SPEAKER_01: 0:00

We had one co-op in New Rochelle that was self-managed, and they had gone about 20 years without a single rejection. Um, and so obviously, you know, you would think that at the end of the day, they're doing something right. What they found within the first year of the implementation of this law, which nobody could have predicted, they had three rejections. And the single biggest reason for that was the financial requirements. And one of the things that the president of the co-ops bemoaned to me was that some of these rejected applicants were themselves in protected classes, but they now had to state their financial requirements. And these people didn't meet their financial requirements. Under a normal situation, they would have gotten to yes with them, but they felt that they couldn't because of the new law.

SPEAKER_03: 0:45

This is the Co-op and Condo Insider, the podcast dedicated to New York's cooperative and condominium communities. This is your trusted source for the latest insights, strategies, and stories shaping the world of shared housing. You will hear from the people who are leaders in this community. Information and insights you will not hear anywhere else. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, you're in the right place.

SPEAKER_04: 1:15

Hello, and welcome to the Co-op and Condo Insider, where we explore the real-world issues facing co-op and condominiums across New York City. With inside expertise and a healthy dose of straight talk, I'm your host, Jeffrey Mayel, a co-op attorney and legal advisor to the President's Co-op and Condo Council. I'm thrilled to be joined by my co-host, Richard Solomon, a state's invoice on public radio for over 20 years. Richard has taken us listeners around the world to meet experts, newsmakers, and the people making a real difference in our lives. Richard, great to have you on the mic today. I feel like it's coincider. Please introduce my guest today, Tim Foley, the CEO of the Building and Realty Inst Real Estate Institute. Tim, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05

Thank you, Jeff. And thank you, Rich. It's wonderful to be here.

SPEAKER_04: 2:14

Amy Collin, working closely on legislative affairs and public policy. And now he leads the Building and Realty Real Estate Institute, a major voice for the real estate uh industry, cooperative and condominium housing sectors throughout Westchester and across New York State. Tim, before we get into policy issues, tell our listeners about your a bit about yourself. What led you from communications to the New York State Assembly to becoming the CEO of the Building and Realty Institute?

SPEAKER_01: 2:44

My own background is mostly involved with political organizing. I was political director for a labor union for resident physicians based out of New York City, but also operating in six states in the District of Columbia. Did that for nearly a decade. I was director of the SEIU Connecticut State Council. And then, of course, as you mentioned, I worked for Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, who is my assemblywoman. And I was very fortunate to work with and learn from the best. She is the most productive legislator year after year in the New York State Assembly. She is one of the smartest people working in the New York State Assembly. And even though I had been involved in the political and policy side for a long time, I learned a ton uh working within her office. So uh mostly my background is on member-driven organizations as well as politics. I did not have the best background with regard to real estate. I've certainly made up for it in lost time. Uh made up for lost time, believe it or not, only the third executive to run the BRI in its 80-year history. So there's been a lot going on.

SPEAKER_04: 3:57

So you've had steady leadership there, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01: 4:00

That's for sure. It probably should have come up in the job interview, if I'm being perfectly honest. Are you prepared to make a 20 to 50 year commitment in the role? It did not come up, but we've been very productive.

SPEAKER_04: 4:11

So tell us about the BRI. Um, I know there's various sectors. Uh, give us an overview of the sectors that you guys represent, what you do for them, and of course, uh the Copen Condo uh council that you guys hold.

