Climate change could cost condo boards billions. They aren't ready for it.

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Climate change could cost condo boards billions. They aren’t ready for it.

The Surfside, Fla., building collapse is just one example of a bigger looming problem

By Evan McKenzie
Evan McKenzie teaches in the political science department and the law school at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of two books about condominium and homeowner associations.
July 2, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

The collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside, Fla., is a terrible tragedy. Besides the stories of the victims and their grieving loved ones, early attention has focused on the causes of the collapse, such as how the building was constructed, the effects of saltwater on reinforced concrete and whether the condominium association was properly maintaining the high-rise.

Those are important matters, but the disaster exemplifies a bigger problem, one that will still loom once we have answers about what went wrong in Surfside: The untrained, unpaid and unsupervised volunteer directors of the nation’s more than 350,000 condo and homeowners’ associations, armed with limited financial resources, are expected to deal with the unprecedented infrastructure challenges that climate change poses to their communities. And there is no reason to believe that they are up to that task.

More than 20 percent of the U.S. population lives in property administered by condominium and homeowners’ associations, nonprofits run by volunteers elected by the owners. These directors and officers are responsible for an estimated $7 trillion worth of private property and infrastructure, including high-rise buildings, private streets, parks, pools, sewer and water systems, lakes, garages, and many other building systems and amenities.

As condos and HOAs blossomed across the country in the last 50 years, little or no thought was given to the eventual effects of climate change, in terms of location or construction quality. The common-interest housing sector emerged in the 1960s as a way to put more people on less land, increasing developer profits and local property tax revenue. The model spread rapidly, and condos and HOAs are now the default options for new construction in many states, not just across the Sun Belt where they originated but in older metro areas as well.

Many locations are problematic from the outset. ...

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/surfside-condo-climate-change-cost/2021/07/01/b6699a98-da76-11eb-9bbb-37c30dcf9363_story.html

[elleng]

1. No one IS, ready for it;

'society' has been avoiding it 'forever.' 'Human nature's' dooming us.

[Warpy]

2. Condo owners will be the ones who are screwed

Just about the time they finally pay off the mortgage, whether or not they live thee, the condo will be declared unsafe and condemned unless tens of millions of dollars (at least) of repairs are made immediately.

Oh, some were so over engineered that they might list, but think of the first 3 floors flooded and the building accessible only by boat.

About the only thing that will stabilize a shifting barrier island is the mangrove. Guy named Carl Fisher ripped all those out in 1911 in order to turn it into a resort area The railroad was going in, and the draw from the cold wintry northeast would have been considerable.

Even he didn't see dredgers increasing the size of the island and high rises going up like mushrooms. Without the mangroves, the sand tends to shift around--a lot--deep under the ground. The auger/cement pilings were meant to mimic mangrove roots, but they only did part of the job.

IOW, most of those building will live fast and die young. The people holding the bag are going to be the people who bought them and thought they'd live there in retirement.