Ten months after Hurricanes Irma and Maria, 34-year Thomasville resident Simon Rawlins Sr. said he still mops his floors every time it rains.
The culprit is a giant hole spanning half of the north wall of Rawlins’ unit in Building 7E of the Thomasville Cooperative Apartments in Estate Bovoni. His home is partially protected from the elements by a patchwork of sundry pieces of plywood that his son, Simon Rawlins, Jr., scavenged from hurricane debris.
“This is a symbol that the management of Thomasville is saying to you, ‘You have to pay rent,’ even with this kind of stuff that you see,” Rawlins said, pointing at his wall.
The makeshift wall is not watertight: each time it rains, Rawlins and his family find themselves mopping constantly to keep up with the steady stream of water.
“We have a piece of tarpaulin that we use in the bathroom,” Rawlins said. “When the water comes through, it’s through the bathroom for this area. But over there, it hits the front room for the neighbors.”
Rawlins is not alone. On Sunday, some 25 angry Thomasville residents gathered in the community center to meet with the three sitting board members tasked to manage the community. Sen. Marvin Blyden, who has been visiting Thomasville for the last two months, was present to moderate the meeting but had difficulty calming down residents decrying various forms of post-hurricane structural damage that remains unrepaired and have only gotten worse.
Board President Fitzroy Harry said part of the problem was the fact that their insurance company, Guardian Insurance, has not given them a final figure of the total claims amount to which the community is entitled. The board was offered a check in the amount of $250,000, he said, as partial payment that would go toward fixing the residents’ roofs.
Some residents expressed concern about damage that occurred after the insurance company’s assessors have already taken photos for documentation, and were the direct result of the stop-gap repairs that management performed on their roofs, they said. The board did not give a clear answer when asked who would pay for those damages should the insurance refuse to cover them.
One resident, Julie Smith, flatly accused board members of insurance fraud.
“[Harry] said not to put on the tarpaulin, because what? To get more money,” Smith said, addressing other residents.
“I have that on my phone, videotaped it,” Smith told the board members. “All of you need to stop playing.”
Blyden said he will monitor developments and will hold board members accountable if they do not come back with news from the insurance company in two weeks.
A Board Without A Quorum
Residents also lamented what they considered gross mismanagement of the community by the three-member board that they called illegal. The board, mandated to have seven members, has consisted of only three members for roughly a year now: Harry, treasurer John Jno-Pierre and vice-president Conrad Grant. The current members are 60 days beyond their term, and their elections have been postponed three times, according to residents.
“There have been several meetings in terms of whether there’s a board in place or not, which runs the [cooperative], whether it’s legally acting or not,” Blyden said, referring to the lack of quorum. “Most of the action that has been taken, in my opinion, is illegal.”
Jno-Pierre said some members were taken off the board because their by-laws state that any member who owes back payments cannot sit on the board nor vote.
“If you are on the board, and you’re owing, you cannot tell people who are not on the board to pay,” he said.
Another issue was the 30-day notice of termination some residents received in their mailboxes citing non-payment of arrears for which many of them are on payment plans. While members of the cooperative own their homes, they pay toward the cooperative’s fund that finances the community’s day-to-day maintenance.
Smith said that management’s legal counsel asked them for low sums per month as part of their payment plan, which resulted in confusion when management turned around with termination notices.
“Even if the legal counsel made this plan, wasn’t he supposed to go back to the three stooges and confirm it?” Smith asked, referring to the three-member board. “You went a year and five months after the plan to come back and say you want more?”
Diana David, a resident of Thomasville for 43 years, is among the residents on a payment plan. She said she pays an extra $200 every month to slowly cover the arrears, but on her last receipt from management, the amount she owed went up by the extra amount she paid instead of decreasing.
Jno-Pierre said this was simply a “mix-up” then pointed to the larger problem of the growing debt some resident owe to the cooperative.
“We gave people numerous chances, numerous occasions,” said Jno-Pierre, adding that they even had to involve legal counsel. “Between the 12 of them, they owe $223,000 combined. That’s why we are [sending termination notices] because we can’t go on functioning like that.”
This was not the first time residents have accused Harry and Jno-Pierre of wrongful termination. In April 2017, resident Bernice Isaac took them before the Superior Court for the same reason. Blyden, meanwhile, encouraged residents to visit management’s office individually and come up with a new agreement instead.
“Even if you go to court, the judge is just going to make sure you sit in a separate room and come up with a separate agreement before you come back to his court,” he said. “You cannot come back to his court unless you have an agreement in place.”
