Roommate Review

Jan 23, 2013 — The rules and laws governing roommates and sublets in co-op apartment buildings are an apparently limitless reservoir of confusion, complaints and consternation for boards. If the point of cooperative living is for the community to choose its members carefully, why are there so many loopholes in the approval process when it comes to sublets and roommates? In this episode, Manhattan board member Regina Warren brings our attorney panel a particularly knotty question: her board has the power to approve sublets, but if a subletter brings in a roommate, are they allowed to approve the roommate? To answer that, Habitat Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Carol J. Ott enlists attorneys Bruce Cholst of Rosen Livingston & Cholst and David Byrne of Herrick Feinstein to dig deep into the intricacies of New York’s “Roommate Law.”