On June 2, condo owners at RainbowVision Santa Fe were awarded damages over rising service fees in arbitration court.

The services, including shuttles to the airport, meals and workouts, decreased over the years, but prices increased. 

On June 30, The LGBTQ-friendly retirement community filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, complicating the process. In the filing, the condominium development cited nonpayment of services by the owners as a reason. 

“Clearly [RainbowVision] didn’t want to take responsibility for their own failure,” Frank Mathew, a lawyer representing the condo owners, tells SFR. He’s since filed for a lift of the stay, which protects RainbowVision from paying debts. 

Condo owner Dave Garrity insists that those who stopped paying for services only did so after going through mitigation, unsuccessful talks and more recent fee raises with RainbowVision. 

“I don’t know how many of us would have embarked on this effort had we known all that we would face,” Garrity writes in an email to SFR. 

Ken Boiarsky, an attorney who represented RainbowVision, says the arbitration ruling is unfair because neither side sought the method for repayment used by the arbitrator. 

“The decision acknowledges that no one asked for release granted,” Boiarsky says. “Where do you go from there?”