Building Board Votes To Ban Discussion Of Real Estate Values, Politics, And Quote Whatever Todd From 8B Keeps Saying
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Upper West Side Apartment Building Forms HOA To Regulate Which Opinions Are Acceptable In The Elevator
NEW YORK — The residents of 340 West 89th Street on the Upper West Side have established a building homeowners association whose founding charter includes, among its provisions, a detailed Elevator Communication Code governing what topics may be discussed during the average twelve-second elevator ride between lobby and upper floors, with specific prohibitions on real estate valuations, political opinions, and any statement made by Todd Hannigan-Webber in apartment 8B.
The HOA, formed at a residents’ meeting attended by twenty-three of the building’s forty-four units, passed the Elevator Communication Code 17 to 6 after what minutes from the meeting describe as “extensive and at times contentious debate.” The code establishes three categories of elevator speech: Permitted (weather observations, delivery package questions, brief pet acknowledgments, anodyne building maintenance observations); Discouraged But Not Prohibited (opinions about restaurants, sports outcomes, weekend plans); and Prohibited (apartment sale prices, rental comparisons, political positions of any kind, and what the code specifically calls “Todd’s thing about the subway, which everyone has heard many times and which has not become more accurate with repetition”).
HOA President Geraldine Whitmore-Chu, who drafted the code, told reporters that the elevator was “a shared space that has been weaponized by a small number of residents who treat it as an opportunity for unsolicited commentary” and that the code was “a reasonable attempt to restore the social norms that should govern brief involuntary social encounters.”
The Todd Situation
The specific reference to Todd Hannigan-Webber in apartment 8B is, the HOA president confirmed, not incidental. Hannigan-Webber, a forty-four-year-old freelance consultant who has lived in the building for six years, has been the subject of recurring complaints about his elevator behavior since at least 2021. The complaints, documented in HOA pre-formation records, include: extended opinions about the Second Avenue Subway timeline delivered during elevator rides of under twenty seconds; unsolicited real estate valuations of other residents’ apartments based on what he describes as “my own analysis”; and what multiple complainants describe as “a position on the designated hitter rule that he has stated in the elevator on at least forty occasions and that several residents have memorized against their will.”
Hannigan-Webber, contacted Wednesday, described the HOA elevator code as “an unconstitutional restriction on free expression in a shared building space” and said he was “considering his legal options.” He then offered his opinion on the Second Avenue Subway, which reporters noted was detailed and took approximately ninety seconds.
The elevator ride at 340 West 89th Street takes twelve seconds.
This kind of community regulation that addresses a genuinely experienced collective problem through a governance framework whose enforceability is questionable is consistent with a long tradition of HOA codes that express community norms rather than enforceable legal obligations, with the expression itself being the primary function.
The Enforcement Mechanism
The Elevator Communication Code’s enforcement mechanism is a social reporting system in which residents who witness prohibited elevator speech may submit a report to the HOA board within twenty-four hours. The board will review reports at its monthly meeting and may, for repeated violations, issue a formal notice. The notice has no legal force. It is a piece of paper delivered to the resident’s door expressing the board’s concern.
Board member Patricia Osei-Mensah, who helped draft the enforcement mechanism, described it as “primarily normative” and said the code’s “true enforcement mechanism is community disapproval,” which she acknowledged was “not a robust enforcement mechanism for someone like Todd, who has demonstrated a tolerance for community disapproval that many of us find admirable in its way.”
The HOA has not determined what happens after a formal notice is ignored, because the code does not specify. Board President Whitmore-Chu said this was “an area we will address if we reach that point.” Most board members appear to believe they will reach that point.
The Other Residents
The six residents who voted against the Elevator Communication Code objected on various grounds. Two said the code was “unnecessary because polite people already know not to do these things.” Two said it was “an overreach into private speech.” One said it was “specifically targeting Todd, which is understandable but legally murky.” One said he had no opinion on the code but had voted against it because the meeting ran past ten p.m. and he had an early morning.
Seventeen residents did not attend the meeting and have not formally registered their positions on the code. Of these, four have been observed since the code’s passage discussing weather in the elevator, which is permitted. Three have been observed discussing restaurant recommendations, which is discouraged. One has been observed listening to Todd discuss the Second Avenue Subway without apparent reaction, which suggests either resignation or hearing loss.
This is consistent with a wider pattern in residential community governance in which formal codes are adopted by an engaged minority and observed variably by a disengaged majority.
For more on New York City residential community dynamics, see The Daily Mash for related British building management coverage.
The code is posted in the elevator. Todd has read it. Todd has opinions about it. The elevator ride is twelve seconds.
Jerome’s Philosophy Extended
Jerome Whitfield-Okafor’s approach to The New Yorker has attracted attention from a writer at a food culture publication who is developing a piece on what they are calling “honest service culture” in New York, the specific tradition in which directness and efficiency are not experienced as rudeness but as respect. The tradition is, by various accounts, genuinely regional: the service interaction that reads as cold in other American cities reads as efficient and mutually respectful in New York, because both parties understand the transaction’s nature and do not require it to be emotionally elaborated. Bohiney.com published a piece this week on regional service culture variation across American cities that is directly relevant to what Jerome is doing. The London Prat’s culture coverage draws useful comparisons to British service culture, which has its own version of performed directness that is different from New York’s but recognizably related. Jerome was not available for comment on the forthcoming profile. He was making coffee.
SOURCE: https://sites.google.com/view/world-satire/united-kingdom-and-satire