A week dedicated to the stories from New York’s uniquely ubiquitous housing option.
Like bedbug infestations and ceiling leaks, at some point in a New York City apartment, the chance of seeing your neighbors in the buff is extraordinarily high. But what do you do if the people who just moved in across the courtyard are hoping you see them nude?
Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Getty
There are plenty of ways that your co-op neighbors can ruin your peace. Odors from the heavy marijuana smokers or the hoarder next door may waft into your unit; the neighbor who hates the way you close your door might start throwing things at the wall (and even sue you). Or, in the case of one new co-op owner, the neighbors may be nudists who have a tendency to flash onlookers from their window. “It didn’t bother me at first because I just mind my business and go about my day,” she wrote in a Reddit post asking for advice. “BUT I have noticed that they’re acting a little too bold now.”
The unwilling witness, who said the couple who recently moved into her building “like to be naked all the time,” got a shock the other night when she went to close her bathroom window. “I saw him just standing there with his shlong,” she wrote. She gave the man a disgusted look, which sent him running and shutting the door behind him, but that wasn’t the end of it. He reportedly works nude in his home office, which is right in front of the woman’s kitchen and bathroom windows, and “he stands by the window where I can see him naked on a constant basis.” Even though she has curtains, she sometimes needs to open the window after she showers or cooks, and that is when he’s apparently ready “to strike with his weeny.” And what about his partner? “The girlfriend barely does it, but she’s a freak too,” the woman wrote. “It’s coming to the point where I feel uncomfortable in my bathroom or kitchen.”
Like bedbug infestations and ceiling leaks, at some point in a New York apartment, the chance of seeing your neighbors in the buff is extraordinarily high. But it’s one thing to catch a glimpse of someone occasionally; it’s another altogether to be subject to a full-frontal nude on a daily basis. “She has a right to a view,” says Julis Weil, a board member and former board president at the Carlton East in Sutton Place. “It’s her window.”
Some fellow redditors seemed to think the situation was futile (“You can’t really do anything about someone being naked in their own home”), and most offered some pretty elaborate shaming solutions (“Surprise them with a laser pointer on the dingus”). But according to Aaron Shmulewitz, a real-estate lawyer, the process for dealing with a repeat window flasher in your co-op isn’t all that different from other nuisances like someone across the hall blasting metal music at midnight. He says this behavior would violate a catchall provision that’s likely in her building’s house rules about acting in a way that is “unreasonably disturbing” to other residents. His advice? The woman should write to the co-op board or its managing agent and get its attorney to send a strongly worded letter ordering the couple to stop, or at least hang some curtains over their windows. “Ironically, she’s going to need to take photo and video from her window of them doing this,” he adds, “which kind of promotes the exhibitionist angle, but she needs the evidence.” She could also call the police on the grounds of public lewdness. (“Very often a mere visit by two cops to your apartment gets you to stop doing stuff,” Shmulewitz says.)
Weil, the board member, says that although his building hasn’t dealt with nudity issues, it did have a man who would come home drunk and throw up in the hallway and elevator. The puking stopped, at least in the common spaces, after the building’s attorney sent a letter. This also worked with a randy couple in a Jane Street building who repeatedly had sex during their quick rides in the elevator and were well aware of their potential audience. “They kept looking up at the camera while they were doing it,” Shmulewitz says. “I wrote them a letter, and there were no further incidents.”
Could the Naked Neighbors have to go to court? It’s possible, Weil says, especially if the woman claims she doesn’t feel safe getting roped into this couple’s routine again and again. But, he adds, his co-op board has yet to evict or take legal action against a shareholder over issues with the house rules. “They either comply, they pass away, or they sell,” he says. How neighborly of them.