Condo Media - January 2016 - 16

Asked & Answered

Understanding Census
Requirements
Over-55 Communities Should Take Notice

Q
A

CONDOMEDIA

Are community association boards and managers
required to allow census takers to come into the
community and/or provide census information
about residents? My board is concerned about potential liability if we don't cooperate and liability in
the other direction if we provide access to a census
worker (or an impostor) who does some harm.

Stephen Marcus, Esq., senior partner at Marcus,
Errico, Emmer & Brooks, P.C., answers succinctly. Yes,
you do have to cooperate with census officials-local
and federal. Cooperation means providing access so
they can go door-to-door or a roster of residents if they
request one.
The applicable federal and state laws are worded
differently, but they have the same effect, Marcus
says. The federal law requires "the owner, proprietor,
manager, superintendent, or agent of any ... apartment
house, boarding or lodging house, or other building ...
to furnish the names of the occupants of such premises
or to give free ingress to and egress therefrom."
The state law requires owners of multifamily and
other dwellings to provide the names and dates of
birth of residents to census takers. The state law also
specifies "the president or principal officer" of a condo
is responsible for providing the info. This raises the
obvious question: What if boards or managers request
the information and some owners refuse to provide it?
"I've never seen a city or town say, 'We don't care
about your problems. Do whatever you have to do
to fill out the forms,'" Marcus replies. Simply "doing
your best" to comply should satisfy the statutory
requirement.
As a practical matter, Marcus says, "we don't get
hundreds of calls" every time a census is taken, which
suggests to him that most census forms are sent
directly to residents rather than to association boards.
To address potential liability concerns, he advises
boards and managers to insist on seeing valid
identification from census workers who request
admission to the community. If they refuse or you
have some reason to question the identification and

can't otherwise verify it, you don't have to admit
them, Marcus says.
There's another census about which some condominium boards should be considerably more
concerned, he observes. That's the census agerestricted "55-and-over" communities must conduct
to verify that no fewer than 80 percent of the units
in the development are occupied by one person who
meets the minimum age requirement. Communities
that don't document compliance could lose the Fair
Housing Act exemption that allows them to impose
age restrictions.
If Marcus gets relatively few questions about the
"big" census, he hears absolutely none about this one,
and that makes him nervous because it indicates "no
one is doing it."
The law requires a census in over-55 communities
every two years, but Marcus suggests an annual tally
to get residents accustomed to providing the information.
Boards don't have to worry right now about the
federal census because there won't be another one
until 2020. However, boards that haven't undertaken
the required census in over-55 communities should
focus on that one, Marcus says, "as soon as they have
read this."

Condo Media - January 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Condo Media - January 2016