Florida Homeowners Association Terror

Getting terminated from your job has its pros and cons. One pro is that if you have been trying to get out of your career field of almost two decades and have been dragging your feet, you instantly get a motivational boost (and extra time to act on it) like never before! Another pro is that you become eligible for unemployment compensation if you were fired without cause.

A layoff is “without cause”; and so is discrimination—> Your employer will not implicate itself in a continuous pattern of actions that are illegal/alegal by contesting your unemployment compensation claim. Some would say if your employer did something illegal, then you can file a complaint with the EEOC and/or sue them. Sounds simple? It absolutely is not. Legal battles are costly, time-consuming, and mentally exhausting—like fighting your Homeowners Association. On the other hand, getting unemployment compensation is relatively simple, unlike dealing with your Homeowners Association.

One of the cons of unemployment compensation is that no matter how much money you were previously making, the maximum amount you can qualify for in the state of Florida is $275 per week. That is $550 every two weeks which is how often you will receive the money when you “claim your weeks”. That is $1100 per month which equates to about $7 per hour if you were working a job. And that may pay your mortgage for the month, but you’re going to have to strip or sell a lil’ somethin’ to pay for the electricity, water, phone, internet, automobile, auto insurance, gas, food, toiletries, etc. Add being in the hole with your HOA putting a lien on your house, foreclosing on it, and then afterwards, fining you for your roof tarp. Yes, this all happened to me in one summer!

Unemployment compensation lasts no longer than three months. At that point, you take whatever job you can get and hope that you stick out amongst all the other 100+ people who applied to the same jobs on Facebook—I meant LinkedIn. Meanwhile, your HOA continues to harass you—kicking you while you are waaayyy down in a situation that they could have stopped from the very beginning. HOAs and their property management companies are not for the people, the homeowners. They are for business. And that business is your money.