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Aging Infrastructure and Fiduciary Duties for Communities

10/01/2021 11:10 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

By Geneva Cruz La-Santa, CP&M

Our communities are like our bodies; all the stress alleviation endeavors in the world won't help us if we aren't taking care of ourselves or our communities. Reflection or Meditation will not do us any good if we aren't getting sufficient sleep. When we try to reflect or meditate, we might doze off because we are not taking care of our body's need for sleep. If we doze off on the care and maintenance of our communities, we are allowing the exterior breakdown of our building, our core strength, our foundation. Similarly, hitting the gym occasionally won't relieve much stress if we only fuel our bodies with junk food. We need to take care of our basic needs first if we want our stress relief activities to be practical. Like our communities, band-aiding or patching a concern does not alleviate the problem but temporarily hides the prolonged issue.  


As we provide self-care for our bodies, a conscious act we take to boost our physical, mental, and emotional health, we provide for our long-term well-being. We must interject the same type of self-care into our communities. Many forms of community self-care can be taken. Like we do for our bodies, we ensure we get enough sleep every night or take a moment to step outside for a few minutes for fresh air. We must provide our communities with routine maintenance of roofs, gutters, siding, windows, painting, grading & drainage, foundation & concrete, patio & decks, crawlspaces and landings, and steps & railings.  


Community self-care is crucial for maintaining our communities' resilience towards stressors in life that we cannot eliminate. When we take steps to care for communities' buildings' interior & exterior, we set our communities up to be better prepared to handle other issues that may arise. Unfortunately, however, some communities view community self-care as an indulgence rather than a priority. Consequently, managers are left feeling overwhelmed and ill-equipped to handle a community's inevitable maintenance challenges. Managers need to assess how they and their HOA boards are caring for communities in different areas to ensure the building structure, and surrounding areas are being well taken care of and regular maintenance is transpiring.


You need to take care of your buildings if you want them to provide a strong foundation. Remember that a strong connection between your building's exterior and interior helps the community become an efficient and desirable place to live. The best way to cultivate and maintain a great community is to put time and energy into building: your relationships with your board, your service team, and your contractors. There isn't a certain number of hours you should devote to these relationships; the key is to figure out the community's ultimate goal and set the path to achieving it. A community self-care plan is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. A community self-care plan needs to be customized to each community's needs. Assess which areas of your community need more attention and address it, then reassess your community often. As your community ages and itsneeds change, your community self-care needs are likely to alter too. When you discover that you're neglecting a specific aspect of your community, create a plan for change. You don't have to tackle everything all at once. As communities get older, more repairs and replacements are required.


Develop a Community/Building - Self-Care Plan

  1. Get to know your communities (building structures, roof type, siding, brick stucco, windows, decks, patios, concrete, grading, drainage, crawlspaces, etc.).
  2. Conduct regular community walks (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.).
  3. Schedule Routine Maintenance.
  4. Manage and address maintenance recommendations as specified in reports – so they don't lead to more significant issues.
  5. Manage & address major concerns promptly.
  6. Be vocal about concerns that you know may lead to potential issues.
  7. Discuss andimplement a reserve study for your community. A reserve study is a resource that will provide a replacement schedule for common area elements (e.g., siding, windows, roofing, paint) as well as indicate how much a community association will need to set aside now and annually to have enough funds to take care of future maintenance and replacement requirements.
  8. Seek advice, ideas or solutions.
  9. Work with experienced contractors – do your research.
  10. All contractors should understand how to recognize different structural components and identify problems or potential problems; they should be able to document this information and determine when engineers or other specialists are needed.
  11. Contractors should be an aid in helping determine whether repairing or replacing elements will be  more cost-efficient for the community. It's about providing the best solution for the community.
  12. A contractor’s goal should be to assist the community in implementing preventative maintenance programs that fit that community’s goals.

The importance of community self-care cannot be spoken about enough;  working with a good core team is the first step to success.

My name is Geneva Cruz-La Santa, I have been with CP&M (Community Preservation & Management, Inc.) and its many entities for 17+ years. I have enjoyed watching CP&M grow into a full-service General Contractor with an in-house roofing division (R3NG). CP&M specializes in providing solutions for commercial property managers, HOA managed multifamily and single-family communities, REO rehabilitation, apartment industries and government housing entities.

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