Albert Hammond Jr.<\/a>\u2019s girlfriend, and she had brought a friend \u2014\u00a0and people are saying, \u201cWe need people to be on the board,\u201d and the girls are like, \u201cYou should do it.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cFuck it, okay.\u201d<\/p>\nI did get in, and then I was part of an internal coup. There was an old lady that nobody liked at all, and she had been the president forever. She hated every idea \u2014 every answer was no without hearing the reasoning behind it \u2014 and she just made everybody\u2019s life miserable. There was a freight elevator next to the normal elevator, and sometimes, when things were busy, the porters would let people come in and use it, but they had to bring you up and down. She just treated it as her private elevator, and she treated the building staff like they were her personal employees. She was the Grinch that everybody hated, and the goal was to get her out. It meant talking to shareholders in the hallways or the short elevator rides where they were trying to bitch about three things at once and saying to them, \u201cCan we please get some more people willing to step up to the plate for this thankless job and see more options so people don\u2019t just go, \u2018Hey, the president is on the ballot again; let\u2019s vote for her again\u2019?\u201d Ultimately, it took a year or so to get the president out, and I think she moved out a year or two later. The porters were psyched.<\/p>\n
We talked about building a roof deck for every year that I was in the building, and there were so many people opposed to it. You start hearing the reasoning and you\u2019re like, Oh my God, people are crazy. They were saying, \u201cPeople will be going up there at all hours; it\u2019ll be noisy.\u201d One thing that I have to acknowledge is that I moved there in the late \u201990s and people that were there in the early \u201990s tell stories about entire floors being run by drug dealers and walls painted black, so there are people with a memory of a time when it was different \u2014\u00a0not the sort of gentrifiers, if you will, who are like, \u201cThis is a chill apartment building; one-bedrooms cost $700,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was some rock-star rogue renovation there. Albert Hammond Jr. maybe had only lived in the building for, like, a year and a half, but there were multiple issues where we were like, \u201cSomebody has to tell him he can\u2019t do this.\u201d\u00a0He was definitely doing work throughout where it was like, \u201cYou need to file this document. You have to put up this security deposit. You have to make sure that you have insurance for these things.\u201d He just wasn\u2019t ever doing any of that. It was always one of his people \u2014 a manager, his girlfriend \u2014\u00a0with whom we were trying to resolve a building issue. We\u2019d tell them, \u201cYou can\u2019t do that,\u201d and they\u2019re like, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t know; he\u2019s on tour and we don\u2019t know where he is,\u201d but the renovation has started.<\/p>\n
Apathy and frustration is how I\u2019d describe being on the board. All the other shareholders think you\u2019re totally mismanaging, and it\u2019s just a disorganized group of five people who are volunteering to run a huge building with a multimillion-dollar budget. The plumbing was a huge issue. After each shareholder meeting, we would try to deal with it for three or four months and get to an impasse, and then let it go until the next shareholder meeting, when everybody would yell about it. It was on the docket from the first shareholder meeting that I went to, and it was still on the docket ten years later, when I moved out. And it was just such a monumental job that we didn\u2019t have the resources, knowledge, and support to move it forward. And so then, we have everybody yelling at the shareholder meeting, and man, it ground itself to a halt each time.<\/p>\n
Windsor Terrace area, on the board for five years<\/strong><\/p>\nI was in a smallish building, so there\u2019s just a general sense that everybody\u2019s got to pitch in at some point and join the board. I really didn\u2019t want to do it. I\u2019m a person who has a lot of anxiety and an aversion to conflict.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s challenging \u2014 your biggest financial assets are entangled with all of these other people. You\u2019ve got people in really different life circumstances in the building,\u00a0some who have been there for a long time and then some who have come in on this more recent wave of gentrification. In every case we had a new applicant, just given the prices of these places, they were always pretty well-heeled people. We never rejected any sale. We pretty much rubber-stamped the people that individual shareholders were looking to sell to.<\/p>\n
