Every Sunday the Chicago Tribune runs a column in its real estate section devoted to answering readers’ questions about condo-related issues. How to deal with an owner who refuses to allow management to enter her apartment for pest control? What recourse does the condo association have to deal with an owner who is in arrears on paying monthly assessments? Is it possible to fine an owner who continues to violate the association’s rules about smoking in common areas? What are the restrictions on owners renting their apartments, either short term or long-term? What actions can owners take to force the association’s board to share budget information?
Looking at this array of concerns, one could infer that condo life was rife with conflicts and discord. And I’ve heard from friends that there are instances where some people are unlucky enough to have bought into situations that resembled pricey penal colonies, so bad that that they had chosen to sell out and seek a quiet rental.
Fortunately, that is not our story. We’ve lived in our building for almost 30 years. It’s the first property we’ve ever owned. Prior to that, as I’ve described before in earlier blogs, we had been satisfied renters with what Rosellen calls” good housing karma.” I won’t go through the whole roster, but one of the most recent examples brought us to a house in Houston owned by a wealthy left-leaning woman who had bought up a whole neighborhood of small houses and rented them out to “creatives” to surround a museum she was building to house her considerable art collection. This followed 9 years in an 18th century farmhouse in a small New Hampshire town owned by a couple who planned to move into it when they retired and wanted renters they could trust to maintain it responsibly. They were well off enough not to see the house as income-producing. They never once raised the modest rent during our nine-year stay.
We continued our renter’s life for our first several years in Chicago, including two years subletting in our current apartment, before the owner offered to sell it to us. Let me describe the building and the apartment to help you understand why we jumped on the opportunity to lose our property-owning virginity. I’m going to sound like a realtor posting a description on Zillow for a property she’s hawking but here goes. We live on the 16th floor of a 17-story building which has only one apartment on each floor. We have an unobstructed view of Lake Michigan to the east and a good part of the Hyde Park community to the west. We can watch both the sunrise and sunset every day, weather permitting. The rooms surround a central elevator shaft, producing a feel very different feel from the shotgun arrangement of many apartments; you enter the apartment straight from the elevator. A visiting friend once commented that the place had good feng shui. Each of the apartments in the building is laid out on the same plan
But just as important as the physical attractiveness of the building is its community of residents. In our almost three decades here, governance has operated smoothly. I can only recall a few instances of discord of the kind that might show up in that Chicago Tribune column. A new owner turned out to be a party animal who was growing pot in what had, in olden times, been the maid’s room. The music was sometimes blaring past midnight, even during the week. When polite requests failed to change the pattern, the board began to levy fines, which finally convinced the owner to buy a house in a secluded area where he could turn up the volume, free of complaining neighbors whose sleep-disrupted kids had school the next day.
The building is a few years short of its hundredth birthday which means that just as for people of a certain age, there are always things going wrong. Exterior walls need tuckpointing and sealing. The two elevators need repairs and replacement. Plumbing gives out. Time to replace the roof. Unlike many condo buildings which sometimes contain dozens to hundreds of owners, there are only 16 of us – the price we pay for that one per floor luxuryis thatwhen there are big fixit projects, the costs weigh heavily on a small number.
That requires thoughtful long-term planning to avoid having a sudden elevator failure and no money on hand to pay for the repairs. Here is where I want to sing the praises of our board which includes people with fiscal savvy and a willingness to really invest time in tasks that benefit the entire community – everything from beautifying the lobby to improving the building’s security. Rosellen and I have both served our time on the condo board, but we are content to leave these tasks to younger residents who are far better equipped to steer the ship.
I was thinking about this at our annual condo-wide meeting last week, marveling at how little friction there is at these events which could be fraught with discord, especially when owners are asked to increase their bills to keep the building on sound footing. In this time of massive dysfunction in so many of our institutions, I’m happy to be part of a functioning example of civil participatory democracy. I feel like I’m back at the New Hampshire town meetings of an earlier period of our lives, where some belief in the common good still prevailed, although I hear from various sources in that snowy wonderland that it ain’t what it used to be.
I’d love to hear from you about other examples of functioning democracy that should be making news but are obscured by tales of woe about failing institutions. I can’t imagine that we’re alone.
