Condo Media - March 2020 - 22

Asked & Answered

Maintenance Fix
Handyman Services for Owners
One of our board members wants to
provide a free service for residents,
doing maintenance and small
repairs in their units. The board
member isn't licensed or insured
for this work, nor does he have a
company representing him. What's
your advice if we allow this board
member to provide this service?
Without doing a formal survey, it is probably safe to
assume that most industry professionals-and probably
every condominium attorney-you asked would agree
that this is a terrible idea, for several reasons. The three
most important:
■ Legal and financial liability for the association.
However handy your board member is-or thinks he
is-if he screws up an owner's project, the owner will
undoubtedly sue him for doing shoddy work, and will
sue the association for at least implicitly endorsing him.
■ Insurance coverage. You indicated that the board
member isn't insured personally for this work.
Because the work isn't related to his responsibilities
as a board member, the association's D&O policy won't
apply. That means the association may well get stuck
with the defense costs (if any) and with the bill for
compensating the owner. Other owners are unlikely
to applaud this use of association funds.
■ Ill will. Even if dissatisfied owners don't sue the board
member, the association, or both, they will probably
complain loudly and at length to the board and to
other owners, which is hardly a recipe for harmony
in the community.
If you want to provide handyman services for owners, you might consider having the association hire
someone (not a board member) for that purpose.

CONDOMEDIA March 2020

The board at Whittier Place in downtown Boston
decided recently to do just that.
That decision was a solution to a long-standing
problem, Wesley Blair, senior vice president at
Brookline Bank and a member of the Whittier board,
explains. For years, "an apartment mentality" prevailed in the community, he says. "Whenever owners
needed someone to unclog a toilet or repair a leak,
they called management," who would dispatch a staff
maintenance worker to take care of the problem.
After calculating how much time staff were spending
working for owners (and not doing the work for which
the association was paying them), the board informed
owners that the association wouldn't be providing
these services any longer. "That went over like a lead
balloon," Blair says. Many long-time residents had been
receiving and relying on these services for years, and
they didn't view the list of recommended vendors the
board planned to provide as an adequate replacement.
ALTERNATIVE APPROACH
Rethinking its initial decision, the board determined
that if it charged owners a reasonable fee, the association
could hire someone to meet owners' maintenance needs,
and could assign this individual to do common area tasks
when homeowner assignments lagged. This is the program the board is planning to implement this year.

Condo Media - March 2020

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