Kevin Davis: 0:00

We talked about these boards of directors, vendors, union owners, neighbor to neighbors. There's a line you can't cross. You can get upset. But the problem with being upset is that we end up, at some point in time, crossing line, calling somebody incompetent. You know, it's like saying somebody has stolen money, saying somebody, guess, I can't believe it, not only that, but they have some infectious disease I heard they had, you know. Or, guess what it is, sleeping with the person too, you know. So those are the lines that are crossed that once I hear them as an insurance person, I know we're going to spend hundreds of 1000s of dollars.

Announcer: HOA Insights: 0:42

Common Sense for Common Areas, exists to help all 2 million volunteer board members nationwide have the right information at the right time to make the right decisions for their future. This podcast is sponsored by for companies that care about board members, association insights and marketplace, association reserves, community financials, and Kevin Davis Insurance Services. You'll find links to their websites and social media in the show notes.

Kevin Davis: 1:13

Hi, I'm Kevin Davis of Kevin Davis Insurance Services,

Sherry Branson: 1:16

and I'm Sherry Branson, marketing manager from Kevin Davis Insurance Services, and this is HOA Insights, where we promote common sense for

Kevin Davis: 1:25

common areas. Welcome everybody to episode number 67 again this week, I'll be substituting in for Robert Nordlund, and glad to be back again with Sherry Branson, hey, Sherry, how you doing?

Sherry Branson: 1:36

Oh, good. Kevin, good. How are you doing? I'm doing very, very well, and I'm happy to do podcast number two with you. Thanks for having me.

Kevin Davis: 1:43

Sure Glad you're back, and we're gonna talk about something that's really problematic these days, and that is discrimination, harassment and bullying against board members, against neighbors and neighbors, against everybody in these community associations. But I wanna encourage everybody to look at last week, episode number 66 where I talk about how to avoid these, these, these claims out there that we've been seeing just to make up. You can't stop the claims itself, but we talked about ways and some tips to kind of just lower the magnitude of so they're not as costly as they was before. And you want to catch your prior episodes, you can listen to them on our podcast website at WWW.HOAinsights.org, or watching from our YouTube channel. Or you can subscribe to our podcast and any of them more popular podcast platforms. If you have any crazy ideas or topics or any questions you'd like for us to address in the upcoming episode. Please let us know. Put a comment on YouTube, leave us a voicemail message at 805-203-3130, and send us a email at podcast at reserve, study.com

Sherry Branson: 2:57

Fantastic. Thank you, Kevin and our goal today everybody is to talk about the fact that we've seen a big increase in neighbor to neighbor disputes, discrimination, harassment and bullying complaints in a lot of associations. So we'd like to offer some tips today to help associations minimize those complaints and the best way to deal with them

Kevin Davis: 3:22

and Sherry, this is the problem with this. Under the Fair Housing Act, it's unlawful those free babe housing and talking about housing discrimination is unlawful. That is race, creed, color, sex, religion, and we know all those but what they have done is to add bullying into that definition. So now bullying is a form of housing discrimination, and that's what's creating this massive promising for communication boards and the directors, and if they're the property address these issues can lead to serious issues involving all types of financial costly. It could be really costly, talking about the hundreds of 1000s of dollars, because bullying, harassment and discrimination is problematic in states, very

Sherry Branson: 4:04

problematic, and on the increase as well. Kevin, you know, in this post covid world, people are many more. People are working at home. They're hearing the dogs, they're seeing people, they're noticing noise. They're just seeing so much more going on in the neighborhood. And neighbors are just not used to seeing each other as much, I think. And like you said, you know, we've talked about before, people used to go to work and come home at the end of the day, but now you still have quite a few people working remotely, and that has led to a big uptick in these claims as well.

Kevin Davis: 4:35

Yeah, and that's what we're saying right now. We're seeing, if you just think about how it used to be we live in community association and make sure you live in the HOA there used to go to work at nine o'clock, eight o'clock in the morning come up for you, because in the E watch Netflix. And now again, two o'clock in the afternoon, you're looking outside and you're seeing things you don't like. And the problem today that those things you don't like are becoming. Be toxic. You know, it's like, you really don't like it. You know, we had a situation where there were wind chimes on the neighbor, okay, Southern California, and you lived in Southern California, and you know what the Santa Ana winds could be like, right? Yes,

Sherry Branson: 5:13

yes, very powerful winds.

