weeks after the storm, then-board president Smith worked with the community’s then-management company, Pegasus, which has since fired the association from its client list.

She relied on Pegasus to vet contracts, recommend contractors, and more, as lawyers had little availability in the aftermath of the storm, she said.

The work was constant, Smith said. She estimated she sometimes spent up to 12 hours on the phone daily with Pegasus and their insurance company, Voyager, a public adjuster they had hired, different contractors and residents.

Smith had been trapped in her garage during Ian as the floodwaters slowly, inexorably flooded in. She only escaped by breaking a window high above her head and clambering out. This, she believes, led to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Her sleep suffered, and she was constantly on edge, which impacted her decision-making ability on behalf of the association.

“God, there were so many problems,” Smith said. “A lot of pressure … came from the mitigation companies, the management company, and the residents.”

Pegasus president and owner Michael Chapman denied pressuring Smith or her board into making decisions, adding that the association attorney reviewed all contracts “to make sure they were fair and reasonable.”

All managers with Pegasus are licensed community association managers with the state of Florida and all complete the required continuing education, Chapman said in an email. As the licensing and education doesn't cover disaster management skills, he said, they interviewed and recommended experts to help the communities they manage.

After an evaluation of Epic, Pegasus advised Smith's board against hiring Epic, believing the contractor did not have the resources necessary to handle the rebuild of 85 units, Chapman said. Pegasus’ attorney also advised the board against hiring an adjuster. The board went against their advice and hired both, regardless.

Shortly afterwards, Chapman said, “things started going south” at Island Park Villages.

Throughout the early stages of the rebuild, homeowners said were in a constant state of confusion, and placed their trust in the board to make the right decisions. Redfern had purchased a home in the retirement community for her mother the year before. It wasn’t clear whether they should hire their own contractors, what the association’s insurance policy would pay for, or even what to keep, toss or clean.

“Everyone was obviously frustrated and mad,” Redfern said. “They promised us they’d get everything taken care of.”

In the weeks following the storm, the board hired remediation companies, one of which was Lutz-based Ready Nation Contractors. Homeowners claim Ready Nation billed tens of thousands of dollars on condos that had already been privately remediated.

Smith and Riley are among those who saw little or no work done on their homes by Ready Nation, but the company billed the association anyways.

Ready Nation owner Kenneth Martinez said he charged fair amounts for his work, however, and disputed resident and board receipts. A board-owned spreadsheet and emailed Ready Nation payment receipts a reporter reviewed shows the association paid Ready Nation $1.47 million.

Martinez said that was what he charged – but that he received only $1.1 million in payments.

There is a roughly $370,000 difference between what Martinez says he received and what Smith’s board paid that neither Smith nor Martinez can account for.

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A public adjuster the board hired and fired after a few months, and later, the board’s treasurer, who has since sold his home and moved back to Canada were in charge of negotiating costs with Ready Nation, said Smith. Both declined to comment on the story.

Smith believes Ready Nation came through her home – although they were not supposed to, as an insurance adjuster declared the condo off-limits due to structural damage – because the association was charged $28,000 for remediation of her condo. But, Smith said, she never saw a lick of work done.

According to Martinez, her home was never declared structurally unsound, and his crew did remediate her home. He did not dispute the amount she cited.

The Rileys paid their own contractor $15,000 for remediation, their home stripped to the studs and dehumidifiers installed. Afterwards, they said, Ready Nation entered their condo while they were away and left fans in their home for five days. The fans tripped the breakers multiple times – then Ready Nation charged the association $42,000.

Martinez, however, said the remediation done by the first company was incomplete. His crew did additional work, he said, and claimed he only was paid $29,000 to remediate both the Riley’s home and their roommate's.

Other homeowners whose homes were serviced by Ready Nation complain of overzealous or uneven work.

“They came through like a wrecking ball,” said Redfern. In her mother’s condo alone, Ready Nation broke a toilet, crashed through walls and somehow, around this time her bathtub disappeared – though Redfern doesn’t know which company is to blame for that.

The association told her Ready Nation billed the association more than $50,000 for remediating the 1,000-square-foot condo. Martinez did not dispute Redfern’s bill.

According to Smith, the board was so overwhelmed that while they attempted to negotiate remediation bills and total costs down, ultimately, they still paid out millions.

It was months after the fact that they realized the costs were much higher than they should be, Smith said.

Hiring contractors

Shortly after remediation was complete, Smith connected with Andrews, whose presentation wowed her, she said. He, in turn, put her in touch with Broward-based Epic Energies and presented a package that her board agreed made sense. Soon, they signed it.

