Affordable Housing Institute : US

In the continuing million stories in the rent-stabilized city, from the New York Times comes another one that illustrates a pair of complicated secondary consequences of living communally:

 

North Shore Towers, an upscale co-op complex in eastern Queens, consists of three hulking 33-story buildings (1,844 apartments) along the Grand Central Parkway near the Nassau County border.

 

The complex has a private 18-hole golf course and an indoor shopping concourse. It has 3,500 residents, many of whom are well-to-do, a $35 million annual budget, underground parking for about 2,800 cars, and its own 500-seat movie theater, ZIP code and power plant.

 

The complex also has Fred Hadley, a self-described aging leftist who spent his youth crusading against the Vietnam War, and who is considered by the co-op’s management as a major thorn in the side. Mr. Hadley, who lives in one of the few remaining rent-stabilized apartments in the complex, is still fighting.

 

Fred Hadley is fighting the management and co-op board of North Shore Towers, which he accuses of suppressing free speech by censoring dissent in its meetings.

 

Mr. Hadley, a film projectionist at a movie theater in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, moved into the complex in 1977.  All but 150 units [in other words, 93% now owned — Ed.], one of which is his apartment, were converted into the co-op in 1987.

 

Unlike nearly all other residents, Mr. Hadley is a long-time renter, not an owner.  He gains no benefit from property appreciation, and he suffers no harm if the property does poorly.  Conversely, he benefits by his tenancy from increased amenities and public spaces, but pays no more for them.

 

Mr. Hadley’s economic incentives are diametrically opposed to those of the other members, and their ability to enforce against him is blunted by his city-mandated rental and tenancy protection. 

 

Mr. Hadley is fully padded.

 

Only now, his adversaries are the management and co-op board of North Shore Towers, which Mr. Hadley accuses of “ongoing suppression of free speech” by censoring dissent in its public meetings and limiting the distribution of fliers and publications in the buildings.

 

Not only are the incentives opposed, this is an asymmetric conflict.  The management and board have legal exposure; Mr. Hadley does not. 

 

He is waging his public war in hopes of proving that the powers that be at North Shore Towers are bent on squelching opposing views. As the host of a local cable show in Queens and the author of a weekly newsletter, Mr. Hadley criticizes co-op employees and board members.

 

The co-op’s management has responded to Mr. Hadley by suing him for slander and libel and threatening him with eviction.

 

The lawsuit against Mr. Hadley, which was filed in State Supreme Court in Queens, claims that he has slandered, libeled and defamed Glen Kotowski, the co-op’s general manager.

 

I’ve previously posted about the complexities of co-op living, and the curious mix of pressures — legal, social, societal, and snobbish — that results.  The complexity redoubles when to the stew is added rent stabilization, with its political distortive tenacity, wealth transfer from owners to residents, and arrogation of righteousness.

 

We start with Mr. Hadley’s freedom-of-speech grievances:

 

Mr. Hadley used to videotape board meetings and functions for the complex’s television channel, but, in 2004, he said, Mr. Kotowski began instructing him to exclude the comments of some dissenting residents at the meetings. Mr. Hadley protested and soon thereafter, he said, his contract as videographer was terminated. Now Mr. Kotowski and other management officials are regular targets in his newsletter, whose motto is “The True Independent Electronic-Journal of North Shore Towers.”

 

Is freedom of speech at issue here?  Do the owner/ shareholders of a co-operative — a voluntary association, a ‘living club’ as it were — have the same obligations as a government?  Is co-operative space public space, or is it private space?  The answers are by no means clear, and they are legally significant. 

 

“Help, help, I’m bein’ repressed!”

 

The issue arises frequently in HUD-regulated affordable properties, where now and then the residents decide to unite against their management. 

 

Does the status of landlord — group of private individuals, private off-site owner, regulated private owner, or public housing authority — make a difference? 

 

To help his cause, Mr. Hadley enlisted the New York Civil Liberties Union, which wrote a letter to co-op board officials advising them that it is illegal to interfere with “the communicative privileges of tenancy.”

 

Long ago I learned to perk up at the difference between a right and a privilege.  What are the communicative ‘privileges’ of tenancy?  (A very fast Google turns up nothing.)  Might they be governed by a lease?  When does my right to become communicatively irate interfere with your right of ‘quiet enjoyment’? 

 

He said the co-op board banned him from board meetings and refused to broadcast meetings of a dissenting residents’ group, the Shareholders Association, on the in-house television channel.

 

Does management have a duty to protect me, the peaceful indolent somnolent tenant, from the rabble-rouser down the hall?

 

Not exactly Gandhi

 

What obligations do communal residents have to one another?

 

Samuel B. Freed, a Queens lawyer for Three Towers Associates, which owns the rental units in the complex, recently sent Mr. Hadley a letter warning that if he continued “causing unnecessary panic in the community” he could face eviction.

 

The “panic” mentioned in the letter referred to Mr. Hadley’s newsletter that he sends as an e-mail message to hundreds of residents. The newsletter often contains articles accusing officials of mismanaging the complex.

 

Neither Mr. Freed nor Errol Brett, a lawyer representing Mr. Kotowski in the lawsuit, offered much detail about the dispute involving Mr. Hadley.

 

Mr. Freed called Mr. Hadley “a unique character.”

 

“He has freedom of speech, but can you yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater?” he said, adding, “I don’t know if it’s risen to that level.”

 

In the lawsuit, Mr. Kotowski cited an issue of the newsletter sent out after a fire at the complex in 2004. It included a wanted poster with Mr. Kotowski’s image and blamed him for leaving open some fire doors after the fire, which Mr. Hadley considered a security violation. The newsletter also included photographs of what Mr. Hadley believed to be fire code violations.

 

Here too is another thorny matter of intra-group dynamics.  If Mr. Hadley cannot blow the whistle, how else can one shout ‘fire trap’ in a crowded property? 

 

The newsletter also included criticism of a $2 million lobby renovation and accusations that the co-op board runs fraudulent elections.

 

Co-op board members have legal obligations to one another.  Fraud is a serious matter.  Allegations of fraud are serious.

 

Mr. Hadley also demanded to know if rooftop antenna signals, asbestos and toxins in the golf course’s irrigation system have caused a high rate of lung cancer among residents.   [Surprising he didn’t mention that it might be disturbing the fairies. — Ed.]

 

He quoted a former employee who claimed that security guards were trying to find out how to tap residents’ phones.

 

Beyond the asymmetry of exposure, there’s also the matter of collectibility. 

 

“We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately,” because it’s all about the Benjamins.

 

Management and the board are fully collectible, whereas Mr. Hadley may be legally intemperate with minimal financial risk.

 

Mr. Hadley was raised in public housing in Woodside, Queens, and studied film at New York University. He pays $1,400 a month for his spacious one-bedroom apartment on the 25th floor with a view of Manhattan’s skyline to the west.  [Judging by comparable sales, the apartment is worth $350-500,000. — Ed.]

 

It is a tangle of video equipment, conspiracy theory books, and rock records from the 60’s and 70’s, as well as files obtained through freedom-of-information requests.

 

He walks around the complex lugging thick folders of news clippings and legal documents. He chats with supporters and detractors. He says he has spent $50,000 in legal fees in his dispute with the co-op’s management. And he says his recent trip to China, which included a visit to Tiananmen Square and Mao Tse-tung’s tomb, only strengthened his resolve.

 

Is Mr. Hadley fighting, or is he in fact playing?

 

“Part of me enjoys it,” he said.

 

What part of you doesn’t enjoy it, Mr. Hadley?

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