In the past 6 months I've had a tussle with my upscale, gated HOA community. I learned a lot about Florida law as a result.
I originally had an idea that I freely admit wasn't too bright -- a 100 yard varmint rifle range using 4 feet of sand backstop, backed by unoccupied structures on my property. A "collimator" sand structure that I planned to stop any errant projectiles, in my mind really increased rather than decreased the risk of an improperly deflected projectile. That recognition and a really hysterical meeting with members of the Board caused me to change.
I decided merely to put up a small 2-foot thick commercially available shed and fill it with a plywood sandbox, allowing for a backstop if there were civil disruptions worthy of needing to teach neighbors some skills.
Even this (unused) strcuture set the HOA off. However, I learned several things:
1. Florida has a recent statute that invalidate all local government firearms rules -- cities all over the state had to rescind their ordinances. 790.33 What is NOT perfectly clear is how it applies to private contracts (HOA Covenants).
2. However, Florida also has a statute (720.3035) that says basically that HOA's can't dream up new areas to enforce, if it really isn't covered in their Covenants. In my case, we had a fairly libertarian set of Covenants, and a fairly EXPANSIVE interpretation by some members who really had never read 720.3035....
3. Florida also has rules that require ANY meeting of an HOA board to have prior notification, openness to all members, and minutes. My particular HOA simply seemed incapable (despite multiple explanations in writing from me) of grasping that this applied to THEM as well.
In the end, I endured a very testy general membership meeting where my lawyer (they hadn't even gotten a lawyer) had to gently explain to them what were the limits of Associational power. It was very clear that the big issue to most of them was economic -- they felt their property value would decrease because of the need to notify any new buyer of a member of the Asssociation with a "target range". The kicker was that since I really had no particular plans to USE the sandbox, I specfically avoided nailing down any claim that it WAS a target range....which provided cover to all ofus. They were also trying to avoid the fact that there is apparently a target range right across the street; you can hear gunshots just about any day.
My concerns were more "prepper" in nature, but I did learn what considerable rights Floridians have with overreaching HOAs.
I originally had an idea that I freely admit wasn't too bright -- a 100 yard varmint rifle range using 4 feet of sand backstop, backed by unoccupied structures on my property. A "collimator" sand structure that I planned to stop any errant projectiles, in my mind really increased rather than decreased the risk of an improperly deflected projectile. That recognition and a really hysterical meeting with members of the Board caused me to change.
I decided merely to put up a small 2-foot thick commercially available shed and fill it with a plywood sandbox, allowing for a backstop if there were civil disruptions worthy of needing to teach neighbors some skills.
Even this (unused) strcuture set the HOA off. However, I learned several things:
1. Florida has a recent statute that invalidate all local government firearms rules -- cities all over the state had to rescind their ordinances. 790.33 What is NOT perfectly clear is how it applies to private contracts (HOA Covenants).
2. However, Florida also has a statute (720.3035) that says basically that HOA's can't dream up new areas to enforce, if it really isn't covered in their Covenants. In my case, we had a fairly libertarian set of Covenants, and a fairly EXPANSIVE interpretation by some members who really had never read 720.3035....
3. Florida also has rules that require ANY meeting of an HOA board to have prior notification, openness to all members, and minutes. My particular HOA simply seemed incapable (despite multiple explanations in writing from me) of grasping that this applied to THEM as well.
In the end, I endured a very testy general membership meeting where my lawyer (they hadn't even gotten a lawyer) had to gently explain to them what were the limits of Associational power. It was very clear that the big issue to most of them was economic -- they felt their property value would decrease because of the need to notify any new buyer of a member of the Asssociation with a "target range". The kicker was that since I really had no particular plans to USE the sandbox, I specfically avoided nailing down any claim that it WAS a target range....which provided cover to all ofus. They were also trying to avoid the fact that there is apparently a target range right across the street; you can hear gunshots just about any day.
My concerns were more "prepper" in nature, but I did learn what considerable rights Floridians have with overreaching HOAs.