I feel that the potential is their if its in food retail or solid tenants not offices.

You aren't going to take someone to small claims court for damaged paint or anything, and if a major loss occurs the tenants are almost never collectable anyways. 

You have to have someone fill in the gaps for you.You can do this on your own, don't get me wrong, but the time loss and the costly mistakes don't make that approach worth it, in my experience.

Headline (total) inflation for the past month was negative, -0.1%.Core inflation (total inflation minus food and energy) was up only 0.065%, so it gets rounded to 0.1% increase.

Maximize your W2 earnings, get a 2nd job, swallow your pride and live at home (if that's an option), don't spend a dime on anything if it is not food, housing, or transportation, and pile up money. 

Is it even worth considering renting at a potential loss of HOA, also knowing home repairs could be needed in the future?

I would just cut my losses and move on.

remember payments may only be 400 a month at best.. 6 months reserves is a whopping 2400 dollars.. so someone theoretically with less than 10k in cash could get into these properties.. this William I personally think is highly dangerous for lender and for buyer... its not losing the 10k that's nothing its getting your personal credit trashed when you can't make the payments because you lost all your cash.IMHO if you want to be in the rental game you need 20 to 30k liquid at anyone time that you don't have to borrower etc.. this will insulate you from taking a loss. as you build units of course its not exponential but you need a base.And since this is not TRUE cash equity only paper equity there is no hope of selling them for a profit or what you have in them.. 

With the cause of the loss probably being a hurricane I would make sure your hurricane/wind deductible isn't insanely high though as sometimes it is a percent of whatever the home coverage is.

If he is broke, its just a waste of your time, and I would say cut your losses now and consider it a lesson learned.