Unneighbourly behavior
The cooperator
By Mike Odenthal
28 September 2017
In August, the New York Post reported that Eddie Wong, a resident of a
luxury Greenwich Village co-op, was accused of "watching a 30-year-old
neighbor through her bedroom window after she got out of the shower."
According to the story, Wong faces criminal charges for unlawful
surveillance, while the co-op board has filed a lawsuit to block him
from “sexually predatory behavior.”
Maintaining privacy and personal boundaries among residents in a
community setting is always a challenge. The nature of condo and co-op
living requires neighbors to exist together in an at least
semi-harmonious fashion. Attempting to get a glimpse of a fellow
resident in the buff is a pretty serious breach of the social contract.
Human nature may be partly to blame, but the bottom line is that
creepy, inappropriate behavior has a far-reaching, toxic effect on any
community if it's not nipped in the proverbial bud.
Baring it all
“I've lost count of the number of tenant shareholders who have been
caught wandering nude through the hallways,” says Michael T. Manzi, a
partner with the law firm of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP, in
Manhattan. “Sometimes, sadly, they're suffering from dementia or
another type of mental illness, but other times, they are not.
Sometimes it's more along the line of ‘'I was only taking my garbage to
the garbage chute.'”
Manzi also recalls an instance where a couple was consistently choosing
the roof of their building for loud romantic assignations. “That was
disturbing to children,” he laments. “These things have to be handled
delicately.”
Finally, he relates the tale of a resident threatened with a so-called
Pullman action (in which a co-op shareholder is ejected from their
building for being a constant nuisance or menace to neighbors and
board) for “making out to a high level of inappropriateness” in the
lobby. “I believe that the man involved was actually either a doorman
or a super, which made it even more objectionable,” he says.
Aaron Shmulewitz, a partner with Belkin Burden Wenig & Goldman,
LLP, a law firm also in Manhattan, has heard similar stories, including
indecent shenanigans inside elevators that were caught on security
cameras. “An Upper West Side superintendent walked around the lobby
fully exposed from the waist down... before he was terminated," says
Schmulewitz, "and an Upper East Side condo owner was having a
long-standing affair with the building super before her husband was
found dead. She was arrested for his murder.”
Miscellaneous mischief
Of course, it's not always sexual activity in condos and co-ops, as
there are plenty of other ways to creep out or generally perturb one's
neighbors. Anti-Semitism is one example.
“One Park Avenue apartment owner drew a swastika on her Jewish
neighbor's terrace divider after a fight,” says Shmulewitz. “The
accused later claimed that it was actually a Mayan fertility symbol.”
He also recalls an Upper West Side co-op owner who kept two pet wolves—
yes, wolves—in his apartment. “He claimed that they were an exotic dog
breed.”
Bodily functions occasionally—and unfortunately—play out in communal
areas as well. Jay Cohen, vice president and director of operations at
A. Michael Tyler Realty Corp., tells a story of a person who took to
relieving themselves in their building's hallway. “There was mental
illness involved,” he says. “With a level of maliciousness toward the
community, probably stemming from the former.” And Manzi remembers an
owner who did something similar in an elevator after being fed up with
the board.
Grievance Industry
Then there are those who just complain out of fear, paranoia, boredom, a general sense of superiority—you name it.
“We had a situation where a contractor—an older gentleman—was working
on some landscaping, and had to call his son in,” says Cohen. “The son
came with his kid in a truck, and somebody [in the building] called the
Department of Labor, saying that we were hiring children. We had to go
through a whole child labor investigation, which was obviously
eventually dismissed.”
In most of these scenarios, the perpetrator ceases any strange behavior
once confronted. According to Manzi, an objectionable conduct violation
may be threatened, but those occasions are very rare. “You don't find
too many crazy things going on in the buildings,” Cohen says. “In
luxury co-ops and condominiums, as soon as something starts to go awry,
you confront people, and they'll stop.”
But as is evident above, people can be extremely weird, so best not to ever get too comfortable.
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