BROOKLYN

With their local Community Board chairperson in agreement and on their side, nearly 900 residents of Brooklyn's Mitchell-Lama Lindsay Park Housing Cooperative (click image to enlarge) are petitioning to change a board election process they say leads to an entrenched board that is secretive, non-responsive and, as 64-year-old Elizabeth Blizinska told DNAInfo.com, "a dictatorship."

The co-op board of the seven-building Williamsburg complex gathers "general proxies" that don't name a candidate, rather than "directed proxies" that do — which the bylaws allow. The corruption comes in, petitioners say, when the longtime board president uses the proxies to re-elect herself and her allies, sometimes after having misled or intimidated immigrant and elderly residents into signing away a vote. CB1 chair Dealice Fuller agrees with the dissidents. Board president Cora Austin has denied knowledge of any petition, said DNAInfo, but the website cited memos Austin sent to residents earlier this month warning them not to sign it.

“It was a big deal, a big undertaking,” says Jay Silverberg, principal in Zenith Properties. He’s not kidding, either: take a 21-member board in a seven-building co-op complex, add a $4 million project to convert 10 boilers in three boiler rooms from No. 6 heating oil to natural gas, factor in Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) involvement because it’s a Mitchell-Lama (subsidized) property, and consider that HPD restrictions prohibit loans – and the undertaking doesn’t just seem big. It seems impossible.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, a co-op board takes away a parking space from a little old lady with Parkinson's, saying her car's insurance and registration had lapsed — they hadn't — and that the car didn't run ... so they took away the spot while the car was in the garage to, y'know, run. Doesn't sound like the board's running on all cylinders, either. Same might be said on Fifth Avenue, where a co-op board president who lost a bid for an apartment in her building allegedly decided no one else could buy it, either. Plus, Patrick Stewart makes it so with a condo buy in Brooklyn.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, a condominium board sues its developer. a co-op buyer sues a seller, and a co-op shareholder sues his neighbor. Plus, a lawyer sues his clients, whom he'd represented against a co-op board. Ah, springtime in New York!  We've also a co-op board trying to evict an agoraphobic transgender smoker, but hey, that could happen anywhere....

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, it's co-op shareholders vs. rental tenants at Chelsea's London Terrace over access to a pool. We've also news of a new, retroactive property-tax abatement; the Brighton Beach bathrooms get put on hold; and as Stevie Wonder sang, we're very superstitious, writing's on the wall — just not the wall of the 13th floor. Plus, for boards, co-op taxes are up, and Concourse Village workers are up in arms.

Buyers pay a premium for a co-op or condo apartment with outdoor space. But what happens when a terrace needs repairs that prevent the shareholder or unit-owner from using it?

That was the question in Goldhirsch v. St. George Tower & Grill Owners Corp.

In the early 1980s, the 16-unit co-op at 572 Sterling Place in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn was an abandoned, derelict shell. Catholic Charities and the parish of St. Theresa of Avila helped secure it a $440,000, 30-year mortgage, and property was incorporated as a co-op under the city's Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC). Each unit was valued at just $27,500, and shareholders agreed to contribute sweat equity for 10 percent of that sum, including demolition work and installing flooring, trim, and cabinets.

It was a building designed to be affordable to low- and middle-income New Yorkers. But now some shareholders, delighted by the low price when they bought, are seeing things differently as they go to sell — warping the very affordability the HDFC program fosters.

Exploding toilets sounds like the punch line of a joke. But to the residents of Caton Towers, a 283-unit high-rise co-op in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, it was no laughing matter. A string of recent toilet explosions in the building injured three people — and now the co-op is facing three lawsuits.

The worst part is, that's not the worst part. Because of the three lawsuits, the Federal National Mortgage Association, popularly known as Fannie Mae, is now declining to back mortgages in the building, causing half a dozen potential sales to fall through.

The single biggest complaint among co-op and condo residents? Probably the neighbors' noise. And at one condominium in Park Slope, Brooklyn, that noisy neighbor is nothing less than a DJ who produces music — in a studio in his apartment. After months of fruitless negotiation between neighbors, the condo board told the DJ that a music-production studio violates zoning laws and to either soundproof the place or wear headphones while playing music. The DJ refused to do either — and, incredibly, the condo board backed down! What recourse do the DJ's neighbors have? The New York Times' Ronda Kaysen examines options in her "Ask Real Estate" column. She also helps an East Williamsburg reader wanting to know about rent-to-own apartments, and discusses an East Village co-op board whose members are paid for their service.

The board at 572 Sterling Place deals with challenges every day, but its members know how to face them. The key, they say, is that instead of picking up the phone and calling a manager when problems and challenges arise, they're willing to roll up their sleeves and take on the task themselves. Or, as board vice president Ralph Pinero puts it: "Nowadays, if you want a place to live that's decent and affordable, you're going to have to get your hands dirty."