To the editor: To avoid wasting the California condominium, we have to focus not simply on new development but additionally on these buildings constructed, or transformed, within the growth years of the Seventies and Eighties (“The California condo is dying. Can this affordable housing option be saved?,” Sept. 11).
Most have reached midlife with deferred upkeep and a necessity for particular assessments, a failure due partly to legislative insistence on a long-term reserve funding system. It is a system that, with necessities for secure investments and an astonishing however hardly ever famous 30% federal tax on HOA curiosity revenue, couldn’t even sustain with inflation.
From a public coverage perspective, saving midlife condominiums is way inexpensive than constructing extra housing. Laws wants to handle the wants of older buildings and provide alternate options to conventional reserve funding that incentivizes present repairs. For condominiums that serve residents with decrease incomes, we have to go even additional, with applications for grants or no-interest loans.
If we don’t get this proper, folks will lose their houses and their investments, and we’ll collectively lose a major share of this state’s reasonably priced housing.
Doris Goldstein, Los Angeles