SPEAKER_01: 4:26

Absolutely. So um the way of thinking about us is we're a trade association, we try and represent the broadest possible spectrum of real estate and interests in our region. So on the building side, we have members who pay dues, who are home builders, developers, that includes market rate, mixed use, affordable, and remodelers, and that's the building side. Then on the realty side, we have those who own or operate existing multifamily. So that's landlords, that's co-op and condo boards, that's property managing agents. And then we have a whole host of folks who want to do business with all of the above. And that can be contractors and specialized subcontractors like HBAC and vulgar remediation. That includes professional class, architects, lawyers, banks. Um, but that also can include companies that sell uniforms to building service workers, or that can include folks who have, you know, the latest app that's going to help you manage your business. We had a guy last year whose uh the name of his business was the closet guy. You can kind of guess what he did. Uh, and we pull everybody together for advocacy on behalf of ourselves and on behalf of our industry. We are always stronger together. Um, we are always uh more effective when we're adding the voices of different elements of the real estate industry together to have a real wide-angle lens for policy members and what's going on in our region. We do a ton of education and programming, um, including both in-person and on-Zoom events and trainings. And then we do networking. It's all about helping people connect and and make better contacts and run their organizations or the businesses better.

SPEAKER_04: 6:07

So the networking would be just the real estate people or or all of the above.

SPEAKER_01: 6:14

You're gonna be shocked, but there are quite a lot of suppliers and service providers and subcontractors who are very anxious to meet co-op and condo board members because they're hoping to get business from them.

SPEAKER_04: 6:25

Well, I'm I I'm doing this 40 years. I get calls all the time, so I do understand.

SPEAKER_01: 6:30

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_04: 6:31

So you're almost like a chamber of commerce.

SPEAKER_01: 6:33

We are, except we have a pretty specific real estate focus.

SPEAKER_04: 6:37

Right. And and you mentioned advocacy. Um tell us the, you know, I guess you do you work in county level, state level, federal.

SPEAKER_01: 6:48

So we don't do federal, but we are very involved at the state level, of course, within Westchester County specifically, and then within individual municipalities. Uh in New York City listeners will possibly be surprised to realize how much variation there is in Westchester, but we have 45 separate cities, towns, and villages within Westchester. Each of them has their own particular uh quirks and their ways of getting business done. The real connective tissue between all of our different uh businesses and organizations is housing. We're either building it or we're running it or we're trying to figure out how to make it work. And there is a ton of advocacy work that needs to be done on that because we are, as everybody knows, in a very acute housing shortage, and it affects everything we do from the ability to get the housing we need built and to make it affordable to figuring out what to do with financially distressed properties that are often 50 to 75 to 100 years old and in desperate need of repair. And the finances on some of those buildings, be they co-ops, be they condos, be they affordable housing, be they rent-stabilized units, gets very, very challenging. And then, of course, we're just sort of in a stew of factors that are driving up costs for everybody, from insurance to property taxes in particular, is a big issue here in Westchester County. Uh, utility costs, uh, interest rates, you name it. So there's really quite a lot of work. And oftentimes the best way to get the attention of policymakers is, you know, you pull your voices together and makes everybody stronger in the process.

SPEAKER_04: 8:20

So, so I I guess that that leads us to um, you know, our our interest, which is the cooperative and condominium community. Explain uh, you know, what what part of your organization represents this community, how large is the community in Westchester, and and we we can go from there.

SPEAKER_01: 8:39

Yep. So within our organization, we have about 280 co-ops and condos who are part of what we call the CCAC, the Cooperative and Condominium Advisory Council of the BRI. Uh, and it is a very vibrant part of our organization. We actually have bi-monthly membership meetings because there's so much demand uh for practical uh information.

SPEAKER_04: 9:04

As we said, you work on statewide issues and and and county issues. Let's start with the state. Uh what are the major legislative initiatives right now in Albany that you guys are working on evolving co-ops andor condominiums?

