Resident worries about fire risk posed by car charging stations in condo parking garages
Live in a home governed by a condominium, co-op or homeowner's association? Have questions about what they can and cannot do? Ryan Poliakoff, an attorney and author based in Boca Raton, has answers.
Question: We are getting more requests by owners to install electric vehicle chargers in their deeded parking spots in our indoor garage. Our town fire marshall recently explained at our board meeting that the chargers and vehicles present a fire risk and that the fire cannot be extinguished.
We now have two charging stations on our outdoor parking deck which are available to owners. Why does Florida Statute 718 mandate that our condo must allow the installation of EV chargers which create a risk of fire in our building? I have recently brought this to the attention of our State representative. Signed, J.P.
Dear J.P.,
With nearly every law, there is a balance between different groups and different interests. There are even professionals called lobbyists whose entire job is to influence public officials on behalf of their clients, particularly when it comes to passing (or rejecting) new legislation.
The law requiring condominiums to allow owners to install electric vehicle chargers in their limited common element parking spaces expressly describes that the legislature wanted to promote electric vehicle use. It says that 'the Legislature finds that the use of electric and natural gas fuel vehicles conserves and protects the state's environmental resources, provides significant economic savings to drivers, and serves an important public interest. The participation of condominium associations is essential to the state's efforts to conserve and protect the state's environmental resources and provide economic savings to drivers.'
So, that's the official stated reason for the law, though it ignores the question of EV safety or the risk of fire. While I don't know the actual specifics of how this law came to be, I can tell you from experience that there's lots of possibilities, including lobbying by electric vehicle companies, electric utilities and charger installation companies.
Or maybe this law was pushed by a legislator who heard a story about a friend who was denied the right to charge their electric vehicle in their condominium, and they decided this was a problem they needed to solve. Or, it could have even been something that happened to a legislator, themselves.
Whatever the reason, someone had an idea, they managed to develop support for it, and the competing interests couldn't push hard enough to stop the law from coming into effect. The reality is, if people in condominiums have EVs, they need somewhere to charge them — it's a necessary evil.
But what may happen, as so often does, is that a tragedy could occur one day that completely changes the calculation, and perhaps even reverses the law. Let's say for example there is an electric vehicle fire caused by a charger in an owner's parking space, and that the fire causes serious damage to a condominium building.
There would then be a push to make changes to the law to protect these buildings and the lives of residents, and that may even end up reversing the law entirely (or perhaps providing that chargers can only be installed outdoors, or only a certain distance from the primary building). This wouldn't reduce the risk from the vehicles themselves, but it would greatly reduce the primary fire risk, which I understand occurs during charging. It's unfortunate that it often takes a newsworthy event to lead to broad legislative changes like this, but in the real world, that's how the sausage gets made.
You reasonably brought this issue to the attention of your legislator — but unless the firefighters get involved in an aggressive lobbying effort to change the law, or unless something terrible were to happen that makes the legislature totally rethink the relative value of electric vehicles (and I will clarify that I am not in any way disparaging EVs — I own one myself), I would not expect this law to change. It's simply the way our system operates.
Question: Our condominium board has instituted a new policy of background checks for new purchasers. Since there is nothing in our governing documents that addresses background checks, are they able to do this? Signed, D.C.
Dear D.C.,
Your governing documents may provide that the association has the right to require whatever documents it needs to approve or reject rentals or sales; and if it does, it's likely that requiring a background check would be found a reasonable part of that process, even if it is not expressly mentioned.
If your governing documents do not allow the board to reject tenants or owners, at all, the question would become whether the background check rule is reasonable.
If the board has no power to reject a lease or sale, what exactly are they doing with the background check information? In that situation I question whether an arbitrator or court would find such a requirement reasonable, as there's no obvious purpose to conducting the background check.
Ryan Poliakoff, a partner at Poliakoff Backer, LLP, is a Board Certified specialist in condominium and planned development law. This column is dedicated to the memory of Gary Poliakoff. Ryan Poliakoff and Gary Poliakoff are co-authors of "New Neighborhoods — The Consumer's Guide to Condominium, Co-Op and HOA Living." Email your questions to condocolumn@gmail.com. Please be sure to include your location.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Fire hazard v. convenience: Can condos ban car charging stations?
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