Is Fair Housing Flying the Co-op?
The curiosity of a socialist owning real estate inspires much teasing from my friends. But why shouldn’t I own my own home? As our comrade, Barbara Garson has proven in her book, "Money Makes the World Go Around”
We’re a pretty chill board. We don’t have any stringent financial requirements. We’ve approved buyers who put down as low as five percent (when just about every other building in the neighborhood requires a 20 percent down payment), figuring that even if you default on your loan, we’ll make our money back one way or the other. We also assume pets innocent before being proven guilty of loudness or aggression, and therefore don’t have a blanket “no pets” policy. And I, for one, don’t care who your sleep with as long as you are sleeping in your apartment with him or her, and not illegally subletting your place.
Not all boards are as good as this one. The NY Times real estate section is chock full of horror stories of boards using tenant applications as political footballs in struggles over power and wealth, as well as less-well documented instances of purchase applications being rejected for reasons of racism or heterosexism. With more than 332,000 households in New York belonging to co-ops, the City Council is taking action to ensure that hard-fought protections against housing discrimination are not gutted by our “stakeholder society,” by requiring boards to provide prompt and specific justifications for rejecting purchase applications. Our building’s management company – a necessary evil – is, like most management companies, organizing to defeat the bill and seeking to enlist the help of our co-op board members. The Real Estate Board of New York’s lobbying letter concludes, in relevant part:
Int. No. 119 of 2006 will drastically restrict the rights of co-op board members, shareholders and property managers. It will also significantly delay transactions which will hurt the coop market as a whole. More important, it will substantially increase litigation in the marketplace, and make it difficult for coops to recruit qualified shareholders to volunteer their time to be a part of a co-op board.
Any discrimination by board members is expressly forbidden in City, State and Federal law. Currently, under the City Human Rights Law, the New York State Civil Rights Law, and the Federal Fair Housing Act, cooperative boards are prohibited from discriminating against a potential buyer on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, military status, sexual orientation, age pregnancy, or disability. There are remedies within each of these statues for a party who believes he has been discriminated against. The legislation does not add to these protections that are already in place.
In response, I have two points. Firstly, individual members of co-op boards are, for the most part, shielded from personal liability for board decisions – which is a fact that our management companies frequently stress while they, for instance, encourage us to evict our rent controlled tenants. More than fear of litigation, fear of the management companies with which we enter into contract is a more likely culprit for intimidating shareholders from serving on co-op boards. Secondly, while there are plenty of anti-discrimination laws on the books, it is nearly impossible to prosecute such cases if co-op boards need not disclose the reasons for rejecting an applicant. Boards who reject applicants for legitimate reasons (for instance, poor finances, dangerous pets or speculative investments) need not fear the extra scrutiny and paperwork. Boards who run their buildings like the Jim Crow South deserve the exposure and financial liability that this bill threatens. The extra work that it will require on my board’s part will be well worth it to ensure that New York City remains a free and integrated society.
The Land Where It’s Never Christmas
The Guardian of London has a heart-warming seasonal story about a small town called North Pole in Alaska, where it’s Christmas 365 days a year and all the town’s residents (including the school children) answer “letters to Santa” that come in from around the world. Last spring, a group of about a dozen of North Pole’s sixth graders were caught “making a list and checking it twice.” Their Columbine-style massacre plot was narrowly thwarted. Perhaps the incessant holiday “cheer” drove them to it, writer Jon Ronson wonders?
I was thinking about North Pole while doing some grocery shopping this morning in Kew Gardens, the Land Where It’s Never Christmas. All the shops are open as normal. Perhaps they’ll close an hour early for the big day in deference to the rest of society. There are no Santas around, the streetlights are plain and unadorned and almost no houses are decorated. It’s bliss. This is a less-advertised perk of living in a majority Jewish neighborhood (and, being Queens, those who aren’t Jewish are Hindu, Sikh, Taoist, Buddhist and Stewardess). Sure, it’s hell to find parking on a Friday night, but you won’t be driven bonkers by the whole “X-Mas Atmos.”
Serving on my co-op’s board, it has come to my attention that my apartment has probably doubled in value in the last three years. If we promote this whole “No Christmas” thing the way that North Pole promotes its “Year-round Christmas” thing, we could probably redouble our home values with all the Scrooges beating a path to our doors. But if I ever do sell, someone please remind me of this post. Just start singing “Jingle Bells,” and my Pavlovian response will kick in: “Never leave Kew Gardens.”
2006 Endorsements: Bring Back the Greens
Election time is around the corner, and I’m sure you’re dying to read my endorsements. This election, in truth, offers a rare opportunity to alter the political landscape for a progressive change.
No, I’m not talking about the increasing likelihood of a Democratic sweep in New York. That is a foregone conclusion since the Republican party has collapsed under the weight of Pataki’s bland presidential ambitions and the national GOP’s right-wing extremism. The Republicans have put up scarecrows against the Spitzer and Clinton steamrollers, and are poised to lose members of their Congressional delegation and perhaps even control of the state Senate, ushering in what could become a generation of Democratic dominance in New York State. Don’t get too excited. Spitzer and the Democrats will govern from the center, and much of the tax-cutting, welfare-slashing, tuition-hiking agenda that Pataki carried out over three terms is now accepted as status quo.
