Photo: Penn South Post No one could get together at Penn South, but they could talk. As residents of the towering 15-building complex sheltered in place during the early months of the pandemic, Facebook groups and text chains lit up with neighbors sharing updates from the state, asking after loved ones, and, with all that idle time, getting deep into one another’s business.
As the desire for outdoor space grew during the pandemic, tensions only increased. “In season it’s lovely; it’s got all these flowering trees and plants and things,” Melle said. “If you walk past, you can smell people cooking things on a barbecue — it seems like they’ve got a privilege that we don’t have.” At one point, some cooperators went old-school, papering all 2,820 apartment doors with fliers that read, “Penn South Board to Cooperators: Drop Dead.
Officially named the Mutual Redevelopment Houses, Inc., Penn South is one of several trade-union co-ops built in the 1960s targeted at the city’s white middle class. Penn South required residents to undergo mandatory preoccupancy training that emphasized its labor bona fides and community values, which attracted a certain kind of person: Former cooperators include civil-rights activist Bayard Rustin and David Graeber, who was asked to leave the co-op after Occupy Wall Street .
Vanessa Wyeth, a cooperator who got into the garden three years ago, said that she understood people’s frustrations with the current system. But, she added, “maintaining the garden is a tremendous amount of work, and it does seem it’s a core of people who have been members forever and are on the garden board who do most of that work.” She agreed that there should be a way for the co-op to openly discuss the issue and come to a resolution.
But with the announcement of the second garden, Cohen and others saw an effort to diffuse the momentum about opening up the first garden and to maintain the closed-door nature of how garden decisions are made: The original garden committee — the first garden committee — holds annual meetings only for its members. The board’s monthly meetings are still largely closed, too.
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