Florida HOA Lawyer Blog
A recent survey by the Community Associations Institute found that 67 percent of respondents have noticed an increase in home-based businesses operating within their communities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same survey, 83 percent of respondents reported that their community restricts home-based businesses, but 73 percent indicated that their association was now being more lenient when it came to approving residents’ requests to operate businesses such as daycares, school learning pods, hair stylists and others from their homes.
Most Florida community associations have restrictions prohibiting commercial business activities from being conducted in residents’ units. Some include blanket bans on commercial activity altogether, while others make a distinction between permissible and impermissible activities.
It makes sense for associations to regulate and restrict businesses from operating within their communities, especially for commercial activities that entail increased traffic and noise, but the upsurge in working from home in the new post-pandemic normal calls for HOAs and condominium associations to take a prudent approach that is guided by reason. Today’s technology allows for a great deal of work to be done from home with no disruptions whatsoever to the community at large. Rather than attempting to ban all commercial activities in a community, the better option is to specifically delineate in the governing documents the types of activities that are not allowed.