This is a sample letter that we used to ask OUT OF STATE members to write an email to our legislators and to testify to the legislative committee that was hearing the bill. You can use this as a base for your instructions to your state members.
Legislative Alert!! HRLNG
Instructions for supporting SB 5727 These emails must be sent by Monday night, 2/13/2023
Please help RiseUpWa to help you. We are fighting for your protection against HOA/COA abuse. Please read the information below and then act.
This is our most important Senate Bill. Senator Yasmin Trudeau has written this bill for the State of Washington! Think about how a bill like this would benefit your State!
This bill benefits us in almost too many ways to list!
Just like Leavitts bill it puts all the HOA/COA laws under the Consumer Protection Act. It requires a mandatory member list including name, address in HOA, mailing address if different, phone number if listed and email address. These are the big two, but there are many more benefits to the homeowners in this bill.
The opposition in the Senate is questioning the benefit of putting the HOA laws under the Consumer Protection Act. They are arguing that under this program, the AGs office could investigate a complaint of a PATTERN of violating the law, and if the AGs office finds that the Board Member(s) have displayed a pattern of violating the law they can send them a cease and desist demand. If the Board Members refuse to follow the law after 5 days, the AGs office can file a lawsuit against them. And somehow, the opposition feels that this is unfair to the Board Members.
We are asking all of you that in States other than Washington to help out. Please write an email to the Washington legislators stating that your state has the same problems with their laws as Washington has with theirs. Then tell them how HOA Boards violating these laws damages homeowners.
I made the list below for the AGs office. You can just cut and paste this list into your comment and remove the ones that you are not aware of. My HOA violated just about all of them.
First thing: send 3 separate emails: one to Senate and two to the House. Many email servers will not handle more than 100 emails addresses in one email, so we split the addresses into three emails. Some also will not send out the same email to more than 100 addresses per day, so change the Subject line slightly in each email.
Copy and paste one of the 3 lined below into your Subject line:
Please support SB 5727!
Pro for SB 5727, please support this bill!
Support SB 5727 PLEASE!
Copy and paste this into the body of the email, or whatever you want to write.
“Please support bill 5727. I am from not from Washington, I live in MY STATE.
I would like to explain to you why passing 5727 is so important.
My State has all the same problems with their HOA laws as your state does. We are excited that your legislators have realized the problems and are attempting to create laws that will stop the HOA dictatorships.
This law will put the HOA laws under the Consumer Protection Act and under the Consumer Protection Department of the Attorney General’s office. This will allow the Attorney General to investigate and prosecute Board Members that violate the HOA laws.
This law will also require a mandatory true and accurate mailing list to be given free to all members including the members name, address in the HOA, mailing address, email address and phone number. The phone number may be withheld by requesting it be withheld in writing and the email address does not need to be the private email address of the member but can be an email address they acquire to use for the their HOA email address. This will be the address used by the HOA to communicate with the member, the member to communicate with the HOA and the address shared with the members.
Fill in your VERY SHORT summary of how the current laws are damaging your life, property, neighbors, etc.
Fill in how this bill will benefit you and other HOAs in your state.
Sign the email with your full name, address, email address and phone number.
Many email servers will only accept 100 email addresses per email and only 100 emails per hour, so we broke up the email addresses into sections of 100 or less emails.
1st email, send it to SENATORS: Copy and paste this into the “To:” line:
List of emails of all your senators or the emails of the senators in one committee.
2nd email, send it to HOUSE MEMBERS: Copy & paste this into the “To” line:
List of emails of all your representatives (less than 100) or the emails of the representatives in one committee.
3rd email, send it to HOUSE MEMBERS: Copy & paste this into the “To” line:
List of emails of all your remaining representatives (less than 100) or the emails of the representatives in one committee.
SEND YOUR EMAILS RIGHT AWAY (if you have problems, let me know, I’ll help).