SPEAKER_01: 9:20

Well, probably the biggest one that we are actively working on right now has to do with insurance. Um, it is no surprise, it's probably exactly the same in Queens as it is here in Westchester. But insurance has really just gone through the roof for all types of multifamily housing. But particularly, it seems to be the most acutely affecting older buildings, and a lot of co-ops were built in the 80s or before, um, as well as those where the residents are on some type of a fixed income or where they're affordable. Double-digit increases have become incredibly common. And in some cases where there's any claims history whatsoever, we've seen some insurance rates really at eye-popping levels, increases of 52% to even 100% in some cases. This is not entirely driven by New York State. This is actually nationwide, in some ways, international trends. There are a lot more extreme weather events, there are a lot more damages from extreme weather events. The cost of replacement and the cost of repairs, and particularly building supply costs, have increased dramatically post-COVID. First, it was the supply chains, and then it was inflation, and now it's the tariffs. One thing or another, those prices just keep going up and up. And we have some unique features here in New York that make it extremely challenging to try and stabilize the insurance market. So we've been working with various policymakers, and in fact, we're testifying at a hearing just next week on some solutions that they should consider in terms of trying to stabilize that market. Co-ops are smack in the middle of it. They fit the profile all too well, and we've seen really, really bad increases, and we really need some state help.

SPEAKER_04: 11:08

So, what what what what are some of the solutions or some of the legislative proposed solutions?

SPEAKER_01: 11:13

So the this is gonna sound really boring. The single biggest thing that we have been advocating for a while is a state or public backed reinsurance market. So most folks, um, if you're not familiar with insurance, you play your pay your premium to a carrier who oftentimes will then take out a subsequent reinsurance plan for higher damages and higher claims that may come through. That reinsurance market has gotten to the point where it's completely broken within New York State. We have very few carriers. There are a lot of places that will not even offer a plan because of some of the specifics of the New York State insurance market. That in turn makes your premiums higher because uh that reinsurance premium, if the insurer can find it, is just through the roof at this point in time. So we think that's a big piece of it. The second piece of it is we know that there are a lot of co-ops, condos, affordable housing that have been trying to do some retrofitting. Now, obviously, in New York City, you're required to. In Westchester County, we're not required to, but a lot of them are trying to take on those projects because there are some pretty substantial savings on utilities and energy costs. We actually think, since the underlying cause of so much of the spike we've seen in insurance is extreme weather events, is that if you're doing something to be part of the quote unquote climate solution, we ought to figure out if there are particular things that the state can say, this is good. We appreciate that you've done the following and you're entitled to some type of discount on your premium. We think that uh it's it'll be small on a case-by-case basis, but it's important to get more folks um incentives to go in that direction.

SPEAKER_00: 12:53

Just in following up on your insurance question, is the state going to do anything to sort of maybe increase competition? Because, like you said, there's so few carriers. You see that in all kinds of fields like workers comp, because there's so few carriers in the state. So, you know, there's less and less people pull out all over the place, leaving less and less people to be the insurers. What what can they do in even if it's cross-border, you know, other state carriers? I mean, can they do something to get more competition in?

SPEAKER_01: 13:25

Well, that will they do that? I don't know. Should they do that? Absolutely. As I said, New York Can you lobby for that when you talk to you. Yes, absolutely. And New York has a couple of things that make it particularly difficult. So we deal with builders who are building in Westchester County and then Fairfield County in Connecticut, which is I could probably throw something and hit Connecticut from where I am right now. Um, and we have they the builders will want to use a really good contractor that they have that works primarily in Fairfield. The contractor will tell them, you know, I can't work in Westchester. My insurance won't cover me to come into New York because the New York market is so expensive, and because New York has a couple of features that are specific to insurance in New York, including, um, first and foremost, we've got a much more uh litigation-friendly environment here in New York. So the damages tend to be higher. So if there is a payout, the claims are going to be much more expensive. And then lastly, New York is the only state out of 50 that still has something called the scaffold law. And what that basically means, and it relates to workers' comp, if there is an injury that involves gravity in any way, shape, or form. In every other state, there's what's called comparative negligence. The court figures out who's to blow what percentage of blame. Maybe there are safety protocols that weren't followed by the worker. Maybe someone showed up inebriated or high because, of course, we have legalized marijuana here in New York, or any number of other things, but there is a shared blame. Here in New York State, because of scaffold law, it's an absolute liability standard. The employee has no share of the blame whatsoever. It is all on the employer side. And that drives up costs. Uh and the property owner. And the property. And the property owner as well. And that certainly means that the payouts and the claims and so on and so forth are naturally going to be higher. And that has led to over decades a number of carriers saying we just don't want to deal with that. We don't have to deal with that in any other state. We're not going to deal with that. We're not going to sell policies in New York.

