By Anya Schiffrin

It’s a well-known fact that we New Yorkers depend on our supers. They have copies of our keys in case they need to get in to do repairs or staunch an emergency leak. They know  everything about us — whether we’re slobs, when we come and go, who visits us and when we’re out of town. They take deliveries and solve our problems. My wonderful super (or his wife) puts perishables in the fridge when a food delivery arrives and I am out. Once he turned on my TV when the complicated remote was too much for me to handle. During the pandemic his wife used to head to the roof to do my hair outdoors. Graydon Carter  says the super in his building cooked for the building staff during the pandemic.

A big apartment building is like a small city and the super reigns supreme.  As well as helping tenants with chores (particularly in small buildings) supers supervise the “back stairs men” (aka the handymen) and they manage the doormen too. They’re in charge when contractors come in to check the boiler or repair the roof.  

Sadly, it’s an open secret in New York City that the power a super holds has led some down the path to corruption. It’s  an ongoing problem.

In decades living on the Upper West Side, I’ve amassed many stories. There was the time a back stairs man slipped notes under the doors in my mother’s building alleging that the super made the building’s employees work on his property on weekends. The same super surreptitiously moved all the furniture out of his apartment, after which “he did a bunk in the middle of the night with the connivance of the back stairs men,” my mother said. 

In my own building, we once had a super who charged $4,000 to construction firms before allowing builders in to do renovations. He also forcefully told outside repairmen coming into the building that he’d rather not have them enter because he wanted apartment owners to pay him to do the work. He cheated a doorman in the building, selling him an overpriced house with a hefty mortgage (the super’s son misfiled the doorman’s taxes, leaving him with a large debt of back taxes). That super vanished in 2020 back to Budapest, where he apparently had managed to build a real estate empire. I asked the son once what he thought of corruption. He shrugged and said: “Well, as long as the work gets done.”

When I asked board presidents and seasoned managing agents about “super” corruption, they told me that accepting kickbacks from vendors is the number one offense. Architects I interviewed said kickbacks are often in the form of a “tip” that supers expect from building contractors. Any time there is a major renovation, they said, the super — and often the “back stairs men” — expect “tips” for doing things like turning water on and off so that plumbing work can be done. The amount is rarely discussed; contractors are expected to know the prevailing rates. “It is corruption but it’s been normalized in the construction industry. It’s become like a usage fee,” said one architect with decades of experience working on New York apartments. Indeed, a friend on seventh avenue who recently renovated her apartment told me her super told her contractors to stop working, in the middle of the job, because there were “issues” but wouldn’t explain what they were. The contractor gave $1,000 in an envelope to the super “and work started again the next morning.”

Another problem: supers who use the building’s budget to buy supplies that they then keep for themselves (aka, stealing). That led to a super being fired on Central Park West, a building resident told me.

“It’s vitally important that you trust your super because they review and sign off on bills before a manager even gets those bills. They are the first line of defense for bill paying and bill review,” says Despina Leandrou, a vice president of Orsid New York, which manages 150 buildings in Manhattan.

Adam Graycar, a professor at Adelaide University, South Australia, who specializes in research on corruption, says it’s not particularly surprising to hear these stories of kickbacks and theft. “Corruption follows opportunity,” says Graycar. “In any organisation/profession there is always likely to be somebody on the make and who will exploit an opportunity.” 

Graycar says to combat such corruption, the city could develop a way to deregister or blacklist “bad apple” supers. Or buildings can bring charges against them. But while there has been coverage of New York City Housing Authority supers arrested for accepting bribes, managing agents say that in private buildings, the normal procedure is to terminate the super with a lukewarm reference and some sort of payout that is negotiated with SEIU 32BJ, the union representing supers (a union spokesman declined to comment). 

While researching this story I was told about a  building of Columbia University professors whose super was fired after overbilling to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. Many of the building residents called for restorative justice and wanted building residents to compensate the super who had just  been fired. 

Neil Davidowitz, president of Orsid Realty, and a former district attorney in the city, says some managing agents and contractors were prosecuted in the 1990s, but prosecution of building supers is rare. 

Davidowitz told me that boards are more interested in getting the illegal behavior stopped than in prosecuting the staff. “These are difficult cases to prove as you need the cooperation of contractors and vendors who have been the victims,” the agent says. “It often requires an industry investigation, rather than ‘one off’ prosecution.”

Boards also may feel the amount of money involved isn’t worth a fight or that prosecuting in court may make it hard to find a replacement for the super. In some cases, a board may even decline to fire a super for taking kickbacks if they feel his expertise about the building is essential.

“There’s value in maintaining competence even if it’s on the edgy side,” said one board member. 

Boards that take such a position can infuriate a building’s managing agent. “If there is conduct that rises to the level of criminal conduct or corruption, we terminate immediately,” says Davidowitz, the Orsid president. “The only thing that works is a zero tolerance policy. No tips or gifts from any vendors and if you are offered one, you better tell me.” Davidowitz notes that supers generally earn more than $100,000 a year and live in rent-free apartments which may cost anywhere from $6,000-10,000 on the open market. They also are likely to receive free utilities and cable service, and some have free parking.

Davidowitz’s Orsid colleague, Despina Leandrou, says that old-style corruption is becoming a thing of the past as supers are more professional now and agents employ tougher vetting procedures. Orsid’s job application is 17 pages long, and the firm requires drug and background checks before hiring a super.

“It’s a generational shift, the old guy who's been around forever is being replaced by someone who is not just a handyman with a free apartment who does a payroll but is a career super with professional standards,” Leandrou says.

Professor Ester Fuchs, director of the Urban and Social Policy program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, notes that rental buildings also have corruption problems.

“The city needs to be regulating all of this and even where there are regulations there is nobody home to do the oversight. The city is not equipped. Where are the inspectors?” Fuchs says, noting that the city has some 20,000 vacancies in government offices.

Anya Schiffrin is a native Upper West Sider and a Senior Lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.