Jean Bestafka – Renaissance at Manchester
Vice Chair, New Jersey Legislative Action Committee
It has been an exceptionally quiet summer for CAI-NJ at the Statehouse in Trenton. The Manager Licensing bill is still pending a discussion and vote in the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, thankfully none of the proposed generator bills have been posted for discussion in any of their assigned Committees, and the foreclosure bills that have not already been vetoed by the Governor are still pending before their assigned Committees. It is highly unlikely that we will see any movement on these bills before the General Election in November. That said, we turn our efforts to Washington, D.C., where CAI National has been very busy advocating for common interest communities in two specific areas: Housing Finance Reform and FEMA benefits for common interest communities. The New Jersey LAC will be scheduling meetings with New Jersey’s members of Congress and the Senate in their district offices here in the Garden State in an effort to bolster CAI National’s work in the nation’s capital. Below are our key talking points. Please feel free to use these talking points should you see your representatives at local events in August or should you decide to write a letter or make a phone call.
1. The term “community association” encompasses condominiums, cooperatives, and homeowner associations. There are currently more than 325,000 community associations in the U.S., housing more than 62.5 million Americans. The community association is responsible for municipal services (including trash removal, street maintenance and lighting) and community landscaping, among other responsibilities. Community associations are governed by volunteers (your neighbors) and are often misunderstood. According to research, 9 out of 10 homeowners are satisfied with their community association.
2. Housing Finance Reform — Consumers need access to a wide variety of mortgage products to meet their individual housing and budget needs, and aspects of the existing system that provide mortgage choice and pricing stability must be retained. A new housing finance system must provide all creditworthy households opportunity to access mortgage credit, including households in community associations.
3. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – For decades, community associations have been denied equal access to federal disaster recovery assistance. Residents of community associations should be treated equally like all other taxpayers. Owners in community associations pay the same taxes and are served by the same municipal emergency services such as fire and police that are provided for residents living outside of associations. Owners in community associations must likewise receive the same federal benefits as all other residents within a local jurisdiction in the aftermath of a natural disaster. As always, we thank you for your continued support of our legislative activities.
If you would like to get more involved, please call the CAI-NJ office and speak to Lisa Hibbs about joining the LAC, writing articles for your association’s newsletter, or making yourself available to join the Chapter at the Statehouse to testify on bills of interest to CAI-NJ.
