ROCKAWAY BEACH

Shore View Condominiums, 20 units in seven seaside buildings in Rockaway Beach, Queens, was hammered by superstorm Sandy. And though the complex suffered nearly $250,000 in damage to its entranceways and basements, including residential areas, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, recalls board president Janie Simmons, "said they don't help condos." That isn't quite accurate since FEMA indeed helped countless co-op and condo apartment owners find emergency shelter, and gave them money to do emergency repairs. But she is correct in that FEMA by law is not allowed to grant funds to condo and co-op boards to fix common areas.

The first signs were little things. Storefronts with wood instead of glass in their picture windows. Then the signs became more pronounced: trees upended, their roots exposed like some kind of garish sculpture; buildings with huge gashes in their façades; and a series of strange-looking poles on the beach that had, once upon a time, been supports for the boardwalk, now blown away by superstorm Sandy.

Homeowners rose in tax revolt again in 2012, yet politicians still failed to act to solve inequities hurting co-ops and condominiums. A board may have helped drive a resident to suicide. No-smoking rules, digitized offering plans and automated water-meter readers all made the news. And good boards and bad have their say and their day in some of the year's most interesting utterances.

Recent news affecting co-op and condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. The aftermath of superstorm Sandy lingers, Concourse Village workers may strike and a co-op / condo board-member group meets with mayoral candidate Joe Lhota. Plus, lot o' news for boards this week, as one court ruling partly limits the Business Judgment Rule and another says a particular type of Airbnb rental isn't illegal hoteling. And experts answer a board member's own plea: "What Can I Do About the Tyrants on My Co-op Board?"

My co-op faced two engines of destruction in the last 10 months. One of them was manmade.

I have lived at Dayton Beach Park No. 1 — a middle-income, Mitchell-Lama Housing cooperative — for years. Supervised by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), Dayton is home to more than 1,100 families in the Rockaway Beach section of Queens, New York. Our five 12-story buildings are located perpendicular to Shore Front Parkway, with only a few hundred yards separating us from the beach and boardwalk.

Superstorm Sandy devastated Dayton in October. It caused tens of millions of dollars in damage to the buildings and grounds. The boardwalk was uprooted from the support columns in many parts and deposited by the surging waters onto our property. Traumatized during and after the storm, the shareholders and residents of Dayton are now coping with extensive and costly restoration projects.

UPDATED 5:23 P.M. — New York City contractors' boardwalk reconstruction near a Sandy-devastated co-op in Queens has created intolerable disruption, the co-op's attorney charges, including destruction of recently repaired private property. And the City ... well, the City responded to him within days and plans to make good on everything.

Wait, what? Something worked like it was supposed to? Here's how it happened.

Recent news affecting co-op / condo buyers, sellers, boards and residents. This week, Zeckendorf Towers goes smokeless, the folks at Alwyn Court and The Briarcliff go homeless, and thanks to 24-hour construction crews, a Rockaways co-op goes sleepless. Plus, three Lower East Side co-ops install fuel-efficient boilers to save money heating 2,700 apartments, Airbnb lobbies politicians to take the "illegal" out of illegal hoteling, and people debate the pros and cons of the proposed co-op admissions disclosure law.

You've seen the headlines, and they're grossly, irresponsibly inaccurate: "Condos and Co-ops Not Covered Under FEMA." Co-op shareholders and condo unit-owners are covered under the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Only co-op and condo boards and common areas aren't. Why? Because FEMA's primarily aim is giving homeowners and renters alike temporary shelter and supplies after a disaster, and no one lives in a building's common-area hallways and lobbies.

Now that that's settled, what can condo and co-op boards do for funding to help restore their buildings after, oh, say superstorm Sandy? Here's what.

After the storm, after the surge, after the wind has died, after floodwaters recede, the finger-pointing inevitably begins. "We did not have flood insurance," says Dr. Janie Simmons, an anthropologist and AIDS researcher who serves as board president of Shore View Condominiums at Rockaway Beach in Queens, one of the many New York City communities battered hard by superstorm Sandy. "Legally, we were not in a flood zone," she says. "There hasn't been a flood in most of the Rockaways for more than a generation. We were not required nor were we ever offered flood insurance."

In the terrible aftermath of superstorm Sandy, co-op and condo boards and residents found themselves struggling with both immediate needs and longer-term woes. With lobbies, basements and other common areas flooded and in need of repair and reconstruction, with electrical panels destroyed and with buildings not collecting maintenance or common charges from uninhabitable apartments, many boards are understandably overwhelmed. But federal help is available. Through conversations with government agencies and others, Habitat is here to you get through a flood of misinformation.