Time, she said, was the biggest factor. Contractors booked up fast and she didn’t feel they could wait to get three bids. Instead, with their management company’s approval and under the emergency section of their association’s bylaws, they signed two-page contracts with the companies that homeowners now believe heavily favored the contractors.

“There is a period where people are generally in a state of shock and particularly vulnerable to well-rehearsed sales pitches,” Adams said. “This can lead to decisions which turn out to be a second disaster, sometimes worse than the storm itself.”

The contracts, which The News-Press / Naples Daily News reviewed, promised all funds paid out by Section 3’s insurer would go directly to Epic or Andrews Land Management, regardless of how much –– or how little –– work they carried out.

The contracts stated Epic was responsible for all exterior work, and Andrews Land Management would take the interiors. The contracts were signed in November 2022 and February 2023, respectively. At first, residents were thrilled. Andrews seemed knowledgeable, friendly and caring, residents said.

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“Nick was kind of the face of everything for all of us,” said Redfern. “He's very smooth, very calming.”

Andrews said he cared deeply about this community, telling a reporter he even helped people clear damaged items and furniture out of their homes after the storm.

But as the actual work got underway, residents began to have grave concerns. Work took much longer than promised and didn’t seem up to snuff, multiple homeowners said.

Today, neither Epic nor Andrews Land Management has finished a full home in Section 3. Every resident a reporter interviewed was unhappy with the work. All say they raised their concerns and frustrations with Epic, Andrews, or his mother, project manager Jackie Andrews, to no avail. Some provided copies of texts and email conversations as proof.

Redfern said when she spoke with Andrews about speed or quality, he would direct her to the board. The board, she said, directed her back to Andrews. And nothing would change.

“Did I make mistakes?” Smith asked. “Probably.”

For one, she said, she wouldn’t hire these contractors again. But while Smith acknowledges her board didn’t always make the right choice, she feels they did their best.

She said she felt both abandoned by her neighbors and tremendous pressure to move quickly. Since the storm, she has felt scapegoated, held responsible for an outcome she didn’t expect.

Yet residents say Smith’s board was unresponsive to resident concerns, and that they couldn’t get their questions answered. All they knew was that the insurance money was dwindling, and their homes weren’t coming back to life.

Where did the money go?

Ron Martin is Smith’s next-door neighbor. They have a tense relationship, and have for years, which Smith puts down to multiple elections for the presidency Martin lost to her. He admits to yelling at her in board meetings and calling her names. Tensions often ran high surrounding board decisions, as is common with homeowner's associations.

After Ian, Smith recalled angry board meetings where Martin and others would question the credibility of the contractors and complain about the board’s financial decisions.

Martin, who went with his own contractors, was unhappy with the board’s chosen contractors early on; he said residents told him the contractors were “doing a job” on the neighborhood.

“Money just flowed,” Martin said, “and nothing was really getting done.”

But problems continued to crop up throughout the rebuild. As, one by one, homeowners called in their own contractors, it became clear that all the work done by Epic and Andrews Land Management was unpermitted. County records show Epic applied for permits under Fred Griffin Builders’ license, but never paid for or pulled them.

Epic construction director Alex Carnal insisted to homeowners in an October email that it was their responsibility to pay for permits, not Epic’s.

According to the DBPR, however, it’s customary for contractors to pull their own permits. If they don’t, DBPR communications director MK Delegal said, it’s a red flag.

“A licensed contractor typically includes permitting as part of the project costs when they submit a bid for a job,” Delegal said. “Homeowners pay for the permit as part of the project cost, but the contractor will pay the city/local jurisdiction and obtain the permit themselves, which ensures the contractor is held liable for the work.”

As the situation dragged on, relationships between neighbors imploded. One former board member started a secret Facebook group where homeowners vented their frustrations about the contractors, the work, and the board.

Those that group members vented about say the group sometimes crossed a line. Smith and her former board vice president say they’ve been shunned publicly by much of the community. Neighbors refuse to look them in the eye, won’t speak to them, or yell at them when they meet in–person. Digitally, people complained about them vociferously or sent them curse-filled emails.

After a messy situation like this, Adams said, it can take years before homeowners get back into their condos. That timeline grows if the homeowners start to fight against their own board, redirecting the association’s time and resources, he added.

“A house divided against itself falls,” Adams said. “People will spend so much time fighting amongst themselves they’re unable to focus on the problem at hand.”

The Facebook group was deleted after a few months, but not before feelings were hurt – and legal consequences took place.

Martin took issue with Andrews’ mother and project manager for the Island Park Village rebuild, Jackie. Martin admits to following, yelling at, and photographing Jackie in public. He says he posted photos of her to the secret Facebook group, alleging she employed day laborers. After months of this, she took out an injunction against him.

“My mom was just scared,” Andrews said.

