Social Event Who should be allowed to come?

We have a with over 400 single family homes. We have 6 to 10 Social events yearly. They include Concerts in our Park, Movies in the Park, BBQs, and a large Holiday event at the end of the year.

We probably have 8 to 10% of our homes that are currently behind on dues. When I saw behind I mean from $500.00 to $5,000.00 My question is has anyone been able to keep these type of people from attending the Social events that the HOA provides to homeowners. We do not allow them to use our Pool facilities but that is controlled by card access.

Any input on this would greatly appreciated.

What do your documents say?

Do your docs give you (the HOA) the authority to hold events?

Mark,

If your documents allow the board to deny access to common area (in addition to the pool) then I would expect that it might be possible to deny them from the party after you notify them ahead of time.

If your documents only allow banning from the pool then you need to first change the documents to allow banning from the common area and/or social functions.

However, my gut feeling is to allow them to the party but, as previously suggested, the treasurer should use that time to schedule an appointment to stop by and talk about catching up on the assessments.

Tim

I don't mean to be picky, but this doesn't really answer my question. For example, our documents (by laws and covenants) do not provide for social events. We have had a few over the years, but they are not something the HOA is either obligated or part of our mission or mandate.

We budgeted for those handful of events, too, but again, they are not part of our governing documents.

What sort of documents are you referring to when you refer to "all the documents" that you have seen?

The reason I'm asking is that if the documents mandate social events as part of the HOAs function, then that could be considered a common asset or amenity to which all members are entitled. If your documents allow you to restrict access to amenities to members not in good standing then you can restrict their access to the events.

But, as Tim said, if your documents only allow you to restrict certain things from members not in good standing, say, you can only restrict voting rights or only access to the pool area, then you may not be able to restrict access to social events.

On the other hands, if this is just a tradition, that your HOA budgets but is not mandated to provide, then your board could probably establish any rules for attendance that it likes.

But, also as Tim said, either way you should notify them ahead of time the reason for the restricted access.

Also, I do not recommend putting on the flyer or other notice "Only those residents who are current with their maintenance fees are invited to attend."

Once you establish that as a rule and formally notify the entire community, there should be no need to put that on the actual flyer or invitation.

Then again, as I'm leaning against even restricting access because if you publicize that people who are deadbeats aren't invited, if some units are not able to attend because of scheduling conflicts or because they don't particularly care for that particular theme or event, it could start gossip that so-and-so must be late in their fees. . . . I would then feel like I would be compelled to attend an event because otherwise people might think I was a deadbeat!

Maybe I'm over-thinking this.

To answer a few of the many great comments. I am actually the treasurer of our BOD. We do not communicate directly with our past due accounts. This is something that I would like to change during my term. They recieve letters from the PM and in most cases a Collection agent that we use. They know that they are not in good standing with the community.

At a typical event we may only see 20% of our population I do not think anyone other than a BOD would have any idea who is actually one of the dead beats. I am actually on the Social committee so I attend all of the events and in a few cases have seen people that I now know should not be in attendance. The problem I have is I can not visually identify all of our past due accounts.