When fences make bad neighbors

In opting for sensationalism, Gothamist got it all wrong

by Paul Graziano

In a February 14th, 2020 article written by Elizabeth Kim entitled “In Flushing, Enforcement Of A 1906
Ban On Fences Raises Accusations Of Racism” about a deed-restricted neighborhood located in
northeast Queens, the Gothamist website – not for the first time – brings race and ethnicity into the
equation where it doesn’t belong and fails to understand the importance of the topic that they chose to
discuss: private deed restrictions and covenants enforced by neighborhood associations and affected
individuals with standing.

It is worrying that a news outlet – one now affiliated with the respected WNYC public radio station –
would publish a story that is chock full of inaccuracies and harmful racially-charged innuendo without
doing the basic research to make sure that they get their facts straight.

Deed restrictions and covenants, recorded since (at least) the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, are a
well-known tool used in English Common Law, a variation of which is the bedrock basis of the United
States legal system. Typically, early covenants described what a particular property’s use could or could
not be. For example, a cattle farmer in 14th century England might sell a portion of his property to his
neighbor with the stipulation that the new owner could only raise sheep.

Beginning with the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century in the United States, some property
owners began to restrict or ban types of what we would consider industrial, commercial or other
“noxious” uses from their property, particularly upon sale to another owner. These deed restrictions,
often referred to as “boilerplate” became ubiquitous in the second half of the 19th century, as real
estate developers, particularly in urbanizing areas, began to create entire neighborhoods of “residential
parks” that would ensure that current or future owners would not be allowed to create noxious uses
that would negatively affect the community as a whole and an individual property owner within the
boundaries of the affected area in particular.

For example, in the Prospect Lefferts Gardens section of Brooklyn, Lefferts Manor, which was created in
1896 by James A. Lefferts on part of the family’s farm, has a laundry list of banned buildings that could
be erected or operated. These included such undesirable uses as a “stable, pig pen, slaughter house,
smith shop, carpenter shop, coal yard, brick or stone yard, lumber yard, forge, furnace, stove, engine,
brass foundry, tin nails or other iron factory or fertilizing manufactory or any building for the
manufacture of gunpowder dynamite, electricity, glue, vitriol, varnish, saltpeter, lamp black, soap,
candles, starch, baking powder, cream of tartar and or turpentine or other boiling of bones or dressing
of skins, hides or leather or any brewery, distillery or any building for the storage of gunpowder,
dynamite or other explosives…”

These types of restrictions were commonplace throughout new developments at the time, as
mentioned above. In addition, broad restrictions on commercial uses, hospitals, theaters and, during
Prohibition, saloons or liquor manufactories/breweries were written into deeds in order to maintain the
residential quality, particularly in the absence of municipal zoning ordinances.

Other types of controls that were instituted by these early deed restrictions included housing type;
building shape and height; setbacks of the building from the street; location and types of outbuildings
and garages; fencing and walls; and minimum cost of construction. Several of the restrictions included
within Lefferts Manor include a ban on “any building commonly called a flat, apartment or tenement
house” and “any house of less value than five thousand dollars.” The houses had to stand “at least
fourteen feet from the line” of a street; front fences “erected shall stand back twelve feet from the curb
line”; and no “outbuilding shall be erected within seventy five feet of the line “of a street.

Unfortunately, some of the deed restrictions created throughout the United States at that time also
banned “Negros or persons of African descent” as well as “Italians, Armenians and Jews” from
purchasing homes, a terrible legacy of enduring racism in the United States; these restrictions were
found unconstitutional in 1948 by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Shelly v. Kraemer, which
found that they violated the United States Constitution’s 14th Amendment, known as the Equal
Protection Clause. Subsequently, many deed restrictions which included the racial component were
either amended to remove that language or, in some cases, nullified altogether. This is not the case with
those in Broadway-Flushing or other places in New York City, as that racially restrictive language was
(thankfully) never included in any of those covenants.

