After the Memorial Day tornado outbreak in 2019, FEMA obligated about 9.67 million dollars in federal share for debris removal and emergency protective measures across Ohio. Roughly 6.37 million of that went to work in Montgomery County and 2.34 million in Greene County. Crews cleared streets around the Dayton area for weeks.

None of it reached a community association.

That is not a gap in how the grants happened to be written. It is what the regulation says. Under 44 CFR 206.224(c), “No assistance will be provided directly to an individual or private organization, or to an eligible applicant for reimbursement of an individual or private organization, for the cost of removing debris from their own property.”

Federal debris money can reach a private road. But only if a city, county or the state asks for it, performs the work itself, indemnifies the federal government against claims arising from that work, and FEMA’s Regional Administrator first determines the removal is in the public interest. That determination is discretionary, it has to be approved in advance, and it is granted inconsistently. An association that clears its own streets and sends the bill to anyone is, as a matter of regulation, on its own.

On Thursday, September 24, I will be on Capitol Hill with Community Associations Institute members from around the country for CAI’s 2026 Congressional Advocacy Summit. House offices in the morning, Senate offices in the afternoon. Here is what we are carrying in, and who from our area needs to hear it.

Disaster relief: the money arrives, and then it stops

There are two separate federal doctrines at work here, and boards tend to blur them. They are worth keeping apart, because an association loses on both for different reasons.

The first is whose land can be cleared. Since 1988 the Stafford Act has authorized debris clearance from “publicly and privately owned lands and waters.” The catch sits in the same sentence. The President may do it “whenever he determines it to be in the public interest.” That is the discretionary gate described above, and it is why federal debris money reaching a private community depends heavily on whether your municipality asks for it.

The second is who can hold the grant. To receive Public Assistance directly, a private nonprofit facility has to provide an essential governmental service to the general public and be open to the general public. Community association roads and common areas are neither. CAI’s position is that association roads do not meet the requirement to be deemed essential and so are not on FEMA’s list of eligible private nonprofit facilities. Condominium associations are likewise generally unable to get federal help toward shared elements including roofs, exterior walls, elevators, stairwells and mechanical systems.

Those roads carry ambulances, fire apparatus and school buses. They are maintained entirely with assessment dollars. The residents behind them pay the same federal taxes as everyone else.

CAI is asking members to support and cosponsor two bills.

H.R. 4669, the FEMA Act of 2025, sponsored by Representative Sam Graves of Missouri. Section 107, titled Common Sense Debris Removal, strikes the phrase “whenever he determines it to be in the public interest” from the statute and bars FEMA from imposing additional requirements for debris removal on privately owned land. CAI says it drafted that language. Two honest caveats: the section does not mention community associations anywhere in its text, and it preserves the subsection requiring a local government to authorize and indemnify the work. It removes a discretionary gate. It does not let an association bill FEMA directly.

H.R. 9159, the Protect Our Homes Act, introduced June 4, 2026 by Representative Darren Soto of Florida with Representative Jimmy Patronis. It would let the Small Business Administration make supplemental disaster loans to homeowners associations to repair common areas and fund mitigation.

Separately, H.R. 834 and S. 352, the Disaster Assistance Fairness Act, would amend the Stafford Act directly to permit assistance for essential common elements of a condominium or cooperative. The fact that a statutory amendment is required is itself the proof that those elements are not covered today.

Two more local declarations sharpen the point.

After the March 2024 tornadoes that crossed eleven Ohio counties, including Logan County and the communities around Indian Lake, no Public Assistance was authorized at all. About 3.7 million dollars in Individual Assistance reached 481 households and about 887 thousand dollars in hazard mitigation money was obligated, so it is wrong to say nothing came. But there was no debris removal program in the first place.

In Northern Kentucky, the April 2025 storms and flooding produced a declaration covering 91 designated areas statewide. Kenton and Campbell counties, the population core of our Northern Kentucky footprint, were designated for Public Assistance but not for household Individual Assistance. Which category a county receives, and whether a road is public or private, decides a great deal about who gets help.

Condo lending: the rules are tightening and most boards do not know where they stand

This is the item with the most immediate operational consequence for Ohio condominium associations, and the one I expect the fewest boards have heard about.

Fannie Mae’s Lender Letter LL-2026-03 makes two changes that matter.

First, the Limited Review option is retired for loan applications dated on or after August 3, 2026. Limited Review was the streamlined path that historically covered a large share of condominium project reviews. Going forward those loans run through Full Review.

Second, for applications dated on or after that same date, lenders must verify that the budget includes the highest recommended reserve allocation in the reserve study. The baseline funding method is no longer permitted. Separately, effective January 4, 2027, the minimum replacement reserve allocation rises from 10 percent to 15 percent of annual budgeted assessment income.

