Richard B. Levine/Sipa USA/Reuters

Speaker Adrienne Adams and the City Council have only a few days left to vote on a bill that would finally break down the wall of secrecy that enables New York’s co-op boards to discriminate against would-be buyers with impunity. The lawmakers must not skip over a problem that should have been solved decades ago.

Intro 407-a would require co-op boards to inform unsuccessful prospective buyers of the reason they’ve been turned down for an apartment. It would drive a stake through the heart of an ugly part of New York culture that should have died long ago.

At present, “Co-op boards interview prospective shareholders, and they can reject anyone without justification, whether the reason is weak finances or security concerns or an ugly sport jacket,” as New York’s Christopher Bonanos put it. That loophole in fair-housing laws has fueled decades of celebrity lore about the notable figures, from Madonna and Barbra Streisand to Richard Nixon and Calvin Klein, who were summarily blocked from buying apartments thanks to unseen, unnamed power-tripping board members. (My favorite twist on these tales features the calypso legend Harry Belafonte, who, after being denied an apartment on West End Avenue in the 1950s, purchased the whole 13-story building outright, then converted it into co-ops that he offered to glamorous friends like singer Lena Horne.)

Celebrities have the ego, clout, and money to shrug off a rejection and buy elsewhere. But what about the rest of us?

Residential communities are not private clubs free to exclude on any basis; they are subject to fair-housing obligations and can be sued for violations like excluding people based on race, religion, nationality, and other protected criteria. But the veil of secrecy makes it nearly impossible to prove discrimination in court. “Secrecy leaves rejected families without information about the reason or reasons for turndown and with limited ability to assess (either by themselves or with the aid of an attorney) whether the rejection was motivated in whole or in part by an unlawful discriminatory process,” Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center, testified to the City Council earlier this month.

Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties all require disclosure when co-op applicants get turned down. Only New York City shields boards from giving any explanation of their actions.

“Co-op secrecy is not a practice limited to some tiny corner of the real-estate market. There are hundreds of thousands of co-op apartments in New York City, apartments that house more people than live in most U.S. cities,” the Washington-based Poverty & Race Research Action Council testified to the council. “The extent of discrimination is difficult to quantify, but it is estimated to be a factor in almost a fifth of board decisions,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, citing “Where We Live,” an official city report on fair housing published earlier this year.

Allowing co-op boards a free hand to discriminate is one reason New York is still, in a functional sense, racially segregated — with a deceptive diversity that allows people of every description to mix on the streets and subways, only to retreat to relatively monochromic ethnic enclaves after the sun goes down. Segregation then poisons civic life by keeping New Yorkers apart in our public schools and parks.

“New York City remains one of the most segregated school systems in the country, and while housing segregation is not the only cause, it is undeniably one of the most prominent,” testified Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, a group that fights against segregated schools. “Expanding access to housing — including homeownership — cannot be limited to certain neighborhoods for certain people. Any suggestion that housing discrimination no longer curtails opportunity in 2025 is, at best, naïve and, at worst, knowingly false.”

For decades, co-op leaders have pleaded that full disclosure of reasons for rejection would lead to a flood of lawsuits — a strong signal that illegal discrimination is taking place. “The co-op industry is not subtle: It has used secrecy and wants to be able to continue to use secrecy to preserve board-member unaccountability and privilege,” testified Elaine Gross, the founder of ERASE Racism, a civil-rights organization. “Progressive legislative bodies do not tolerate the elevation of self-interest over public interest in other contexts; the council needs to stop tolerating it at the behest of co-op boards.”

Gross touched on the heart of the matter: Year after year, councilmembers have looked the other way at co-op discrimination out of fear that hundreds or thousands of co-op residents might be mobilized against them in the next election by lobbyists for the real-estate industry. The heart of Speaker Adams’s district, for instance, is Rochdale Village in Jamaica, where 20 buildings with 5,860 apartments are home to 25,000 residents. It’s a potent voting bloc and may be part of the reason Adams has not allowed a vote on co-op transparency, even though 30 of the council’s 51 members co-sponsored 407-a.

Interestingly, there’s evidence that the political fears of some councilmembers may be misplaced: A 2023 poll by Slingshot Strategies found that citywide support for co-op transparency was supported by a majority of New Yorkers, 68 percent to 15 percent, and a comparable poll from 2006 commissioned by the Anti-Discrimination Center revealed similar results among co-op owners other than board members, with about 63 percent in favor of transparency and roughly 26 percent opposed.

Speaker Adrienne Adams has been an exceptional leader in many ways: This is the first majority-woman City Council in New York’s 400-year history, and she is the first Black woman to serve as Speaker. She now has the opportunity to leave on a high note by demonstrating courage that none of her predecessors managed to summon by allowing a vote on a bill that will help our city live up to its public image as a haven for fairness and diversity.

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