There seems to be a lot of confusion over responsibility concerning roof leaks. The board cannot comment on any individual cases but we are adding this note to try and clarify the issues.
A good resource on the law in these cases can be found at
https://hoalaw.biz/passing-on-common-expenses-to-benefiting-homeowners/
One quote from this article is:
“[A] point to remember is that the Association is not an insurer of the unit owners. It is not automatically responsible for damage to a unit simply because the problem originated, in, on, or from the common elements. (Schwarzmann v. Association of Apartment Owners of Bridgehaven, 655 P.2d 177 (Wash. App. 1982)). . . The Association, for example, in the absence of fault, is not responsible for interior damage caused by a runaway auto crashing through the wall. Why then should the Association be responsible for ‘runaway’ . . . water that leaks in? . . . As long as the officers and directors have performed reasonably and with diligence, and in the absence of negligence, the board will not be liable simply because an individual unit owner has suffered harm.”
Basically, the HOA insurance covers all costs to the common areas of the community, and the homeowners individual insurance should cover costs to the inside of their individual units. The HOA responsibility is to maintain the common areas. That means to have a plan for maintenance and to follow that plan. We do have a plan and have had for many years, as can be shown by the items in the budget. We follow our plan which is shown by the spending in the budget. Recently, since we became aware of roof issues and leaks, we have doubled the allocation to the roof cleaning and we now inspect the roofs 4 x per year instead of twice which was the normal procedure in previous years.
Another quote from the above-mentioned article:
[H]omeowners should be reminded to purchase insurance for their units to cover items not generally covered by the association’s insurance. Such a policy is generally known as an HO6 policy. The association may have a general insurance policy, but homeowners should purchase insurance for any items not covered by the association’s insurance, including damage to the interior of units.
Although it would be nice to be able to pay individual homeowners for damage originating in the common areas, such damage is not covered by our HOA insurance and it would be a breach of our fiduciary responsibility to all homeowners to cover costs incurred by individual homeowners.
We welcome comments on this note, but please do not mention individual cases.