Fair Housing for All

In a city with more than 300,000 cooperative apartment units, fair housing laws will never be effective so long as the coop admissions process is ruled by secrecy. New York City is such a city, and the coop admissions process has been one of the last bastions of unchallenged privilege. Secrecy discourages qualified persons from applying to buildings where they don't "fit" demographically and it encourages real estate brokers to use race or other protected class status as a proxy for deciding what units are "worthwhile" to show to an apartment seeker. Secrecy makes it difficult for a rejected applicant to figure out why he or she has been turned down, and makes it just as hard to find a lawyer willing to take on a matter with so little information in hand. Secrecy means that discrimination defense lawyers, in the relatively few fair housing lawsuits that are ultimately brought, are able to shape the coop's story for strategic and tactical ends, rather than anyone finding out what actually motivated the coop board in the first place.

Intro 119 -- the Fair and Prompt Coop Disclosure Law -- is co-sponsored by a majority of NYC Council Members and is supported by more than 40 civil rights and allied organizations. The bill would simply require coops to provide a written statement to a family that has been rejected setting out the reasons for rejection. The bill would not change in any way the lawful reasons for which a coop could turn an applicant down.

Unfortunately, the Council Speaker (Christine Quinn), doing the bidding of a coop industry desperate to remain unaccountable, has refused even to permit a hearing on the bill.