When Smith stepped down from the presidency in June 2023, citing exhaustion, Martin says other board members asked him to put himself forward once again. No one else ran, and he won the election handily.

And so Martin took on the job of trying to revive a community still underwater, months after the storm surge receded.

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Today, Martin maintains the previous board needs to clarify where the roughly $8 million in insurance money went, and why they signed such generous contracts with Andrews Land Management and Epic.

According to Smith, she and her board turned over all documentation in their possession, financial or otherwise, to the new board.

About six weeks after Martin assumed the presidency, he ousted Epic and Andrews Land Management, a move many homeowners agreed with at the time, and still do. He began withholding insurance checks made out to Andrews Land Management.

“I told the management company to just put them in a drawer, because I'm not going to allow them to be getting another few hundreds of thousands of dollars of our money for nothing,” Martin said. “How can you get paid … when you haven't done the original work to begin with?”

Martin says he didn’t fire Andrews Land Management, but rather paused the work. He said he’d be open to the contractors coming back, if they bring skilled laborers.

“That’s not the way you handle contractors,” Smith said. “You have to give them a chance to fix the problem, and if they don’t, then you go after them legally.”

Liens, lawsuits and more

As of Nov. 1, 2023, more than 90 liens had been filed against the residents of Island Village Park Section 3 by both Andrews Land Management and Fred Griffin Builder, public records show.

An additional lien for a total of $134,206.65 plus interest was filed Aug. 23 by American Builders and Contractors Supply Co. against the Section 3 association. ABC Supply Co. alleged that the company was never compensated for the roofs it rebuilt after the storm in agreement with Epic Energies. A representative did not return requests for comment.

A homeowner can still sell their property if they satisfy the lien upon the sale, but this particular lien prevented anyone in Section 3 from selling as the entire lien would have to be satisfied first.

Island Park Villages is not alone. Liens from unpaid contractors exploded across the region after Ian, records show.  Between 2022 and 2023, new liens in Lee County skyrocketed, increasing by more than 80% and by 164% in Charlotte County. In Collier, they increased by 33% over the same period.

According to Adams, a board can take a few steps to shut down the liens or the notice of commencement, such as filing a bond against the lien, paying off the pro rata cost or swearing to an affidavit of sufficient funds against the notices. Yet, the new board hasn’t done so.

Martin is not sure what the future holds, despite all his hard work. Ideally, he said, the board would be able to claw back millions, hire new contractors and fix everyone’s condos, even though it’s a year too late.

“At least we’d get it done,” he said.

It pains Martin how many of his neighbors have dug into their retirement savings to restore their homes. On top of that, thanks to a new, much more expensive insurance policy, their homeowner’s association fees recently doubled to nearly $1,000 a month. Many are struggling to afford the increased dues.

“Of the 85 homes in here, probably 40 of them would be up for sale if the liens were taken off,” Martin said.

‘A conga line of contractors’

Frustrated, and with no solution seemingly coming from their homeowner’s association, residents have taken matters into their own hands.

Deckert and several others have called and emailed anyone they could think of, complaining about Epic and Andrews Land Management. Everyone from the city of Fort Myers to the Attorney General’s office to the Federal Trade Commission has heard from Section 3 homeowners.

Ultimately, most offices found the complaints outside their purview. The Attorney General’s Office, for example, received 11 complaints from various residents, records show, but its investigators couldn’t prove price-gouging. They passed it on to DBPR, who so far, has yet to find any fault with the contractors.

Residents say they also reached out to a number of local, state and federal officials and legislators, including Botana, who, happily for residents, has pledged to help.

Botana said he plans to reach out to a couple of colleagues, including State Rep. Juan Carlos Porras (R-Miami), who sponsored the summer’s HOA Bill of Rights, to find the best avenue of recourse for the residents.

He also wants to look into future legislation to cut these situations off at the knees, such as tackling HOA regulations or requiring contractors to hold money in escrow while working on builds.

“We’ll have a few years where everything’s fine and hunky-dory, then we’ll have five years where there’s a conga line of contractors coming into Florida” who take advantage of a disaster, he said.

Now, it’s January 2024.

For large swaths of Southwest Florida, Hurricane Ian is a memory, albeit a painful one. But not in Island Park Village. There, homeowners are still waiting for their homes to be finished, waiting for help, waiting for their association to claw some money back from these contractors, for their liens to be removed.

Unanswered questions and suspicions hang over their community, dimming the bright Florida sunshine.

The one thing they’re holding onto is hope.

Kate Cimini is the Florida Investigative Reporter for the USA TODAY-Network Florida, based at The News-Press and The Naples Daily News. Contact her at 239-207-9369 or kcimini@news-press.com.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Florida HOA lost millions in contractors' disastrous hurricane rebuild