Windsor-Hights Herald, NJ
June 9 2006
Opening activism
By: Dick Brinster, Staff Writer 06/09/2006
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Her battle with Twin Rivers now playing to larger audience
EAST WINDSOR – Disputes over the color and style of front doors
opened the way to what is now Margaret Bar-Akiva’s battle against a
“Trojan horse.”
There might be no better way to begin chronicling a decade for an
activist that began with a term on the board of directors of the Twin
Rivers Homeowners Association and morphed into what she believes is a
war for democracy against those who control such associations.
“Although it began with a debate over rules governing such mundane
items as a storm door, no intelligent discussion can take place
without distinguishing between good rules, bad rules and benign
rules,” Ms. Bar-Akiva said. “Good rules are what day you take out the
garbage, keeping the community clean and healthy, and benign rules
are what color and style your door and mailbox can be.
“Bad rules are where they trample on your First Amendment rights.”
To Ms. Bar-Akiva, the latter is war. And a big battle in that
conflict will be decided by the state Supreme Court. It has agreed to
hear arguments over the board’s attempt to limit placement of
political signs, use of the Twin Rivers Community Room and access to
the development’s newsletter.
The action was filed by Frank Askin of the Rutgers Constitutional
Litigation Clinic on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union of
New Jersey.
A ruling in favor of the association’s board might affect more
than the Committee for a Better Twin Rivers, a plaintiff’s group that
includes Ms. Bar-Akiva’s husband, Haim. Ms. Bar-Akiva is looking
beyond the impact a negative ruling would have on the local community
of 10,000 residents, the state’s oldest planned-unit development,
begun in 1969.
She says 1.4 million people in New Jersey and 52 million
nationwide are living under rules of homeowners’ associations.
“It would be a blow not only to homeowners who live in these types
of communities but I think we need to be very concerned about what
the implications of living in dictatorial enclaves within a country
that holds itself up as a model of democracy,” she said.
That sort of belief carried Ms. Bar-Akiva from the Twin Rivers
board, on which she served from 1994 through 1996, to formation in
1997 of the Common-Interest Homeowners Coalition. Now, the depth of
the battle against homeowners’ associations (HOAs) has led to Ms.
Bar-Akiva leaving as founding president to become legislative liaison
to the C-IHC board.
She hopes the war can be won in Trenton, where Assembly bill A798
was approved March 2. Ms. Bar-Akiva calls that bill an attempt to
snuff out the rights of homeowners and wants to block implementation
of what’s known as the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act.
“It is the brainchild of the attorneys of the Community
Associations Institute,” she said. “CAI is a trade organization that
represents the interests of attorneys, property managers,
administrators, management companies, accountants, etc., all of whom
get paid from hardworking homeowners’ fees.”
But, she insists, this certainly is not done in the best interest
of the homeowners.
“Lawyers of CAI represented the board in the Twin Rivers case,
arguing that homeowners who live in HOAs have no constitutional
rights!” she said. “Those same attorneys want you to believe that a
bill they crafted could be good for homeowners.”
That’s exactly what Assemblyman Peter Biondi, R-Somerset, thinks
of A798, a bill he co-sponsored, because he says it will consolidate
a myriad of laws and regulations applying to HOAs.
“This bill, which is extensive in scope, will not only clarify the
powers of homeowners’ associations but will provide more homeowner
protections,” he told the Herald. “The fact that New Jersey has a
large number of residents living in common-interest residences makes
this bill necessary and will be effective in helping our residents
living in these homes.”
Ms. Bar-Akiva, a mother of three who works for the state Division
of Human Services, is concentrating on stopping S805, the Senate
counterpart of A798. If passed in the Senate and signed by the
governor, UCIOA would become law.
“We find UCIOA to be the Great Pretender, a Trojan horse, a pig in
a poke,” said Ms. Bar-Akiva. “Its 114 pages cement the rights of
developers and of boards, but do nothing to protect owners from
abusive boards.”
Ms. Bar-Akiva is working in support of another Senate bill, S1608,
introduced by Sen. Shirley Turner, D-Mercer.
“It is written in a clear and concise manner and is meant to do
exactly what its title implies: Owners’ Rights in Common Interest
Developments (ORCID),” she said.
Meanwhile, at stake in the state Supreme Court is the outcome of a
lawsuit filed in 2000. Twin Rivers board President Scott Pohl says
$750,000 has been spent in defense of an eight-count action brought
by Mr. Bar-Akiva and two other residents.
A Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the board, applying the
business judgment rule – which holds that a decision must be made in
good faith. But an appellate panel earlier in February sent the suit
back to the lower court that previously dismissed it, instructing it
to apply a constitutional standard to counts involving placement of
signs, the community room and newsletter.
The appellate court’s action did not approve of the residents’
demand for a one-person, one-vote system to elect board members. In
Twin Rivers’ system, votes are based on the value of one’s property.
Ms. Bar-Akiva says there are many problems involving HOAs in New
Jersey and throughout the country. For her, the bottom line is
democracy.
Her first major attempt to push that concept beyond Twin River
began reluctantly in January 1997, when an Assembly task force
conducted hearings on HOAs.
“I wanted nothing to do with it,” Ms. Bar-Akiva remembered. “My
husband insisted that he wanted to go and testify. When he returned
home that night he told me that scores of people from across New
Jersey had shown up on that bitterly cold night to testify about
their own horror stories in HOAs.”
Soon, the Bar-Akivas hosted a meeting at their home with several
of those who testified, and a group of 17 formed the C-IHC.
With Ms. Bar-Akiva’s background, it might be no surprise that
rights and freedom are top-priority items.
She says her Armenian grandparents and parents survived the
genocide committed by the Turks in 1915 and 1922. The forced
deportation from Turkey landed her ancestors in what is now Israel in
1923.
“I think when you grow up in an environment where you’re aware of
the Armenian genocide, the Jewish Holocaust, and the suffering of the
Palestinian people, you realize how easy it is for things to go wrong
when good people don’t speak up,” she said.
For the first 12 years she and her husband lived in Twin Rivers,
Ms. Bar-Akiva was hardly an activist. But in 1993 – six years after
buying a townhouse for her parents in Twin Rivers – that began to
change. She said she received a letter from the board saying the
brown front door on her parents’ home was in violation of the
community bylaws because it was the same color as the townhouse
itself.
“They gave us a deadline to change the color of the door, which we
did, but missed the deadline by 12 days,” she said. “We received a
fine of $1,200.”
Then she won a seat on the board. Shortly after she left, the
C-IHC was founded. The ink on the charter was barely dry when the
Bar-Akivas received a letter from the board saying the storm door on
their home was in violation of architectural standards.
She especially criticized the Twin Rivers board and its attorneys
for being wasteful in the 1997 storm-door suit. Ms. Bar-Akiva
contends it cost homeowners $100,000. Mr. Pohl, who was elected to
Ms. Bar-Akiva’s former seat on the board, disputes that, saying about
$30,000 was spent. He denied Ms. Bar-Akiva’s claim that attorneys for
Twin Rivers charged $400 an hour for depositions.
Today, Mr. Pohl insists the same storm door, minus grates but
including a second color on the hinges – both objectionable to rules
Ms. Bar-Akiva claims were never recorded – is on the front of the her
residence. Mr. Pohl does agree with the Bar-Akivas on one thing – the
ridiculousness of the fight – but blames them for most of the cost.
Ms. Bar-Akiva contests that.
“You have an in insignificant encounter which then opens your eyes
as to how bizarre it can get,” she said. “These attorneys deposed us
for seven hours . . . all over a storm door.”