But then you\u2019ve got people in\u00a0$30,000- or $40,000-a-year households and people who are probably $300,000- or $400,000-a-year households. Say you need a new roof: Do you rip off the whole roof and really extensively fix it for hundreds of thousands of dollars? Or do you put some new covering on it for $30,000 or something? It\u2019s just a really tricky balancing act. There\u2019s the proper way \u2014 the best way \u2014\u00a0to do something, which you should do, and then there\u2019s many, many different choices that are half-measures or quarter-measures, and balancing how hard do you want to be on the people that have a harder time paying versus how much do you want to do the best thing for the building as a whole.<\/p>\n
There was a time when we were having bike thefts, and I thought, \u201cShould we sleep in the basement with a sleeping bag where the thief has been getting in to steal bikes?\u201d I never actually did that, but the board was weighing whether we should install a big security system or just get the buzzer thing fixed and hope the thefts stop. We did not get a camera system. We just upgraded our locks and tried to stay vigilant, and the thefts did stop.<\/p>\n
Once I was up all night, trying to figure out what we should do about some big assessment thing \u2014 I think\u00a0trying to pay off an old building mortgage. I was on vacation with my family, at some airport hotel. My son was 4 years old, and at one point late in the night, he was still awake because I was pacing around, and so I took him outside the hotel and we walked around in the middle of the night. He still talks about it to this day, like \u201cthat night that we stayed up all night walking around jumping on fire hydrants and stuff.\u201d He thinks it was a fun time. Really, I just couldn\u2019t sleep because I was stressed.<\/p>\n
My hair has receded and gone gray. I did a lot of my graying during those years. It\u2019s a chapter in my life that\u2019s behind me that I am very, very happy that it is.<\/p>\n
Manhattan, on the board for 14 years<\/strong><\/p>\nI ran because people asked me to run; they needed a coalition, and I know how to get along with people. We had lawyers on the board. We had schoolteachers on the board, we had housewives and househusbands. We had semi-brain-dead people \u2014 this one guy,\u00a0we assigned him to decide what food we were going to order at lunch and dinner meetings.<\/p>\n
Depending who the person was and whether people liked him or not, any board member who wanted a bigger apartment, who wanted to get a choice unit and join their apartments together,\u00a0they got the apartment. Some joined two apartments together, and some people joined three apartments together. If I know, for example, that a non-board member is going for a particular apartment, but I happen to know that the apartment in question would help me make my apartment bigger, you might get rejected for that apartment. There is a woman who joined the board two years after I did in 1995; she has seven apartments all joined together. She\u2019s one of the few people that did what no one else can do \u2014 she actually took hallway space too. She got the board to approve that. Like, right out of the elevator is her door. I think there\u2019s only one other tenant in the entire co-op that has that. She\u2019s still on the board today.<\/p>\n
Why do some people get rejected? There were things sometimes that cut on racial lines, but those weren\u2019t spoken. It\u2019s like, you look at an application, you look at the name, then you look at where they\u2019re from, and you\u2019re like, \u201cOh, I don\u2019t want that here.\u201d You didn\u2019t have to give a reason; you just rejected people outright, and you don\u2019t say anything that goes into the minutes. Like, the lower floors of the buildings, we wanted those for Orthodox families, who\u2019d have to walk up and down the stairs during Shabbat. If a non-Jewish family or non-Orthodox family wanted to move to the third floor, that might not be approved if we knew that there were other people buying the apartment that would be a better fit for using the stairs. On the other hand, if you had an Orthodox Jewish family that wanted to get a 20th-floor apartment with a deluxe balcony, we\u2019d say, \u201cHey, let\u2019s keep them on the low floors where they belong, and let\u2019s give the better apartments to the better people.\u201d It went both ways. I don\u2019t remember anyone being rejected for any real good reason.<\/p>\n
We gossiped a lot. We talked about people having affairs; we would talk about the shareholders that we knew were doing things they shouldn\u2019t be doing and things like that. I was the secretary of the board for a while, and we used to go through the minutes and edit them out because we didn\u2019t want certain things to be public. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s allowed.<\/p>\n