SPEAKER_04: 15:37

New York City is having a hearing. Uh, New York City Council is having a hearing on December 2nd. Uh, come to City Hall uh if you want to uh listen to the hearing or you can stream it all online. Uh and we're gonna hear something called the Reasons Bill. It's in Pro 407, and it's it's quite uh quite um devastating in its particulars with respect to how it treats uh co-op boards. Uh it requires reasons to be given uh for uh rejecting an application uh timelines. Uh you have to give it in the format of a torn statement and severe penalties if you uh don't even for technical violations. So that being said, um I know Westchester has had a reasons bill for years. Um so you guys are kind of the uh the the incubator of the laboratory for us here in New York City. Uh can you explain the the the the format of your reasons bill and and how's it going?

SPEAKER_01: 16:41

So yeah, you're absolutely right. We actually had a two-step process. In 2018, Westchester County Board of Legislators and the County Executive passed a timeline bill. It did not require a reason to be submitted to a rejected applicant, but it did set timelines for the admissions process that was mandatory for all co-ops. Basically, the applicant had to be notified whether the application was complete or not within 15 days. Um, if they you said, hey, you've left out this information or you need to cure something, uh, and they submitted it and you needed that even more information. You had 15 days to make that request. And then within 60 days of the completed application, you had to provide a written notice whether you approved or denied the application. At that time, you did not need to state a reason within that letter, but you did have to copy the Westchester County Human Rights Commission on the letter. Um, the implementation of that was actually, I have to say, not too terrible because most people were able to adhere to that timeline. And, you know, sometimes over the summer might be a little bit difficult. You might have to push, but 60 days generally for a lot of this was sufficient, and we didn't necessarily see a problem with that. Um, where things got a little unfortunate was the copying of the Westchester County Human Rights Commission. Um, and they began releasing statistics just on how many rejections there were per month, per year, so on and so forth. And unfortunately for those who were advocating for the law, any amount above zero was obviously a sign of like a huge, huge calamity. Just a level set based on the number of transactions that were happening within Westchester County and based on the number of rejections on those publicly reported numbers, the rejection level is around 10%. And it actually has been for years. And so, in that, it's actually less than the rejection percentage for mortgages writ large within Westchester County as well. So it wasn't out of the ordinary, but advocates, you know, said, can you believe how high this number was? So in 2021, we did get a very robust version of a reasons bill passed. And that meant a couple of different things. First and foremost, now instead the timelines were preserved, but now instead of a written notice, whether you approve or denied the application, there was actually a standardized form with check boxes for the most common reasons for rejecting an applicant, as well as a space where you could have a reason that you were supplying that wasn't on that list. Um, and no surprise, having on the publicly reported data that we see on that, overwhelmingly it's things like credit score or insufficient income or debt-to-income ratio. Those are, in fact, the three most common reasons. And in fact, they account for more than three-quarters of the rejections that have happened since that time. But the law didn't actually stop there. The other things it did is it required every co-op board to have as part of its application packet either its minimum financial requirements, if it had those, or its minimum financial preferences. And in fact, they had to specifically supply their preferred minimum income, their preferred liquid asset total, their preferred credit score, their preferred maximum debt-to-income ratio, and their preferred percentage of purchase price being financed. We had some co-ops who already supplied that information, either as a hard requirement, but we had plenty of co-ops who did not. Now all of them were required to supply it at the same time. The law also required, uh, as previously mentioned, within 60 days of being elected, they had to take fair housing training and they had to renew that every two years. Uh, and then at the the last piece of it were the penalties. And the penalties are the same whether there is an inf no matter what infraction it is. So if you uh we've seen some folks get penalties because they sent out a written notice of denying the application, but they didn't use a standardized form. They came up with their own form. Well, that's a no-no, and they wound up getting dinged on with fines. We've seen some folks who had the minimum preferred financial requirements because they had previously published something and they they stuck to it, but they left out one of the categories and they didn't fix it in time. And so they got dinged with the penalty. During the transition period, a lot of those penalties were ultimately waived. Um, but it applies equally to those uh uh infractions as well as anything else within the full contents of the law.

