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Latest Co-op Disclosure Bill Is Stalled in City Council

New York City

Co-op boards, purchase applications, disclosure legislation, fair-housing laws, discrimination,
Jan. 14, 2025

It's like cockroaches and Cher — unkillable. "It" is the perennial push by legislators to require co-op boards to disclose their reasons for rejecting apartment sales. Such legislation has been coming around periodically for the past two decades, and the latest iteration now before the New York City Council appears to be permanently stuck in the mud of legislative indifference, Gothamist reports.

This latest bill would require co-op boards in buildings with 10 or more units to explain their reasons for rejecting prospective purchasers, and it would impose fines up to $25,000 for failing to comply. The legislation has gained 29 council sponsors since Public Advocate Jumaane Williams introduced it in February of last year, but councilmembers with the most co-ops in their districts — a swath of territory largely concentrated in Manhattan — have not signed on as sponsors and have declined to answer questions about whether they would support the legislation.

That's good news to co-op advocates, who fiercely defend boards' freedom to reject potential buyers for "any reason or no reason" — provided they are not discriminating against of the classes protected by fair-housing laws.

Fair housing groups contend that requiring boards to disclose their reasons for rejecting applicants would help prevent discrimination based on race, sexual orientation and other characteristics in those transactions, while providing baseline transparency for people trying to buy or sell a home.

“For too long, a complicated, nebulous and opaque co-op process has left open the possibility for discrimination and denial of housing to qualified applicants,” Williams, the public advocate, said in a written statement. “It's clear that co-op reform is vital to help New Yorkers find and stay in stable homes.”

Opponents of the legislation counter that it would eliminate board members’ discretion to choose their new neighbors, including people who might not meet strict financial criteria but who might otherwise be approved.

"We would no longer be able to have that flexibility  because in order to avoid claims of discrimination we would have to be 100% consistent in the way we treated every applicant," says Warren Schreiber, the president of a 200-unit co-op building in Bay Terrace, Queens and co-president of the Presidents Co-op & Condo Council.

Attorney Craig Gurian, who serves as a spokesperson for a coalition of groups backing the disclosure legislation, says councilmembers face a simple question: “Are you on the side of civil rights enforcement, or are you just standing for secrecy and for co-op board members?”

Gurian notes that neighboring Suffolk County already requires co-op boards to inform applicants why they were rejected, and Westchester County co-op boards must notify the applicant and the local Human Rights Commission of the reason they deny an applicant.

Schreiber, the Queens co-op board president, states flatly that there is “no evidence of systemic discrimination in cooperative housing.”

Rebecca Poole, the director of membership at the Council of New York Cooperatives & Condominiums, adds that the legislation would have a “chilling effect on shareholders to serve on co-op boards” because they would fear being sued.

The need for transparency trumps such fears, according to Councilmember Shaun Abreu, who represents a Northern Manhattan district with about 15,500 co-op units and is sponsoring the bill. “Transparency for homeownership is very, very important,” Abreu says. “We know a lot of people get rejected for reasons unknown, and I think folks ought to know why they are getting rejected from access to homeownership.”

Stay tuned. If this cockroach of a bill goes away, another one is sure to take its place.

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