Family says HOA told them they couldn't use generator during ice storm blackout

Outside of Apartments and gated communities, they’re more rare up in Canada. You don’t see them spring up in a random neighbourhood, it’s invariably in high-density projects that require communal elements that are normally separate that they can be found.

And then they’re called Stratas, and have no significant power beyond those communal elements. Like, an apartment strata can ban live Christmas trees if there have been too many needles dropped in the hallways, but otherwise cannot prevent you from building a particle accelerator in your living room unless other residents start complaining about the high levels of radiation and fluctuating power levels as capacitors charge (oops).

HOAs are a legal framework designed for condominium (and other) domains where some parts of the property are owned in common. Without HOAs, I fail to see how condominiums could thrive. And condominium domains are everywhere! So there is no possibility whatsoever of them being eliminated in our current legal system.

The problem in this instance was that running a generator creates fire and/or electrical hazards. Those dangers are mitigated by the condominium domain's insurance. The insurers may not provide coverage if a single owner violates the policy. Two examples:

a) Snow is falling, accumulating and melting on an area which the generator wires are laid. One side of the circuit wiring is bare and a tenant, while holding onto a (grounded) steel banister, steps into a puddle of water that the generator wire crosses. No one else is present: the tenant is electrocuted and his semi-frozen body found half a day later, still leaning on the banister. Who is liable?

b) The generator malfunctions and catches fire. B/c it is inside a back porch area, the fire spreads quickly to the condominium unit and thence to surrounding units. Due to a higher than normal volume of calls and the icy roads being difficult to navigate, the fire department is slow to respond. Once they do respond, they find some water supply lines are frozen, further slowing them in their attempts to contain the fire and requiring extra units to be fielded, even further increasing their response time. Who is liable?

In both cases the legal liability probably lies with the condominium unit owner who runs the generator. If the HOA fails to notify the unit owner or fails to takes steps to shut the generator down, the legal liability may include the HOA.

Not surprisingly, very few people buy additional insurance that covers them when they make mistakes (a so-called "umbrella policy" does this sometimes, among other things) in judgement as happened here. Normally one would install such a generator ahead of time and provisions for safety as well as responsibility and liability insurance would be made well ahead of time.

The correct (and IMO easier) thing for the woman to do would have been to move to a hotel/motel/warming center/etc. After all, she had the wherewithal to procure and install a generator on her porch, a task that surely took hours or days to complete.

In sum, this is simply another condo owner sob-story. Condo buyers sign a legal agreement and, as soon as they break that agreement and are notified by the HOA, they cry to the media.

Having once been president of an HOA in a condominium, my own ideas, which include public hangings by edict as punishment for HOA agreement violations, might seem archaic, but they would do a lot to tame the madness of condo owners and calm the economic path of most HOAs.

The HOA would merely assume control of your unit and sell it to someone else (even at a loss) who could follow the rules.

But the parent post is an example of the human detritus that floats ashore when condos sell: idiots with no concept of ownership, the law or cooperative behavior. Put a bunch of them together in an HOA and you get a real view of why pure democracy is such a PITA.