Shareholder meetings were one of the most raucous, uncontrolled things in the world. We had local rabble-rousers. Every week, there\u2019d be a piece of paper under every apartment door from a shareholder, his own newsletter \u2014 I think it was called the Eric Gazette. He would call out board members and write about what their personal issues are, their family issues, and how they were managing or destroying your home. And then people would come to shareholder meetings with the Eric Gazette in their hand, like, \u201cIs this true?\u201d No, it\u2019s not true, you know, but I can\u2019t prove a negative.<\/p>\n
My opinion on boards is that I think that they\u2019re silly. The average person who lives in a co-op, whether you\u2019re an accountant, a financier, a lawyer, or a plumber, what gives you the knowledge to be on the board? There are certain decisions that have to be made that are necessary, that are fiduciary, and not everybody\u2019s capable of doing that. But when you\u2019re running for the board, it\u2019s a popularity contest. It\u2019s who you know, who hangs out in the courtyard and courts the most votes and friends, not necessarily who\u2019s more capable of running the co-op. So you end up with a bunch of clowns on the board who couldn\u2019t get hired to be a dogcatcher, but they\u2019re deciding the fate of people who own million-dollar apartments.<\/p>\n
Northwest Brooklyn, on the board for two years<\/strong><\/p>\nThe building is self-managed, but it\u2019s more than 25 units \u2014\u00a0really too big of a building for a bunch of part-time volunteers to be dealing with. There\u2019s also a generational divide. The president on the board is this old woman who was one of the original shareholders when the building was converted back in the early \u201980s. Her husband was the board president, and she took over from him. And there were these two other older women, also original shareholders from the \u201980s who had previously been on the board, stepped down, and are back on the board now. They\u2019re just grumpy. Their attitude is \u201cif it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it.\u201d Also: \u201cWe\u2019re not a luxury building.\u201d The older generation of shareholders who have been there for decades, they sort of see it as a middle-class building. But the reality is anyone who\u2019s buying into this building now, they have $2 million at minimum to buy one of the units. So it\u2019s an upscale clientele.<\/p>\n
I remember one time when plans for renovation were being discussed, because the interior spaces are a problem. You have real-estate agents who show units, and the first thing they do is they apologize, \u201cOh, this is all going to be updated; don\u2019t worry.\u201d This woman on the board was like, \u2018This is ridiculous. We just need to get our super some paint, and he can paint the walls.\u2019 And it\u2019s like, \u201cNo, we\u2019re not just slapping up paint on the wall!\u201d<\/p>\n
I did a big renovation project in our unit, and that was difficult. This one member of the board who oversees renovation projects, he just was difficult. At one point, he was convinced our contractors were drilling into a slab in our bathroom he didn\u2019t want them drilling into, so he was looking through our windows and filming. It was a tense situation for a while.<\/p>\n
All the people on the board are pretty conservative \u2014\u00a0 they aren\u2019t really pushing hard to have updates. The two people who were pushing hard were me and this other guy, and we both got voted off.<\/p>\n
Park Slope\u2013Gowanus area, on the board for seven years<\/strong><\/p>\nWe\u2019re in a small building, relatively speaking \u2014 there\u2019s only 10 units. I probably joined the board maybe seven years ago, partly because there was a member of the board who was a little bit bonkers. He was threatening to sue the board, calling emergency services on the building, and he left for Westchester County, where he belonged.<\/p>\n
It becomes super apparent in co-op buildings which people actually are built for New York City and who is not. I think you can kind of get away with things when you\u2019re in a rental building and be like, \u201cOh, yeah, I love New York City,\u201d but when you buy something and then you have to collectively deal with owning property in New York City and actually get along with your neighbors, I think that separates a lot of people very quickly. But even saying something like, \u201cCo-ops separate New Yorkers who are New Yorkers from people who belong in a cul-de-sac\u201d \u2014\u00a0the reality is, with the people who leave, it\u2019s because they\u2019ve lost their fucking mind. You finally own your own apartment in New York City, it\u2019s a decent investment financially, you made it this far, so obviously \u2014 so if you suddenly change your mind, that just means something dramatic has happened.<\/p>\n