SPEAKER_04: 21:53

Who signs the first of all, the form is statutory?

SPEAKER_01: 21:58

The form is statutory. It's actually written. Uh it was the specific contents of the form were written into the law when it was passed. And so Westchester County has a standardized form that they require everybody to use. And who signs it? It can be signed by whoever. So I have personally, you know, we don't see all of them. Obviously, in some cases, the co-op board might share it with us. We've seen some signed by a managing agent acting on behalf of the co-op board. We've seen some signed by the officer of the co-op board, we've seen some signed by the chair of the admissions council or the admissions committee, if the admissions committee is a separate body than the co-op board. It just has to be someone acting in the interest of the co-op board.

SPEAKER_04: 22:44

And what type of penalties have you seen imposed?

SPEAKER_01: 22:47

So we have seen some folks get essentially a notification of in some in again during the transition period, we saw uh one managing agency in particular where they had not been precisely using the correct form. And they had no one had noticed them that they were using the form incorrectly. And they actually got six months worth of penalties all at once. And if you're starting at 1,000 for the first infraction and jumps up to 1,500 for the second, so on and so forth, that bill was very, very high. I can say they appealed then and got that waived for the obvious fact that if you had told us in February that we were using the wrong form, we wouldn't still be using the wrong form in August when you finally told us. Um, and those are the types of infractions that we've seen. We have not seen a huge number of penalties on it so far, but we have seen uh certainly a couple of effects that that gave us pause. Some of them have been mollified over time, but some of them are still very much with us. And so much worse than the penalties themselves have been the number of investigations that have been opened within the Westchester County Human Rights Commission. And we absolutely did see a surge of those where that were either complaints driven or were initiated by the Human Rights Commission themselves, particularly when the law first came forward. So one of the things that there was a lot of confusion about was if you have minimum financial requirements and if you have minimum financial preferences, number one, on the negative side, if you make an exception to that for any particular reason, uh, are you setting yourselves up to be flagged? And unfortunately, for a period of time, the answer to that seemed to be yes. The official guidance said, of course, you can make an exception. It's not a big deal. But in reality, if you're accepting uh, let's just stick with credit scores, if you're accepting only credit scores 680 and above on all applicants, and you make a particular exception for a really good applicant whose whose financials look fantastic in every particular regard, and they have a really good explanation as to why their credit score might be down at 650. They're not missing it by that much. And you make an exception for them. The next time you reject somebody at a 650 level whose finances are not as strong, that could trigger some suspicion with either within the Human Rights Commission or a realtor who happens to be representing both applicants. Uh, and then uh you're submitted a very, very long information request from the Human Rights Commission, upwards of five pages worth of material that you have to furnish. Even if it never goes further than that, that is not a fun experience for any co-op board to go through. So uh has the num has the incidence of rejections gone up since we actually did see for the first couple of years of implementation that the number of rejections went up, for sure. And in part it was because there were any number of applicants that a co-op board would look at, and they didn't have they either didn't have the financial requirements written down, but they sort of knew it when they saw it in terms of uh someone being a strong applicant, but now they have the financial requirements and they were all pretty justifiably terrified about making an exception and so didn't. Or they they simply just uh wanted to err on the side of caution. Um, and so if you didn't exactly meet their financial preference or their financial requirement, there were a lot of rejections that were specific to that. And so we actually saw the number of rejections on a month-by-month basis jump from about give or take, about 18 rejections per month. Again, countywide, 18 rejections per month jumped as high as about 27 rejections per month, which is no small number. Um, again, overwhelmingly, you were still seeing most applicants ultimately get accepted and be part of the co-op community. But that number certainly gave some people pause. We also saw the overall number of um overall number of investigations, either launched by the Human Rights Commission or prompted by a complaint, also increase somewhat. And in in some cases, these were things that ought to have been open and shut cases. Um, if I'll give you one example of that. Um, we had a co-op that where the applicant in particular was notified by the bank that she didn't have sufficient resources in the bank to close. It was the bank saying this, not the co-op. So the bank notified her and she notified the co-op, and the co-op said, you don't actually have enough assets to close on this apartment. So obviously we're going to reject you at this point in time. Seems like an open and shut financial reason. And that's precisely what they put into their letter and they sent to the Human Rights Commission as they were required to do so within the time frame. She brought a complaint alleging that the reason was not because of this financial consideration, which had been verified obviously by a third party, in this case the bank, but because she belonged to a protected class, specifically because she was Latina. Uh although it seems like an open and shut case, they went through a full multi-month investigation within the Human Rights Commission on that, including the Human Rights Commission ultimately finding that there was sufficient probable cause. That case, the co-op fought that case because they're rightly said that this is completely ridiculous. Ultimately, it was not settled and it was found successfully in their favor, but they had to go through a process first through the Human Rights Commission and then through the court on something where they very clearly had an open and shut case on financials. And so we saw a lot of that right after the implementation of the law.

