It has recently been brought to the attention of the board of our condo association located in Michigan, of which I serve as secretary, that there are at least 10 units that have non-family or extended family living with them that the board has no written "permission" for in their document files. We are trying to understand our Bylaws regarding people living with co-owners who are not immediate family; one is an adult grandchild living with a grandparent, another is a cousin living with co-owner, another is a friend living with co-owner (paying room and board) but several are single mom's with an adult child, spouse and baby living with her. Our Bylaws read: No condo unit shall be used for other than single family residential purposes... A family shall mean one person or a group of two or more persons related by bonds of consanguinity, marriage, or legal adoption or a functional family which means a group of two or more people having a relationship which is functionally equivalent to a family. Functional family does not include a group of individuals where the common living arrangement or basis for the establishment of the housekeeping unit is temporary. Our Bylaws allow for leasing/ renting a unit, if the board is given notice of such a desire 10 days before presenting a lease form to a potential lessee. No member shall lease less than an entire unit in the condo and no tennant of a unit shall be permitted to occupy a unit, except under written lease. Previous boards have ignored this and when I checked one unit's files, I see that co-owner sent written permission to the board asking to have a friend of her adult daughter move in with them. There was no response that I could find in the minutes of board meetings for the timeframe of the letter and when I asked several former board members if they recalled how the request was responded to, nobody seems to remember. The only notation I see is one reference that the question was "tabled" for further investigation. The majority of these co-owners live responsibly and you wouldn't even know they had someone living with them, but there are two co-owners who continually violate bylaws and resolutions and the board is afraid if we call them out on having non family living with them, they will bring up the fact that there are others who have non-family living with them! Any suggestions or direction would be greatly appreciated!
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