I Hereby Banish Thee From My Co-op

Jonathan Rowe on Oct 30th 2006

Here is an article that illustrates the seemingly private tyranny of co-ops. (Hat tip.) My own thoughts are that co-ops have every right to be jerks and I wouldn’t want to live with the likes of Mr. Winthrop anyway.

The “jerk” in the article is named John Winthrop — co-op board chair in Boston — who puts the kibosh on a prospective sale of a unit. He is actually related to the original John Winthrop of Puritan Massachusetts infamy. Given his roots, he must have inherited a “jerk gene.”

They’ve got every right to exist, but I’d never want to deal with one. So I won’t. In places like New York, even multimillionaire celebrities have been turned down. From the article:

Co-ops are much more common in New York than Boston, and prospective owners are frequently rejected without knowing why. Singer Barbra Streisand, clothing designer Calvin Klein, and casino entrepreneur Steve Wynn are among those rejected by co-ops .

Filed in The Basement, The Bench

2 Responses to “I Hereby Banish Thee From My Co-op”

  1. # treyon 30 Oct 2006 at 2:21 pm

    Here in San Francisco there is something similar, in a weak way, “TICs” or “Tenencies in Common”.

    THey aren’t really intentional co-ops, but the way you almost HAVE to buy a house in this city. Many, if not most, of the residential buildings in this city are multi-unit, but “condominization” which allows units to be bought/sold individually is just this side of impossible (thanks to, imho, draconian pro-tenent laws).

    So to buy a house/flat, you have to buy the entire building, more often then not, with others. You own a % of the building, not your flat. Agreements are drawn up, blah blah. Or you buy ‘into’ a TIC.

    We live in one now. It’s not fun. We can’t sell or refinance without our TIC partner’s (who all live in the 4 unit building also) approval. And you are subject to their whims and demands (don’t get me started).

    We finally finished a 6-year process of condominimizing.. yipee.

    The short of it is, I wouldn’t want to live in a co-op either really…

    but that brings me to a question. Wouldn’t these types of arrangements (citizens buying property individually or as self-selected groups and living as they want) be completely supported by libertarian principles? I see you said you believe they have the right to exist, just curious on that take on these.

  2. # Jonathan Roweon 30 Oct 2006 at 4:47 pm

    If done by private agreement, they are entirely consistent with libertarianism and thus should be allowed.

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