Ryan is a younger shareholder who entered the building in Sugar Hill in 2009 and has served on the board intermittently ever since. He is part of a newer generation of residents taking on the responsibility and governance of the building from its original shareholders. Ryan discussed difficulties of trying to maintain affordable and primarily local residency in Sugar Hill, an iconic but disinvested neighborhood that has gentrified with the rest of Harlem in the past few decades. He emphasized that the co-op is the only place that many shareholders can afford in Manhattan and that HDFCs must be a place of primary residence, not a place to sublet or a pied a terre. He credited the first generation of primarily women shareholders who formed and governed the co-op and hoped to continue the sense of community into the future.

Who is an HDFC for?

Sharing governance