Kevin Davis: 5:17

Exactly. I'm trying to get worked out. I'm trying to go sleep at night. And those wind chimes are going constantly going. So the neighbor just pulled the wind chimes down. He said, the wind knocked him down. But again, he kind of did it. And so now I'll say you had an altercation between two neighbors there based on law. You know, you got to have the board. Can't ignore these situations, and can't ignore them, especially if that one neighbor is saying, now you're bullying me. You know, by taking that sign down, you're harassing me. You making me feel bad. You know, these are the things that historically, they have to be some kind of proof that discriminated against you. Yeah, now it's just a matter I feel bad, right?

Sherry Branson: 6:01

Right? Something as simple as wind chimes, you know what I mean, can actually turn into a very expensive claim. And like you said, Kevin, the board has to make a decision. They have to do something when this dispute gets to that level, yeah. And we're

Kevin Davis: 6:14

seeing all types of claims as a result of, yeah, covid Perfect. What we see, and this is a small one, not a big deal is that, you know, dogs. Okay, people bought their covid pets. You know, they had little dogs running all over the place. They loved it home every day. Now these people are back at work, and now the person who's not at work was sitting home two o'clock in the afternoon, they see that dog barking all day long. Now you can write a nice note and says, Listen, I hope you realize your dog is out barking. Can you please stop and try to get work done? But it always ends up being extra exclamation points on there. And then what happens is that you start going down this rabbit hole to the point where, now, of a sudden, you're yelling and screaming at each other, and you're creating things that you can get past. You know, instead of lowering the temperature, you know, any situation like that, you go up a little bit more. They go up a little bit more. You go up a little

Sherry Branson: 7:07

bit more. Now, of a sudden, oh, right. It just keeps escalating and escalating and camping. We've had a situation in my neighborhood where somebody was walking their dog and they were doing their business on somebody's lawn, and they weren't cleaning it up. So that person started videotaping them and taking pictures of them, and then putting it up on social media and saying, Have you, you know who this person is, and where do they live, and what is their name? And and I thought, oh, boy, this is, this is not going to end well. And they just kept putting up the pictures and putting up the pictures and and then people were saying, Oh, I know that person. I know where they live, and it's so, yeah. Well,

Kevin Davis: 7:42

guess what? Now, this is interesting. In New York, they have something similar, but they do DNA tests for the dog poop that's out there

Sherry Branson: 7:49

nothing. CSI. Come in here. CSI on the scene,

Kevin Davis: 7:53

exactly again. Why is that happening right now? Because that temperature has risen to a point where we don't tolerate each other anymore, and because that lack of tolerance that we have for one another, it's a matter of it's not this discrimination against it. You're harassing me. You're bullying me. Stop it right now, because I feel bad. And then you mentioned something new, that what they do is put it on social media. They put it on the Facebook, they put it on LinkedIn, they put up all these different things now set as height, because once I see it on there, now that bullying has been magnified.

Sherry Branson: 8:29

Right now it's now it's public, and you've got the whole neighborhood chiming in, you know, saying, Oh, I know that dog. I know that person. And then they start talking

Kevin Davis: 8:38

about that person. They say, yeah, that person always did things like that. Well, that person did this. And the problem is they always go down that rabbit hole. You can't just say the person has walked his dog and they'll stop it. No problem with that. It's not only they're doing on this neighborhood, they're doing over here too. They doing this. And not only that, I see them doing other thing they shouldn't be doing, right? They're going to the pool. Whenever I go to pool, they're not obeying any of the laws. They're not doing. You know, again, that people follow they park in business parking. That dog is bigger than it should be anyway. Then violation all these rules. And here's the difference, though, there's a line. Once you cross that line, that line is defamation, libel and slander. Now, all sudden, I have a lawsuit against you, because I feel bad I was harmed. I was harmed to the point where I had lost my reputation. You know, I no longer had that standing I did in the community. I used to feel at the pool and feel honored, and people used to respect me, but I lost all respect, because what you did to me on social media about my dog, right?

Sherry Branson: 9:42

And I feel there. Mm, hmm, absolutely. And Kevin, speaking of social media, for another situation that I saw last year our budget, there was some kind of a mistake in the budget, so a lot of the homeowners started complaining about the board members. And really. Be, you know, a lot of Not, not nice things were said on social media, you know, calling, calling them some names and stuff like that, and really going after the board, saying, Oh, how could they make this mistake? This is ridiculous. Blah, blah, blah, you know.

