PSST - Wanna be a strata committee member?

As an operational structure, strata and community title associations need owners to volunteer as committee members.

And whilst it makes logical sense that after investing significant amounts of their wealth into a strata apartment, owners would want to be committee members for the building, there would be more volunteers than available committee positions and elections would be necessary.  So, most strata laws and procedures are based on those assumptions about committees.

But, my experience suggests a very different situation in the real world of strata committees which is dominated by the following key features.

• Low owner participation levels - it's hard to get meeting quorums and even harder to find committee volunteers
• Long term committee appointees - appointed committee members tend to stay in those roles for a long time
• Increasing compliance requirements - committees have more and more regulatory controls and responsibilities impacting on them
• High owner complaint levels - when lot owners contact committee members its mostly about an immediate problem they have
• Single issue membership - where owners join committees to resolve or further a single issue that concerns or interests them 
• Inadequate resources - there are very few tools to help committee members in their roles

All of which have and are conspiring to discourage committee membership and participation.

This status quo has emerged over a long time to favour and entrench the existing vested interests - which are not always what's best for the strata building and/or the lot owners - and to concentrate decision making and power in strata buildings.

Funnily enough, many law reforms proposals are worsening things.  For example, in NSW there are law reform proposals and suggestions to further lower strata meeting quorums and restrict proxies (leading to even lower levels of owner participation), moves to increase committee member disclosure requirements, introduce committee training requirements, reduce committee power and increase committee accountability (making it harder to become and riskier to be a committee member), and changes to increase committee sizes (making it easier for anyone to join a committee and enabling single issue members).

What's actually needed to get better strata outcomes are more owners participating in committees (and meetings) and that requires more good reasons for owners to want to join strata committees with positive outcomes.  That's not easy.

But, I was encouraged by this recent article by Marc Bhalla in Condo Voice about his owner experiences as a committee member.  It's worth reading to help reset negative perceptions about strata committees and start you thinking about committee participation in different ways.

Francesco ...