Navigating the Challenges of Being a Generous Neighbor and Tough Shareholder in a Co-Op Building

In the decade after I left New York to attend college in California, I was a carefree renter in both states, moving easily and often between leases. This approach worked right through my last sublet here in Manhattan. After I married, my husband and I purchased our Lower Manhattan co-op. I was surprised to learn that the biggest difference in owning wasn’t being locked into a 30-year mortgage. It was discovering, as I sat before the board for our interview, that I was entering a new culture. 

Unlike renting, the co-op world requires the constant consent of my neighbors. Even seemingly minor changes to the interior of my apartment had to go before the board. I would also be involved, even if only by paying assessments, in issues outside of my front door, such as renovating the lobby and replacing the windows and the furnace. And the elevator.

Since I was planning to stay put for more than a year this time, I would have to learn how to jump into a new way of living. My parents had been good neighbors, taking in mail, offering rides, lending tools and sugar, but they never had to consult the rest of the block before they repaired the roof or painted the exterior or planted a tree. Then I remembered something else from my childhood that I hadn’t thought of for ages: jumping rope. As a kid, I was pretty good at double Dutch, knowing exactly when and how to jump in. I needed to relearn this lesson when it came to navigating co-op life.

I checked in with my new super for a bit of information about my new neighbors. I pointed out the calm, pleasant woman who greeted me warmly as she led her well-groomed, well-behaved young children through the lobby. “Yeah, she’s nice,” the super told me, “but when it comes to building business, she doesn’t budge an inch.” After observing her casual conversations with neighbors about building business, I knew he was right. And I had learned my first important co-op lesson: It was possible to be both a generous neighbor and a difficult shareholder. My next move would be to increase my involvement in the co-op. 

I joined a building committee and hosted its meetings. At Christmas, I swept pine tree needles out of the elevator after the super left for the holiday and shoveled snow away from the front door until he returned. By spring, I realized that my efforts had put me smack in the middle of the rope, already jumping. I saw that not everyone jumped the same way. A shareholder who lived upstairs reviewed resident renovation plans, another monitored our finances and another helped keep the co-op out of legal trouble. When the woman who had greeted me on my first day used her well-known mixture of bossiness and compassion to organize shareholders on a rotating schedule to provide hot meals and child care to a grieving family in our building, I knew my husband and I had chosen the right co-op and the right culture.

By our first annual meeting, I hardly remembered the indifferent renter I used to be. While refilling the glasses of the fellow shareholders who were crammed into our apartment, I spoke up about converting our oil-burning furnace to gas and offered to paint over the almost unanimously disliked pink-and-purple elevator doors. I was no longer jumping by myself like a boxer in training, as I did in my renting days. I had become part of a group that jumps at the same time, in different ways. Take that, Rocky Balboa.