Kevin Davis: 10:14

And this is, the problem is that, again, we go down a rabbit hole and everything's height. So you have the board member, you have the universal board member kind of situation, you have this thing going on where that unit owner believes that the board has another job properly. And again, we talked about in the past how right now, while the board members are facing situations where the expenses out there are higher than the revenue taking it because they didn't budget properly, or because they didn't have special assessment, or because they didn't do the things they should have done. I mean, and that's normal, but when you face that situation, when expenses are here and revenue is here, then all sudden, you got to do something. And what we got to do is say, we made a mistake. We're sorry. We need more money from you. However, guess what? As un owners, they go down the rabbit hole and say, Guess what? We don't think you just made a mistake. We think you're dishonest. We think there's quite enough money in there because your brother in law, your relative, your friend, is the one you hired to be the landscaper, and you're getting kickbacks. Or, guess what, you're the one, you're embezzling the money, okay? Or you're just incompetent. When you use words like that, when those unit owners start to go to that level, and again, we live in a heightened world, that's when you can be held liable, right?

Sherry Branson: 11:32

Right? And people aren't realizing that these what's might start out as a minor thing, as you mentioned, escalates and escalates and escalates and turns into a huge claim. There's

Kevin Davis: 11:43

a line that you stay below that line, you can say, Listen, I'm disappointed in the board of directors. Okay, you can even say that, listen, I want you to do a better job of budgeting so that we don't have the situations again. You could be critical. But when you cross the line and say, they did something that's honest, when they said, Guess what, you're getting kickbacks because you hired at somebody giving you money back. Because I know that there's a bid out there for roof for $10,000 but you got a$12,000 roof for you took $2,000 in pocket it. That is that line of cost. Now you can be held liable. That person can sue you for harm, defamation, libel, slander, depending on if you said it, and if you said if you said it to people like that, you know the slant, if I'm an important meeting, if I'm at the pool, you and I at the pool, and I can't believe that board of directors did this to me. I'm looking at the budget, and I'm looking at how much money they should have. I'm quite sure they're embezzling it. I'm quite sure you're getting kicked back as soon as they say that. I say it to you, and then you go back to report it, all of a sudden, That's slander, and you're in trouble. If you go to Facebook, you put it on social media as liable you put in there, our board of directors are incompetent.

Sherry Branson: 12:57

I'm saying that's exactly, that's exactly what they were saying, incompetent. Yeah, and that's the

Kevin Davis: 13:02

problem. That's the line you cross. The same thing live on, slanting. Defamed me because it's not incompetent. I am not incompetent. Now, if you prove they are incompetence, one thing, but we did our job reasonably. The problem is you stepped over the line and called me incompetent. Therefore I'm going to hold you responsible for defamation. You defamed me as folks. We saw that defamation. I lost my standing in the community. I can't go to the pool anymore. I can't be with my friends because they're blaming me because there we had to raise assessments. And we understand inflation has changed the way we do business today. You know, we need more money. It's not my fault. It is outside forces that made us not have enough income for our expenses. But you call me incompetent, therefore you cross the line. So right now we talk about two things, I committed a crime, say I stole the money, or you say, I'm incompetent. Those are the two lines that you cross over. And again, we talk about union owner to that board directors. It can happen the other way too. That board would be worth the unit owners too. And what happened make those unit owners feel bad? He goes as a union owner, I can say, I can go to the board and and say, Listen, I have difficulty right now pay my monthly assessments. Can you give me time? And the board can respond in a lot of different ways. You know, they can respond in a positive manner. They can respond in a negative manner, but they can respond just saying, no problem. And then start whispering, you know, I don't believe that person. They can afford it. I saw that car they had. They bought a brand new car. I can't believe it. I think they're just making things up. They just trying to let me know that, you know, I don't believe anything. They're saying. They're lying. They're lying, you know, they're being dishonest, you know. And then again, when you do this kind of thing. And you create those problems. The biggest one that I to me, that to worry about is that when the unit owners aboard goes after the dentist, okay, that's the tough where they really go after the landscaper,

Sherry Branson: 15:13

usually the roofer. Yeah, yep, yeah, the

Kevin Davis: 15:17

How dare you hire the landscaper? There's been a landscaper. can of coke behind that tree for the past three weeks, and they haven't removed it yet. Every day I'm looking out my window and see that can of coke out there, and they have not removed that can of Coke. I can't believe it. Get rid of that man. Get rid of that landscape. They're incompetent, you know, right? In fact, they probably don't incompetent, but they overpaid. I looked at the budget. You paid way too much money. You know, that's why I like what you're doing, because I think you're getting kickbacks from that again and but when you have a defamation of character against a vendor, now you thought something serious.

