Co-op's Roof Deck Policy Sparks Debate on Safety and Community Concerns

At my co-op’s annual meeting, it’s pretty standard for a shareholder or two to suggest expanding our sublet policy. Currently, a sublet can occur only once during a shareholder's proprietary lease. Last year, the board responded by distributing a building-wide survey to gauge our opinions.

 I voted no.

Not because I’m one of those longtime shareholders reflexively opposed to change. Rather, I am a longtime shareholder who used to put up a kiddie pool every summer for  children — okay, and a few adults — on our now well-manicured, surveilled roof deck.

Since the roof was undeveloped and unused outdoor space, it never occurred to me to check house rules or to consult the board. 

While I chalk up the experience to youthful exuberance, even then I understood that whatever I did on the roof had to be done safely. I never left the pool unsupervised and at the end of every splash session I emptied and cleaned the pool, having first obtained the super’s assurance that the water simply would flow through the dedicated roof pipeline to the sewer line in the street.

Safety also is my primary concern when it comes to allowing more frequent subletting in our co-op.

Ours is one of the largest buildings in our Lower Manhattan neighborhood that does not have a doorman. For frontline security, we rely on an intercom and on knowing our fellow shareholders. The intercom is five years old, which is somewhere between a third to a half of its expected lifespan. Sometimes the cameras work. Sometimes they don’t.

When it comes to recognizing our neighbors, we are behind the curve. After decades with a fairly stable group of shareholders, in the last few years we’ve had a 30% turnover in apartments. When you add up new shareholders, their children, babysitters, housekeepers and dogwalkers, that’s closer to population fluctuations in a college dorm than in a residential co-op.

Even with the shareholder contact list that the board updates annually, I’m not always sure who’s walking behind me as I enter the building or who’s joining me in the elevator. In those situations, my fellow shareholders and I are left with three options:

1. Just presume they live here and let them in.
2. Just presume they don’t live here and then don’t get in the elevator with them.
3. Just presume they don’t live here and don’t leave the front door open so they can walk in behind you.

Unfortunately, options two and three require us to make assumptions based on appearances. In other words, profiling. I learned my lesson about profiling during the pandemic. A man I didn’t recognize was heading for our elevator. In his hand was a shopping bag. As I pointed to the board’s posted COVID restrictions and said that all deliveries had to be picked up at the front door, a shareholder appeared in the lobby and informed me that I was speaking to his doctor. 

During lockdown, I served on the co-op’s ad hoc security committee, a group urgently assembled to investigate ways of improving our increasingly insecure front entrance. After meeting with NYPD officers from our precinct and security specialists, the committee recommended and the board approved the immediate purchase and installation of several exterior lights with motion sensors to better protect the building’s perimeter.

However, today, when it comes to changing our sublet policy, time is not of the essence. As evidenced by recent robust sales, our apartment values have not been negatively affected by our current policy. Indeed, living among a less transient population might be a factor in our ability to attract deep-pocketed buyers. I’ve wondered how much of a price dip I would have taken if I had my apartment on the market the year my upstairs neighbors used their one-time sublet option. No amount of pre-screening could have revealed the renter’s fondness for playing the piano at all hours (or that he seemed to know only one song, Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll”). It’s difficult to think of a time of day when potential buyers touring my apartment would have been spared.

Such nuisance issues could become a bigger problem for the board if we allow more subletters, especially in the age of ZOOM. Shareholders now working remotely from their co-op bedrooms will be incentivized to do so from, say, a friend’s balcony in South Beach or a rented flat in London while others pay to live in their co-ops. It seems inevitable that when pleas to pipe down from absentee owners to renters go unheeded, shareholders living in the building will call on the board to step in.

And yet, many shareholders responded positively to the board’s subletting survey. Since the board has yet to announce a policy change — which they can do, since the sublet policy is not in our proprietary lease — hopefully it is still considering the cost our to our sense of community, to the “privacy, comfort and the quiet enjoyment of our apartments” the lease provides, and to our safety. I can help by offering to reboot the old security committee. This time we won’t be trying to stop potential threats from would-be criminals outside the building. If there are additional subletters, the call may be coming from inside the house.