SPEAKER_04: 29:02

So it's turned into an administrative nightmare for a lot of the co-ops.

SPEAKER_01: 29:06

And I think in some cases it's turned into even worse, uh, a sense of leverage. Now, again, this is a tiny, tiny percentage of the overall transactions that went through. But you couldn't really predict when something like that was going to happen. Uh, we had another co-op, and by the way, this was a co-op that had published their minimum financial requirements long before this uh bill became law, um, where the complaint was brought by not the applicant, but by the seller. They had rejected two applicants in a row, one of whom uh had an insufficient credit score, and the other of whom had an insufficient maximum debt to income ratio. Again, the requirements are right there. It's black and white. They didn't make an exception. They rejected both applicants. The seller in her complaint alleged that it was because. Of her sexual or her, the seller's sexual orientation, and that they were discriminating against her by purposefully rejecting these otherwise perfectly good uh applicants. Well, again, the the co-op fought that because it's perfectly ridiculous. But just to give you a sense, you get a five-page information request that's uh for from the Human Rights Commission that's requesting all of your applications going back the previous two years so they can determine whether there actually is a pattern of you making exceptions or not a pattern of you making exceptions. They're also asking for demographic information on those who live there. And in this particular one, they asked, as part of their demographic inquiry, for the sexual orientation of the board and the shareholders themselves. Now, obviously, I don't think you would want a co-op board to actually go around asking every shareholder what their sexual orientation is. It's really none their business.

SPEAKER_04: 31:01

Isn't slightly violations or something?

SPEAKER_01: 31:04

I mean, you would think, I mean, and that is one of the things that people don't realize is there, I think there is a privacy concern that goes along with that as well. Um, so it's the combination of, I mean, clearly the intent was to uh bring to light any cases of housing discrimination. And, you know, just to state the obvious housing discrimination on the basis of a protected class is obviously wrong. There are a lot of tools to root it out. There were a lot of tools to root it out before this bill became law. But you started to see it get used in more of a coercive manner to try and navigate towards a particular sale or a particular applicant. In the case of the woman who failed to close, she, as part of her settlement demand, clearly was asking for enough money that would then allow her to apply for and then close on another apartment within the same co-op. So at a certain point, it became transparently something that people were using, not necessarily in the interest of fair housing, but certainly in their own self-interest.

SPEAKER_04: 32:10

That's opened up a floodgate of investigation. And even uh irrespective of the merits of a case, any investigation uh takes resources, takes time, takes legal fees. Uh, were insurance companies involved in these investigations? Or were they?