Some of the changes cut the other way, and it is worth saying so. The maximum master policy deductible was raised to fifty thousand dollars per unit, the inflation guard requirement was removed, and the fifty percent investor concentration limit was eliminated.

Here is the part that should get a board’s attention. CAI estimates roughly 5,400 condominium associations nationwide are currently on the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ineligible list, with another 100 to 300 added each month. CAI further estimates, assuming an average of 150 units per association, that this affects more than a million homeowners. That million figure is an extrapolation rather than a count, and I will present it that way on the Hill.

There is no notice. An association is not told when it lands on the list. In a Foundation for Community Association Research survey, 42 percent of respondents were unsure of their eligibility status and 37 percent only looked into it after a unit owner’s mortgage was denied. Sixty-four percent of those found ineligible reported a negative effect on sales or values.

CAI’s ask here is narrow. We are asking congressional offices to request meetings with FHFA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to urge a one-year delay in implementation. There is no bill attached to it. The broader ask, carried to FHFA Director William Pulte in 2025 and again in a July 2026 coalition letter, is that boards be given direct access to their own eligibility status and a clear path to fix whatever put them on the list.

Insurance, and the honest limits of what Congress can do

I want to be straight about this one, because it is the issue boards raise with me most and the issue where the federal ask is softest.

CAI’s insurance priority this year is educational. There is no bill number behind it. We are asking members of Congress to understand what has happened to the cost and availability of community association insurance and to weigh that when housing policy comes up. Anyone who tells you Congress is about to fix association insurance premiums is selling something.

The picture we are bringing is not abstract. Ohio homeowners insurance rates rose 36.4 percent from 2019 through 2024, according to a January 2025 S&P Global analysis. Ohio recorded 74 tornadoes in 2024, a state record that broke the previous mark of 62 set in 1992. Ohio’s homeowners market ran combined ratios of 103 percent in 2022 and 115 percent in 2023, meaning carriers paid out more than they took in two years running. That experience does not stay in the personal lines market. Association master policies are commercial property policies priced off the same hail and wind losses.

What boards feel is the deductible. Percentage based wind and hail deductibles have become standard on habitational risks, and two percent of a two million dollar building is a forty thousand dollar deductible before the carrier pays anything. That number belongs in your reserve conversation, not just your insurance renewal.

Nationally, a Foundation survey published in 2023 found that more than 90 percent of associations reported a property and casualty premium increase at their most recent renewal, 11 percent had coverage canceled or non-renewed, and half funded the increase by raising regular assessments. A more recent Foundation survey in May 2026 found 29 percent still describe premiums as unaffordable and 20 percent had a financing denial tied to insurance deductible requirements.

Who represents our communities, and what we are asking for

On the Ohio side of the river, most of the communities we manage sit in two congressional districts.

Greg Landsman represents Ohio’s 1st District, which covers the city of Cincinnati, a portion of Hamilton County, and all of Warren County. Warren Davidson represents Ohio’s 8th District, which covers Butler County and the western portion of Hamilton County. Ohio’s two United States Senators are Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted.

H.R. 4669 currently has 97 cosponsors, four of them from Ohio or Kentucky: Brett Guthrie of Kentucky’s 2nd, Troy Balderson of Ohio’s 12th, Mike Carey of Ohio’s 15th, and Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky’s 3rd. We are working to build support for it, and for H.R. 9159 alongside it, within our own delegation. Cosponsorship costs a member nothing, and it is the clearest signal a bill like this can get.

These offices engage on community association issues when someone puts the issue in front of them. Representative Davidson is the sponsor of H.R. 425, which would repeal the Corporate Transparency Act, a CAI priority that has passed the House and now sits with Senate Banking. That is real work on behalf of volunteer boards, and it is the reason I think the disaster bills will get a fair hearing. These issues have simply not been raised often enough by the people they affect. That is what this trip is for.

Why a management company president spends a day on this

There are roughly 8,800 community associations in Ohio, home to about 1,657,000 residents, according to the Foundation for Community Association Research’s 2024 statistical review. Kentucky has somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000. Nationally the Foundation counted about 373,000 associations and 78.1 million residents as of the end of 2025.

That is roughly one in eight Ohio homes.

None of the three issues above is a matter of opinion for the boards we work with. An insurance renewal that doubles, a reserve requirement that changes what a budget has to look like, and a debris program that turns on a discretionary determination nobody told you about are all things a volunteer board absorbs with no ability to appeal and, usually, no advance warning.

I will share what we hear when I am back. If you serve on a board in Ohio or Northern Kentucky and you want a specific point raised with your representative or senator, email me before Thursday and I will carry it in.