United we stand
The Sunday Age
Sunday March 6, 2011
Many owners regard meetings as a tedious requirement of apartment living, but to others they're an opportunity to create a sense of community with their neighbours, as Kate Robertson discovers.LORNA Pitt is a strong advocate of the benefits of a committed and active owners corporation. When Ms Pitt and her partner, Mike Hill, set out to develop the former West Brunswick Primary School site - now known as Westwyck - they had a dream of creating an environmentally sustainable and vibrant community.''We had a very clear idea of our environmental and social objectives - that we wished to be creating a community of people,'' she says. ''We didn't want to be part of a development whereby people would be living anonymously in their apartments. We wanted the site to be as interactive as possible.''From the very first meeting of the owners corporation (what would formerly have been called the body corporate), the residents were involved in setting goals for the type of community they wanted Westwyck to become. And although it now has a paid manager to handle some of the corporation's administrative and legal requirements, Ms Pitt says the residents still play an active role.Ms Pitt is proud of the result, enjoying living in a community where neighbours know they can depend on each other, where socialising is the norm and meetings are hosted with speakers on topics of mutual interest, such as sustainable living.Westwyck's design has helped, providing opportunities for regular informal interaction through meandering paths and communal facilities such as a play area, vegetable garden, barbecue and bike sheds. Communication about the management and upkeep of those facilities is done formally, through the corporation manager, and informally through emails and via community gatherings.''We discuss who is going to do what, who is going to water when, and when we might harvest the pumpkins etcetera,'' Ms Pitt says, adding that other apartment complexes may not have the benefits of Westwyck's purpose-built design but their residents can still consider how the owners corporation structure can improve their lives by increasing their social capital. ''It's trying to think about how it can be used in a very positive way to make the connections and broader agendas that people might have. ''I think [owners corporations] can become quite a dynamic sort of facility ... probably not everyone wants to connect at the same level but it's important that you feel you have friends around you,'' Ms Pitt says. ''It's just wonderful to have that sense of a community.''There are great opportunities there, as well as the formal requirements for the owners corporations to be performing in a more straightforward way.''Stephen Raff, council president of the Owners Corporations Victoria, says membership is a legal requirement when common property is involved, to ensure it is maintained, insured and financed. But it is often difficult to recruit members who are willing to take on the responsibility of a committee role and that, he says, is a real pity.The benefits of taking an active role can be enormous. Mr Raff says vibrant owners corporations enable residents to have a much greater quality of life in their development, with an enhanced sense of community and well-maintained common property and facilities such as pools, landscaping and foyers.Some of the owners corporations he manages provide a great outlet for owners to meet and socialise. ''They might have a pool party or a barbecue once or twice a year,'' Mr Raff says. ''There are some where they raise money for charity. They have committee meetings regularly too, so those people get to know each other. They'll organise subcommittees and it might be a community subcommittee, where they're responsible for newsletters going out advising what's going on in the community.''Mr Raff says good candidates need to be passionate about the smooth running of their owners corporation, care about others and not just put themselves first when making decisions. ''The committee is there to make sure the property is maintained to a high standard, and to protect everybody's assets,'' he says.''The budgets also need to be accurate. If they're too high then people will be annoyed when they buy into it. They will be even more annoyed if the contribution is too low,'' he says, ''forcing them to put their hands in their pockets in the future to ensure their property, perhaps the biggest asset they will ever own, is properly managed and maintained.''Mr Raff says most new developments that require an owners corporation will have a professional manager involved from the beginning to ensure the right structures are in place. The committee will be elected at a special general meeting of the owners, which should be called as soon as possible. ''You don't want to leave it too long because you need to ensure that the insurance cover is in place, the appropriate funding is in place, which is very important, and to ensure that you've got adequate building insurance cover and liability insurance cover,'' he says.Office bearers' liability insurance should be in place too, to allay concerns potential committee members may hold about being sued, although this is highly unlikely if decisions have been made honestly and in good faith.But Mr Raff says the committee can delegate most of the difficult and ''tedious'' legal and administrative tasks to the professional manager, who should also be skilled at resolving conflict between members.''So really the committee doesn't have a lot of tedious work,'' Mr Raff says.
© 2011 The Sunday Age