Home may be “where the heart is,” but the community is where your home is. Building a solid community is a part of making your home a welcoming place. Effective community management turns a set of nearby houses into a community.
6 Tips for Better Community Management
Here are six tips that can help your community association make living in your neighborhood even better.
1. Manage the Community Association’s Budget
The first step to effective community management is carefully managing the community association’s budget. The funds generated by community association dues are limited and should be used with care. Your community association’s founding documents define its responsibilities; careful budgeting protects its ability to meet those responsibilities.
The community association may be able to supplement the dues by collecting assessments or other measures, but don’t plan to rely on this. Community association dues can be a financial burden on the residents, and it is the responsibility of the community association’s board of directors to use them wisely. Relying on additional measures can create bad feelings among the residents and can damage the association’s ability to do its job.
2. Prompt Maintenance of Common Areas
The community association’s primary responsibility is to protect the homeowners’ investment by keeping their land values high.
In Washington, the Olympic and Cascade mountains face the worst of the weather, but more sheltered areas like the Puget lowlands see their share of rain and snow. Bad weather damages a community’s facilities and infrastructure. If roads and common areas are left in disrepair, it can hurt the value of nearby properties. Fixing these issues as soon as possible protects the community’s land values and keeps these problems from getting worse.
3. Organize Community Events
Hosting community events or block parties can be a great way to improve your community. Social gatherings provide residents with opportunities to build positive relationships. These positive relationships make a community more than merely people who live near each other.
Fostering positive relationships between the residents of your community makes the community a more pleasant place to live, but it also makes other duties of the community association easier. Residents invested in the community will be more respectful of the terms in its CC&R. They may also be more receptive to emergency assessments and other measures.
4. Communicate With Community Members
Open communication between the residents of your community creates a sense of unity among them. Uniting the residents of your community is the best way to improve living in your community. Open communication among the community members helps prevent conflicts within the community.
Social unity between residents isn’t the only benefit of maintaining clear and effective lines of communication. Effective communication fosters positive relationships between the residents and the community association. Residents will be more receptive to the community’s rules and the needs of the community. Should assessments or other measures be necessary, clear communication will help people understand why the action is needed. There will be less resistance to emergency measures.
In extreme cases, clear and effective communication between the residents and the community association can save lives. Fires, earthquakes, and severe storms are uncommon but not impossible. Living in the shadow of active Pacific Rim volcanoes like Mt. Rainier makes building clear communications and establishing disaster plans even more pertinent.
5. Enforce Community Association Rules
No matter what your community association does to foster respect for the community’s rules, residents will occasionally violate the terms of the CC&R. When this happens, prompt enforcement of the rules protects the integrity of the community. Lax enforcement damages the relationships between the residents and can lower the value of their property. Take care that enforcement measures are fair. Excessive enforcement can also damage the sense of community you have been cultivating.
Damaging your community’s unity through harsh or uneven enforcement of the rules is the worst possible outcome. Remember that the people that share your community are your neighbors. While it may be tempting to be more lenient with someone you have known for a long time or get even with someone who offended you, favoritism in enforcing the rules leads to bigger problems later.
6. Work with a Community Management Service
Working with a professional community management service can help make your community a wonderful place to live. Community managers offer services that can provide volunteer board members with professional assistance in managing the budget, working with contractors, and even facilitating community rule compliance. A professional can help you build a thriving community.