Sherry Branson: 15:53

And actually, Kevin, let me just bring up a quick little example. In my neighborhood, people were complaining they the way they were cutting the hedges. I guess they were cutting, like, really chopping them back. But then it come to find out, somebody else chimed in later and said, Well, those particular types of hedges have to be trimmed that way because of whatever, you know, a lot of people putting up, like, pictures of their their hedges, you know, saying, Look at what they're doing. They're butchering our hedges. They're they're killing our plants, you know.

Kevin Davis: 16:22

And again, that line across is saying that this vendor is incompetent. Once you say that vendors are incompetent, what you're doing now, you are messing with this LED living, you know. And all of a sudden, now you're talking about a major suit. You're talking about something that could cost a lot of money, because all of a sudden, you defame them to the point where they can't make a living anymore,

Sherry Branson: 16:41

right? Their professional reputation, their professional reputation. Professional reputation is everything. Is everything.

Kevin Davis: 16:47

Now, there's two other areas that that comes into play. So we're talking about, you can they're incompetent. We committed a crime. Now during covid, this one popped up a lot. If you have some kind of infectious disease, stay with that person. That person has covid. What do you I don't have covid. As a result of saying covid, I lost my standard in community, you know, right,

Sherry Branson: 17:08

right, right, yeah. I mean just somebody is sick and they're contagious. I mean, that something you can't you should never do publicly. That's,

Kevin Davis: 17:17

that's why you defame me, especially if it's not true. If it's true, you may have a leg to stand on, you still shouldn't do it. But if, all of a sudden, I'm walking through the Community Association, everybody runs away from me because there's a word out that I have covid that's been infected, and I'm infecting everyone else around me. Now, all of a sudden, you talk about defamation. We talk about live on Slack, right?

Unknown: 17:39

Absolutely. The other one

Kevin Davis: 17:41

that's kind of interesting is that you have sex with somebody you shouldn't have sex with. If you accuse having sex with somebody you have sex with. You know that's the fourth area. So the four areas that the line is crossed, and then once you cross any four of those lines, then all of a sudden they're talking about hundreds of $1,000 in damages, very

Sherry Branson: 18:02

expensive claims, very expensive claims. I think the boards, you know, they in this is another situation where they should talk to the experts, their insurance agent, their attorney. You know, this starts going on on their Facebook page, and they become aware of it. Kevin, they become aware of it. They should definitely take action, definitely take action and not do nothing.

Kevin Davis: 18:25

Okay, I guess that's a good time for us. Take a break, hear from one of our sponsors, and we'll come back and offer some really good tips so that you don't get trapped in one of these traps and end up looking going, I didn't mean to, you know, I can't believe this happened to Okay, I will see you back in a few minutes.

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Kevin Davis: 19:16

and we're back sherry. So we talked about these boards of directors, vendors, union owners, neighbor to neighbors. There's a line you can't cross. You can get upset. But the problem with being upset is that we end up at some point in time, crossing line, calling somebody incompetent, you know, saying somebody has stolen money, saying somebody, guess what? I can't believe it, not only that, but they have some infectious disease I heard they had, you know. Or guess what it is, sleeping with the person too, you know. So those are the lines that are cross that once I hear them as an insurance person, I know we're going to spend hundreds of 1000s of dollars. So what we want to do now? Now is really get some tips. How are we going to, you know, stop these things from occurring, and we the main thing is to be aware. And I think if, if there's one thing that we've done today is made you aware of what could happen, because right now we live in that post covid world you talked about earlier Sherry, where we're home at two o'clock in the afternoon and I can't get my work done, because guess what's happening outside right now, the pickleball court is in there, and people playing pickleball at two o'clock in the afternoon instead of working. So I'm yelling at my window, and now the pickleball people are getting upset, and we have to learn to tone it down, okay? Lower the temperature,

Sherry Branson: 20:43

right? That's all they realize. We are living in a community with people, you know, yes,

Kevin Davis: 20:47

yes, yes. And we all have a right to enjoy the facilities, you know, the market law court enjoy. Yeah, we

Sherry Branson: 20:54

actually have a friend who lives right across from we have, like, a field and a pool and like, a clubhouse. They've been having kids soccer practices over there, you know, like a soccer so here he works at home. He works remotely, speaking of post covid, they're just screaming up there for a couple hours playing soccer, you know. And it's like he has to go to the other side of the house to work. So it's like you're grieving for two hours of kids. And,

Kevin Davis: 21:19

you know, I know, and you're fortunate, because, again, a lot of times we can sit back and say, Okay, I don't like it, but life goes on. But we reach into a point, because we live in the world, to dig 50 world we don't like the other side. You know, they're the bad guys. We're the good guys, and now all of a sudden, we start accusing them of being bad guys, and that's what so first thing we gotta do is lower the temperature, but then we really gotta do some things that protects us as board members. So I'm talking to right now board members, even the management companies, and the one thing you need to do is have an anti harassment policy. Because if you're sued, and the first thing lawyer will ask you, do you have the anti harassment policy? And you say, Do we have a what? Right? You don't want to,

Sherry Branson: 22:02

you don't want to see. Do we have a what?

