@That Crazy Swede said:
The Crazy swede is confused. I’ve read in these pages that if something akin to Bill Bratton’s Zero Tolerance policy isn’t stuck to rigidly, ‘the rot will set in’. Give them an inch and they take a mile.You can’t simply accept the strata laws you like and the ones that suit you, but flaunt or even worse in my opinion, not enforce the laws you don’t agree with can you?
I don’t know who said you have to stick to zero tolerance ‘rigidly’ but i hope it wasn’t me. Yes, give some people an inch and they will take a mile – but other people might just be trying to muddle through as best they can and will take direction and correction where it’s offered. You won’t know which is which until they show their true colours.
It’s not a question of accepting the strata laws you like and flouting or chosing not to enforce the others.
Some issues are worth going to the barricades over and others aren’t. If somebody is breaking by-laws and causing other people distress, and they refuse to toe the line then, to quote myself, you should “go them like a pit bull in a poodle shop.”
But there’s also the concept of “no harm, no foul”. For instance, if you are visiting a neighbour’s apartment for some reason and discover they are drying their washing on the balcony in breach of whatever by-law you have, even though no one else can see this, do you really raise a complaint. Zero tolerance would say yes, common sense would say ‘why bother?’
If people park briefly in visitor parking while they unload their groceries into the lift, and everybody accepts that they are, strictly speaking, breaking the rules so they move on as soon as they have unloaded, is there any real harm?
But if someone gets into the habit of leaving their car there for hours rather than minutes, yes, the rot has started to set in, as you put it.
A smart EC and/or strata manager will quickly spot the first signs and respond accordingly. But policing your strata block with the grim efficiency of the KGB (or in your case, SÄPO??) is not the way to build a responsible community. And hunting out every minor infringement or example of ‘creative’ management is not going to make us good neighbours in anyone’s eyes.
As the New York experience showed, zero tolerance is a great idea when everything has already hit rock bottom – but it is not a philosophy for building new communities based on mutual trust and respect.