SPEAKER_01: 32:28

And in many cases, an insurance company doesn't particularly care about the merits of the case. They want to get to a set of, they want to minimize their losses, and they want the co-op board to minimize their losses. And frankly, and uh particularly for directors and officers, insurance, and when it comes to renewal time, if you did not take their advice and settle, you could very well see higher premiums, or they could non-renew you on the spot if you're not specifically following their advice, even if you have an open or shut case in that regard. Um, because again, they don't want to deal with it. Um, and so many of our co-ops who did fight against some of these cases as they arose were under a lot of pressure. Um, they stuck to their guns, they thought they were right. But here's the thing that I think is probably worth underlying the biggest surprise to all of them is we participated throughout the legislative hearings. We had many people testify. Some of the points that some of the legislators were making were pretty good. They wanted a much more predictable process. And part of their rationale for wanting these minimum financial requirements is they wanted transparency. If you're making a decision and you tell us it's a financial decision, then and then it should be clear to everybody what the outcome is going to be. In practice, that hasn't been the case. Either because uh the shareholder, the applicant wants to push their luck, they know they they're missing on a couple of categories, but maybe they think they can make a compelling case, or they're not very well served by their realtor or their attorney who says, yeah, just try it, they'll give an exception. And then the co-op there is disinclined to give an exception because there's a huge amount of risk there now. Um, or in some cases, the co-op board thinks to themselves, I have these requirements, this applicant doesn't fit it, it's an open and shut case. And the first question in any investigation of a fair housing violation ought to be well, is it correct? Is it mathematically correct? If I say the debt to income ratio should be XYZ, and it's clearly not, do I have any safe harbor in any type of investigation based on that? And they found in uh, again, just a handful of cases, but that's enough to create a pervasive sense of fear. They found that no, you did not have safe harbor. You were gonna have to go through the full process and deal with the administrative burden and the compliance benefits and the pain of dealing with an insurance company that just wants you to settle regardless.

SPEAKER_00: 35:01

All right, we got one last question. Rich, go ahead. Have you noticed that this has created a chilling effect on people wanting to be on boards? Because now all of a sudden there's this increased risk of being hassled and time away just from your co-op duties, but now you have to deal with all these investigative, administrative, and justification and paper, papering up uh, you know, the process where oh but something was sort of smooth and now it becomes unwieldy.

SPEAKER_01: 35:29

I have not noticed or we have not had anecdotal evidence that there's a chilling effect on getting people to run for the boards based on this specifically. I think that is because there is a chilling effect factors dealing with being on your co-op board that have nothing to do with admissions. You may be dealing with uh emotional support animals, you may be dealing with disputes within your neighbors, which is always unpleasant. There may be big fights about assessments or arrears or repairs that need to be done or haven't been done. So we haven't noticed that this is particularly a factor in that, but make no mistake, being on your board of your co-op is a tough job under any circumstances, and it becomes hard to recruit people to do that uh given everything that they have to deal with.

SPEAKER_04: 36:20

Dim, thank you very much. This was informative, um insightful, and uh very timely because as I said, this hearing's coming up and uh your your your experiences uh with this statute are gonna, you know, we're we're gonna we're gonna spread it throughout New York City. Um I want to thank you for joining the show and I want to congratulate you because you are now officially a co-op and condo insider. And uh on your 50th, I just want to promise on your 50th anniversary as CEO of the BRI that you'll come on our podcast again.

SPEAKER_01: 36:54

That sounds great. And many times and many times before that. I was gonna say, I hope we I don't have to wait 50 years, but uh I would thank you so much. It's been a great conversation, and I'm thrilled to come back anytime.

SPEAKER_04: 37:07

And we want to thank everybody for listening, and uh we look forward to seeing you on our next podcast. Thank you, everybody.

SPEAKER_01: 37:14

Thanks so much. Bye bye.