Kevin Davis: 22:05

Yeah, and that's that creates a problem, because you're gonna have a lawyer on another side with a big smile on his face right now, saying, Okay, let me see. I always wanted this new car. I always want to let your car. He's already planning electric car he would buy, you know, so have an anti harassment policy. You know, there's nothing more important than having anti harassment policy. Do some board training. Understand that discrimination and bullying harassment are illegal, okay? And as boards, you have to do something about it. You have to understand what it is you can do, what you have to do. So have board training. Board go take some training on anti harassment policy. What do you have to do now? They have the policy number one, but they know what to do when it when it comes in, communicate it effectively that we have a policy against discrimination, bullying arresting, so we don't tolerate it at our community. Okay, that's simple. We don't tolerate this our community. It goes back to education. And guess what happens to the board when they get sued because the neighbor versus neighbor? You know, the dog is barking too loud the neighbor, but that board gonna say, Guess what? We have anti reference policy. We have board training. We communicate our policy. You know, our policy is clear. The policy procedures outline that if you are being discriminated against or bullied or harassed, these are the things you need to do. You need to notify us. And when that happens, guess what? All of a sudden, I don't, you know, I don't want to be sued ever as a board member of a community association, but we did the right job. Okay, we did the right job.

Sherry Branson: 23:50

Yes, we did the right things. I mean, you can't prevent every single lawsuit, but if you're doing things correctly and doing the right things, you can reduce it dramatically and maybe nip it in the bud.

Kevin Davis: 24:02

Yeah. And again, we're always saying, is this lowering the likelihood of a claim, minimize it. You can be sued, but at certain point in time, guess what happens? You know, first of all, I have an insurance policy that picks up discrimination, harassment and bullying. That's number one. You got to make sure everybody out there who's listening to this, go to the insurance agent and say, that protects me if I'm sued for bullying, harassment and discrimination, that's number one. But if they say no, because a lot of people don't, do not insure, because it's illegal to discriminate, and so it's hard to get insurance for that kind of stuff. So if you don't have it, all you have is your ability to say, Guess what? We did our right job. You know, we did not preach our fiduciary duty. We have our we represent, we understand it, and we did our job the way it should be done. You protecting yourself if, in case of a lawsuit, and you don't have, if you have insurance, you're still protecting yourself because we did the right. Thing by doing these four things and anti racist policy, we have boy training. We communicated effectively. We have procedures in place if you are bullied, harass or discriminate against and it works out pretty well. You know, if you teach people about respect for their community, you know, treat people kindness. You know, if you start from a perspective of kindness, you know, and treat people like they belong in a community, a lot of things won't happen, because we live in a time where everything's heightened. And so if I take a couple minutes to be kind to you, to do basic common sense, kindness to you by saying, Thank you, nice to meet you. You know what kindness means. It can also lower a lot of things, but we can't control that. The things you can control are the things we say,

Sherry Branson: 25:46

right, yeah, right. Exactly, exactly. The more that board members are aware of these, these situations and how to handle them, and the more training that they have, Kevin, and the more education, like you said, it's going to just make the association that much better, safer and calmer, and most likely, will diffuse quite a few of these situations where they don't turn into lawsuits or claims, or at least make it a more civil situation. You know what I mean, where if a if a lawsuit or claim is filed, then hopefully they can have reduced some of the damage. But if they have these policies in place, and they're communicating them clearly with the homeowners, I think just the fact that people are more aware of it, rather than just immediately posting on, you know, on Facebook, and putting a picture up of somebody or their dog or whatever they might think twice about it. If the if the homeowners are also, are also educated, it's going to help the homeowners and everybody. Well,

Kevin Davis: 26:51

sure, guess what? I think those are great closing comments. You know, you summarize it really well. So thanks a lot. And again, we hope you learned some HOA insights from our talk today. We enjoyed bringing them to you, and that brings you common sense to your common area. We look forward to having you join us again for another great episode next week. Thank you.

Announcer: 27:16

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