What potential change this election provides is the opportunity to reshuffle ballot lines – an opportunity that only comes up every four years and only in the gubernatorial election. Any party that garners 50,001 votes for Governor remains on the ballot for the next four years. Aside from the big two, there are three other parties seeking to retain their ballot lines and four more looking to gain a new line. Only two of these are of interest. One is the Working Families Party, the progressive fusion party that has disappointed for eight years. When the WFP was founded, many of its early activists invoked the hallowed name of the American Labor Party, which for a few decades around the Depression was a progressive force in New York state politics. That party helped elect scores of Socialists, Communists and Laborites to office, while cross-endorsing the “good” Democrats and punishing Democrats who were too friendly with business and Jim Crow by running spoiler candidates against them and splitting the vote.
For the past eight years, the WFP has only endorsed Democrats, and not just the good ones. There can be no clearer case of a Democrat who votes against the interest of working people in New York than Hillary Clinton and yet the WFP is endorsing her for a second time! I got an e-mail from Pete Seeger the other day that a vote for the war-monger Clinton is actually a vote to bring the troops home. Only a longtime fellow traveller of the CP could embrace such confounding wisdom. If the WFP won’t withdraw support from Hillary, then it is clear that they will never oppose bad Democrats with their own independent candidates, and all the WFP is is a tool to deliver progressive and union votes to the Democratic machine.
I remain a registered voter in the Working Families party, holding out hope for a rank and file rebellion. Under New York’s slow as molasses system, only a registered voter of a given ballot line can petition or contest a party primary, and a change in enrollment must be made before the previous election day. For example, if Jonathan Tasini had decided to run his insurgent campaign against Hillary Clinton within the Working Families party, I could have collected petitions among fellow WFP registrants to force a primary – one that Tasini could have won, giving Hillary a public rebuke and continuing the anti-war campaign into the general election. But, Tasini would have had to have changed his party enrollment to WFP before last year’s mayoral election. And, thus, I remain registered in the WFP in case somebody decides to try to force a primary next year. But I won’t be voting for Eilliot Spitzer on the Working Families ballot line, and neither should you.
I will be voting for the Green Party, and so should you. The Greens had a ballot line from 1998 until 2002, and in that time ran hundreds of candidates for federal, state and local office – garnering hundreds of thousands of votes on a platform of peace, environmentalism and economic justice. Remember that Mayor of New Paltz who initiated a political crisis by marrying same sex couples? Jason West was elected on the Green Party ballot line. We need more rabble rousing in our elections, as only the Green Party can currently deliver.
Vote for Malachy McCourt for Governor on the Green Party ballot line. Malachy is a semi-famous author who recruited to run for whatever name recognition he has (such celebrity-seeking is a frustrating tendency among certain segments of the Greens). Nevertheless, only a vote for McCourt can give the Greens a ballot line for the next four years.
Vote for Howie Hawkins for U.S. Senate on the Green Party line. Howie is a long-time environmental and trade union activist, and was working hard for election reform long before you ever heard about “hanging chads.” He’s campaigning for an immediate end to the war, money for renewable energy and universal health care.
Vote for the Socialist Workers Party candidate for Comptroller. The SWP is a laughable Trotsky-Castro cult by now, but it’s important to give a little love for the “S” word. Also, unfortunately, the Greens’ candidate, Julia Willebrand, is representative of the party’s worst sectarian trend that has held it back as a more welcoming party of the broader left.
Vote for Rachel Trechler for Attorney General on the Green Party line. At least she’s an attorney, while the SWP candidate is typically unqualified. If you must vote for Cuomo, do so on the WFP line.
In Queens, I recommend write-in votes for most of the remaining contests. The judges are, as usual, all endorsed by the Democrats and Republicans and running unopposed. Write in your favorite lawbreakers as a protest. In my Congressional district, Greg Meeks is running unopposed, significantly without the Working Families Party’s support. Write in your own name. Whoever you are, you could do a better job than him.
The Little League Thief Who Was Never a Leader
The recent charges against former president of the NYC Central Labor Council, Brian McLaughlin, are incredibly disappointing. While most of his alleged embezzlement is not connected to his role as head of the local labor federation, the shocking abuse of power as an elected Assemblyman and community leader is a real black eye for the movement. (I mean, we simply do not need to be represented by the cartoonish villainy of a man who would steal $95,000 from a little league.)
The tabloids, of course, are touting this as a story of a corrupt union boss, the president of the most powerful labor body in the city. The sad truth is that Brian McLaughlin was a weak leader, totally beholden to the building trades who pursued the lowest common denominator agenda that couldn’t unite the various union locals that make up the council to support each other’s strikes and contract fights, or even support the same candidates. This weakness was my greatest complaint about McLaughlin up until now, but I always thought that at least he was honest. But, now, it turns out he’s not even that, and I would be lying if this didn’t shake my faith – if only a little – in a movement that allows itself to be “led” by such men.
The leaders of the Central Labor Council are responsibly talking about more oversight of the body’s officials, which is good. It’s discouraging to read that the lesson drawn by Dennis Hughes, the president of the state federation, is that no labor leader should also hold elected political office. The argument that one “can’t serve two masters” has been made by right-wingers who have been targeting McLaughlin for years. Of course it’s bullshit that the same is never said of corporate lawyers and lobbyists who hold office. Labor leaders, as representatives of the people, should ideally be represented in the halls of Congress, the Assembly and City Hall…ideally as members of a real Labor Party.
Finally, the news that Ed Ott is likely to remain as McLaughlin’s successor is reason for some celebration. I’ve known and worked with Ed for years. He’s one of the sharpest minds in our little movement. What I’ve always appreciated about Ed is his ability, when presented with a dilemma, to lay out the correct stand that the Labor Council should take, the pragmatic position that the council could take and then the lowest common denominator position that the Council would take. My hope is that with Ed finally at the helm, the CLC might finally opt more often to take the idealistic stands, rather than the past of least resistance.