Managing a homeowners’ association can be difficult. While managing accounts, enforcing covenants, and collecting payments can be challenging, dealing with confrontational residents can be the most stressful aspect of the job.
These individuals can be extremely demanding and even threatening, making it hard to have any meaningful conversations with them.
But this doesn’t mean that you should sit back and let them take control of whatever issue it is that you’re facing. Instead, you need to develop some strategies that you can utilize to de-escalate and find fair and favorable resolution.
But how do you go about doing that when you’re dealing with a very confrontational resident? Let’s look at some tactics that you might find helpful in your circumstances.
Tips for dealing with difficult members of your HOA
Although it can be challenging to deal with a member of your HOA, there are ways to effectively handle their complaints. This is important since an unruly and disruptive resident can affect daily living in the community. Here are some ideas that you might be able to utilize to reduce the risk of contention and litigation:
- Don’t ignore disputes: It can be uncomfortable to deal with an unruly resident but ignoring them is probably going to make the matter worse, as their behavior may become more egregious, and if left unchecked it may cause others to accuse you of failing to do your job in addressing these issues. So, get involved as soon as one of these problematic situations arise.
- Listen to understand: It’s easy to turn off when a resident unloads on you. But you can learn a lot from them by carefully listening. Their anger may be well placed, or they may have one or two good points that are worth exploring. If you can find a way to agree with the resident, even if on a miniscule scale, you may be able to deflate the tension and find a compromise that makes everyone happy.
- Gather information: You can’t effectively address the resident’s concerns unless you really investigate the issue at hand. Information is going to give you guidance as far as how to proceed with conflict resolution. The upset resident will probably give you all sorts of information, but don’t just take them at their word. Talk to other residents so that you have a clear picture of what’s going on before you act.
- Calendar follow up: If you agree to follow up on the resident’s concerns, it’s a good idea to schedule it so that it doesn’t fall off your radar. If it does, you may wind up with even more problems.
- Consider long-term solutions: Even if you can resolve the problem at hand relatively easily and quickly, you’ll want to find a way to prevent it from becoming an issue again. So, consider what long-term solutions you can implement to head off future problems. One way to do this is by clarifying expectations for both the HOA board and individual members of the HOA.
- Use escalation tactics: Not all disruptive residents are created equally. So, if one comes off excessively aggressive or is unusually problematic, ensure that the HOA has an escalation process so that your board can have key decision makers involved when high contention is at hand.
Effectively deal with your HOA’s issue
Although there are strategies you can use to try to deescalate a contentious HOA situation with an unruly resident, you should never put yourself in a position that’s dangerous. If a resident is threatening or unable to calm down, then you may need to break off communications until they de-escalate, or you may even need to call the police. But if you want to learn some additional legal strategies to deal with these issues, then reach out to your attorney to discuss the matter more thoroughly.