CO-OP/CONDO BUYERS

Bill Cosby famously asked, in a comedy routine, "Why is there air?" And investor James Brady — no relation to the recently decease gun-control advocate — has now spent at least seven years in court and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees asking his co-op, "Where are my air rights?" The answer, New York courts have responded time and again, is that he doesn't have them, even though the offering plan for the commercial co-op at 450 West 31st Street, where he owns a penthouse suite, gives him "the right to construct or extend structures upon the roof or above the same."

Justice Shirley Kornreich, reports the New York Law Journal, dismissed Brady's most recent actions as “a near-perfect example of frivolous conduct" and reaffirmed an earlier decision that the co-op own but the case remains fascinatingly complex and actually quite entertaining — and that's even before you get to Brady's website, BullyJudges.com, where he claims "corrupt" New York justices have behaved with “depraved indifference” and “deceptive behavior” So we're not actually sure if he's calling the judges bullies, or if "bully judges" is a suggestion....

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Just when you think you've heard every claim a New York City shareholder can make against a co-op board, along comes a shareholder who makes an allegation so out of left field, it's not even from the Yankees' or the Mets' left field but from the left field of, I dunno, Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles. 

The claim? That a co-op employee owed him a fiduciary duty to take his side in a dispute ... because they were sleeping together.

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Married couple Steven Phillips and Diane Paolicelli Phillips, two lawyers — and yes, this sounds like a joke setup, but we have lawyer friends so we won't go there — have a 75-pound collie-German shepherd mix, Marcus. That's a big dog. And while it's 12 years old and arthritic, there have been "multiple incidents" involving the pet, co-op attorney Matthew Leeds, of Ganfer & Shorer, told the New York Daily News. In June 2012, for instance, he nipped a neighbor’s finger. So, the board wants the dog to wear a cage muzzle — presumably only when it's out of the apartment until it's out the front door, which really doesn't seem like a terribly long time or ordeal.

But the Phillipses, who got a different kind of muzzle that the board said still allowed unacceptable behavior, refused. The board moved to evict the couple — by today, as a matter of fact, though only giving them notice on Aug. 1 — and in return the couple sued. The irony? The ailing Marcus might not be around by the time the suit ends.

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A READER ASKS: At the last annual shareholders meeting, the board president announced that the market value of our building has gone up, and now everyone's shares are worth ten percent more. Hooray! Except that, after the meeting, I and a couple of neighbors realized we have no idea what that means for is. Is it just a point of pride, or something that we as shareholders can use?

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"Foreclosure" is a four-letter word for most co-op and condo owners, but after you're done cursing your bank, your bills, your finances and a cold and indifferent universe, take heart: There are "5 Reasons a Foreclosure Notice Doesn’t Mean You’ll Lose Your Home," writes attorney Steven Wagner, a principal of Porzio Bromberg & Newman, in BrickUnderground.com. These range from the technical — "Your lender doesn’t actually own your mortgage," since many loans have been repackaged and resold — to the folksy-but-true — "The bank messed up," which covers a multitude of sins and slip-ups. Since the article also gives you defenses that could help you keep your apartment, homeowners should read this piece on foreclosure forthwith. (And so should boards, since a bank's mishaps can scuttle a board's foreclosure filing against those in serious arrears, a financial threat to any cooperative or condominium.)

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OK, so it's a 10-year plan and nothing might be available immediately. But this is New York, where we can wait 10 years on a co-op / condo waiting list for storage-room space or a parking spot. Ten years? We've eaten knishes older than that. So anyway, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Comptroller Scott Stringer and others have announced that the affordable-housing lender Community Preservation Corp. is receiving $350 million to invest in struggling neighborhoods, reports The Wall Street Journal, Crain's New York Business and other publications The public-private partnership with several financial institutions will provide 7,500 units in mostly low-rise buildings to start, as part of the City's $41 billion plan for 200,000 new or "preserved" — whatever that loophole-sounding word means — affordable apartment in a decade. And none of them will have a "poor door."

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The East River Housing co-op on the Lower East Side remains embroiled in a federal lawsuit involving three shareholders' claims that a dog brought into the no-pet complex was a medical necessity for mental-health issues. As previously covered by Habitat, New York housing courts — generally tenant-friendly — and appeals courts all consistently ruled against the shareholders, finding their requests for disability accommodation to be dubious. The courts, as also covered in Habitat, are aware that scammers have misused disability anti-discrimination laws simply because they want a dog. Here, two of the disability claims came only after the dog was discovered — and a doctor withdrew his support for the third.

Yet after losing in the courts, the shareholders, as The New York Times recently followed up, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which is now suing the co-op on their behalf. Speaking for beleaguered boards all over, East River's attorney told the paper, “The board has no problem accommodating pets. The problem is with people trying to sneak in their animals and then thinking they can pull a fast one when they get caught.”

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A READER ASKS: I'm concerned that my board doesn't communicate with residents enough. There has to be a way for them to get information to us other than at the annual meeting. What are some options that I can suggest?

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The outcry over developer Extell's greenlight to build a separate entrance for mandated affordable apartments at 40 Riverside Blvd. has reached as high as Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. "The two-door system is an affront to New Yorkers' belief in fairness and diversity in our city we all live together," said Brewer in the New York Daily News. The Mayor agrees, saying he intends to ban so-called "poor doors" that segregate teachers, nurses, police officers, social workers and others of moderate means from bankers and lawyers — though unfortunately, not until an overall inclusionary-housing law is drafted about a year from now.

Extell's CEO, Gary Barnett, tells the paper he can't intersperse affordable and market-rate apartment and is forced economically to bunch them together. Funny — every other developer of such mixed-income housing seems to be able to do it just fine.

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What to bequeath your co-op apartment to a sibling after you're gone? That grave undertaking could be the death of you, since any assignment of your co-op shares to anyone other than a child or a spouse has to be approved by the board (and sometimes even then). How can you help make that happen, so that you can rest in peace? BrickUnderground.com's "Ask the Expert" column unearths advice from two top real-estate attorneys, who explain the little-known fact that, one puts it, a board can't "unreasonably withhold a bequest to a financially responsible member of the shareholder's family." For more and for details, vault over to the article — it's anything but crypt-ic! (And later check out the Habitat article "Transferring Co-op Shares After a Death.")

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