West Village brouhaha

Oh Steven Gaines, you published your book too quickly! Gaines' new book, due to be released in June, chronicles the (mis)adventures of Manhattan's fabled and infamous coop boards.

As if in real-time, over at the West Village Houses, just south of STOMP (southern tip of the meatpacking district), this Mitchell-Lama complex prized for their generous layouts and oh-so-hot location are in the middle of converting all their units from rentals to cooperatives.

As if it needs to be said, in this Manhattan real estate zeitgeist, no one will be happy for too long, despite the opportunity for someone to buy their 800 sq foot 1 bedroom for an absolutely-Ft-Greene-pre-2002-price of $170K.

Over at the West Village Housing Tenants Associates website, there are enough posts to make the curbed editors work OT for the next week.

Among the goodies:

• some tenant left a homemade pig's head on a certain person named Katy. Without having read all the posts, I think she may have been one of the tenants association's honchos. As one disgusted fellow tenant remarked, 'what's next? a burning cross on their lawn?'
• a veritable craigslist-ian post on people looking to trade up from their 2 BR to a 4 BR
• as one astute tenant wrote: "As reported today in the New York Post, the average 2 bedroom Co-op apartment is now selling for $1,152,180; the average 3 bedroom Co-op is now selling for $3,287,693; the average 4 bedroom Co-op is now selling for $5,978,034. WHY ARE THERE STILL PEOPLE IN WEST VILLAGE HOUSES THAT OPPOSE THE REVISED RED-HERRING?????????"

This, and many others are here: http://www.wvhta.org but beware that you need to register.