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I have been reading comments by fellow coop owners and has me wondering "is investing in coops a wise decision?" If your board is ethical and operating by the book fine, but if it is uneducated and unethical you are screwed. Most shareholders don't know a thing about BCL laws that coops are to adhere to. Therefore they don't look at their purchase as a investment in a corporation thus a investor in their building/community. How can a handful of shareholders turn their cooperative around when legally it is expensive and time consuming. The cooperative has a lawyer to protect the board but what happens if they allow the board/property management to be unethical in decision making? Allow nepotism and some board members to act in their own interests? Essential services are not being rendered properly and no checks and balances by proper supervision. Property manager is a relative of the super in charge and resides on site. Union employees are fearful of speaking up for fear of losing their jobs. Doesn't union delegates come around to check on their members at all? Can the super their boss be the union delegate also when they didn't vote him in? Other lawyers advise you to just sell and get out once they ask the lawyer's name of the cooperative. Is there a old boys club when it comes to certain lawyers not going up against other lawyers? Or is it they know it would be too expensive to fight? I am not in NYC but in Westchester County where I get a strange look of pity. Please advise.
Join the Conversation Comments (1)Yes it was designed with a means to affordable housing with a stake in the coopervative or community. But shareholders don't understand this thus not involving themselves in the day to day operations. Most don't know what the board is doing or not doing until it's too late. What happens to a cooperative when the renters outnumber actual residing shareholders in place? When you can't get a quorum in many years or actual numbers of renters vs shareholders? Do you run or stay? Why can't lawmakers who devise the BCL laws support the shareholders who are suffering?
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Co-ops came about as affordable housing but now all you hear is business law. There is also you don't own I only shares in it. Well I knew all that crap when I bought it! What I did not know was how ruthless and depraved the board members were, they looked normal. I would rather live in a tent
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