We haven\u2019t had any rejections. The process to buy an apartment kind of spits out this uniformly bland neighbor. You\u2019re not going to get that person from more than 20 years ago who bought the apartment for something like $30,000;\u00a0that might be a far more interesting neighbor, and I mean that in a good way. What we get is somebody with a high credit score and super employable in one of the most competitive job markets in the country. They\u2019re not going to be a hoarder. They might be an asshole, but that you can hide. We do get people who outright lie, who say, \u201cOh, I love participating in community.\u201d That\u2019s just not statistically possible in New York City \u2014 50 percent of the people who say that are just outright lying. That just means you have to pull their garbage for them.<\/p>\n
Riverdale, on the board for five years<\/strong><\/p>\nWe had seven board members, and on it, there was a coterie of board members who were all women, and they all voted in a bloc. They ran it like a high school clique \u2014 the Mean Girls. They would cut people off when they were talking, they would not listen to ideas from certain people, they\u2019d be very dismissive. For me, it became, like, \u201cOh man, I dealt with these girls in high school; I don\u2019t need to deal with them in my middle age.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mean Girls had five of them on the board at one point, and the building did okay because there were some committees that were effective for a while, but then it went downhill. We\u2019re a nice building, in my estimation, but the Mean Girls had pretensions to it being a luxury building. One of the clique\u2019s members was in charge of the admissions committee, and we used to have a policy that if the bank approved you and you were gainfully employed, you could live in the building, even if you had a lower down payment. The Mean Girls started making rules that you had to have these big down payments, which ended up getting implemented after I left the board. But before then, they were soft-pedaling to buyers: \u201cWe\u2019re not sure you should live in this building if that\u2019s all you can afford to put down.\u201d I made the argument that you\u2019re excluding people who just became attending physicians at Montefiore and didn\u2019t\u00a0have family money, and they said, \u201cWell, you know, we\u2019re a luxury building; we shouldn\u2019t take such low down payments.\u201d I said, \u201cI think you don\u2019t remember where you came from.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problems weren\u2019t about board members giving family members contracts, but in the selfish aspect. There was a period of time where you were allowed to enclose your terrace and form a sunroom, which is very nice. But we\u2019re a 17-story building, and the cantilever terraces can\u2019t take all that weight. So we said, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have an enclosure already, you can\u2019t put one up now because of the weight\u201d \u2014 except that the Mean Girls got to put them up.<\/p>\n
Our utilities are part of the maintenance, and basically, the number of shares you have determines what share you pay, and there were a few people who had washers and dryers in their apartments, which they weren\u2019t supposed to have, but we grandfathered that in. But then four of the five Mean Girls put washers and dryers in their apartment. Somehow, they were allowed to.<\/p>\n
We had an architect on the board who was very well-meaning who just got fed up with the board process and left. These are people who genuinely want to protect their investment and do what\u2019s right for the building, and those people get driven out. That\u2019s what\u2019s so toxic about the board process: that over time, you get the lowest common denominator.<\/p>\n
If you have an interesting story about your co-op board or co-op, email tips@curbed.com or drop a comment below. <\/p>\n
\n See All<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tales From the Co-op A week dedicated to the stories from New York\u2019s uniquely ubiquitous housing option. Co-op…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":148093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,84894,87351,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,12216,84891,41008,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-148092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-co-op-boards","10":"tag-co-op-fights","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-renovations","18":"tag-tales-from-the-co-op","19":"tag-the-real-estate","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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