it's called a reverse mortgage


basically a reverse mortgage is when the owners take a loan against the house equity and get a monthly check....most elderly people do this so they have some money to eat/etc... then when they pass on, the house is still in the family but the current owners would have to pay back the equity or sell......

could be good or could be bad


b

working as the head of buildings for our cooperative at lafayette park, i've been trying to come up with a preservation plan for our forty-some mies townhouses. while technically the cooperative has one master mortgage, each member has shares of the equivalent price of his/her unit; this essentially makes them the owner of his/her individual townhouse.

about a year ago, before i got here, the coop board voted to make everything but the structure the responsibility of the individual coop member, severely limiting the amount of influence the coop can have on changes made to the unit. since, i have seen some god-awful replacements to door hardware, lighting, etc. one of my favorites has a really ornate chandelier hanging from mies's eight foot ceilings. at the same time, you can't police people's taste, and there's a part of me that really loves what i call "two hundred takes on mies." i find the ways that people live in mies from fairly diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds to be really fascinating and very positive for gaining a wider acceptance of modern architecture. similarly, i love going to the schindler house; it's crawling with alley cats and thrift store furniture. somehow i think even schindler would approve.

getting back to lafayette park's preservation plan, i'm taking the stance that the owners can make changes to their unit as long as it can be restored to its original condition. this means that all original fixtures, fittings, and finishes must be stored and catalogued if an owner wants to change them out. additionally i want to take a hardline stance against demo of existing interior walls; the two-inch thick plaster walls would be very difficult to find a contractor to replace. adding walls, soffits, etc. would be okay since they could easily be demo-ed.

it's a very tricky issue. one that i struggle with, but i do think you have to weigh the rights of the owner versus maintaining the integrity of the design.

I'm by no means an expert, and this is just my naive opinion, but I'm of the mind that buildings change over time, and probably for good reason. No building is perfect for everybody, and thus adaptations will happen. I know that I wouldn't want to live in a place where I wasn't allowed to make whatever changes I wanted to (if I owned the place, I mean).

In a co-op, that's a tough situation because of ownership structure (which may change over time, as well....) Good luck, jafidler! You've got your work ahead of you.

do you repaint a picasso cause you dont like the color???

do you live in a picasso?

you would be surprised how many people would.

at the same time there is a difference between a building and a painting. art (at least modern art) is static, something to be hung on a wall. people live in buildings, have children and pets in buildings, express their identities in buildings; it's a complicated relationship that architects and preservationists can only have so much say over.

forget lafayette park, let's catalog and restore black bottom