Indeed, these early (non-racial) residential deed restrictions found in New York City as well as other
parts of the country are the direct predecessor to zoning law and are reflected in the decisions that
municipalities around the United States made in how to organize land use in the early to mid-20th
century.

In the early 20th century, more sophisticated deed restrictions were also created; places like Malba
(1908), Forest Hills Gardens (1909) and Bayside Gables (1927), all located in Queens, and Fieldston
(1909) in the Riverdale section of the Bronx were created as corporate entities with complete control
over development within the borders of their enclaves, including exterior architectural design. In
reference to Forest Hills Gardens and Bayside Gables, their continued control over all decision making as
well as maintaining a private street grid under their jurisdiction are outliers in comparison to most of the
other active deed restricted communities within New York City.

While most deed restrictions that were created were meant to be permanent – usually stating that they
“run with the land” or some variation thereof - some deed restrictions had to be renewed on a regular
basis by the neighborhood associations that represented the area while others were designed to expire
after a certain amount of time or on a specific date. For example, Sunnyside Gardens – a celebrated
English Garden City-inspired planned community built between 1924 and 1928 located in Sunnyside,
Queens – had 40-year deed restrictions on the private common gardens and open space that define the
community. As the deed restrictions came up for renewal between 1964 and 1968, some of the
individual private owners declined to renew them and began to overtake the garden spaces, fencing and
paving them over for driveways or enlarging their existing rear gardens. The majority of residents who
had maintained the deed restrictions were shocked into action, ultimately pushing New York City
government to adopt the Sunnyside Gardens Special Zoning District in 1974, followed by the creation of
the Sunnyside Gardens Historic District in 2007, both of which have subsequently protected the
remaining open spaces and low-slung housing, albeit through municipal ordinance.

The Cord Meyer (1906) area of Forest Hills, located north of Queens Boulevard, is an area where
detailed deed restrictions were designed to expire five years after the property was sold and built upon;
the goal was to assure the construction of a quality house, thus burdening the developer during
development but not the owner afterwards. However, it is unlikely that the Cord Meyer Corporation
which developed this neighborhood (as well as Bayside Gables) and continues to build in Queens County
today had the prescience to imagine what would happen during the ensuing century. Due to the lack of
deed restrictions, what was once a carefully planned community has been significantly redeveloped in
recent decades with out-of-character extremely large houses, paved-over open spaces and high walls
and fences.

When comprehensive municipal zoning was first adopted in New York City in the 1916 Zoning
Resolution, it mostly focused on high density skyscraper development in Manhattan and regulations to
control massing to allow light and air to the streets below. Low density areas were given broad and
vague designations that allowed for out-of-context development to occur on a regular basis, confirming
the need for the defense and continued creation of deed-restricted communities that had their own set
of controls. It was not until the adoption of the 1961 Zoning Resolution that municipal zoning in New
York City began to reflect, at least in part, the physical reality of many of these neighborhoods. At the
outset, while the Department of City Planning made a broad effort to match zoning to some deed
restricted neighborhoods, it was sometimes adversarial. For example, during the 1950s, many formerly
single-family rowhouses in the brownstone neighborhoods of Manhattan and Brooklyn began to be
carved up into multiple units. In Lefferts Manor, the association sued over the violation of their single-
family deed restrictions. The resulting case, Lefferts Manor Associaton v. Fass, created landmark caselaw
in the upholding of the single-family covenants in 1960 for that neighborhood. As a result, the
Department of City Planning zoned the entirety of Lefferts Manor R2 in 1961, allowing only houses with
single-family occupancy which reflected the deed restrictions in question. Never mind that the R2 zone
allows only detached buildings on 40’ wide lots, with only 7% of properties complying in what is almost
entirely rowhouse development; it was determined by the Wagner administration that the controlling
factor for their decision making was single-family occupancy, which would protect Lefferts Manor from
continued court challenges in the future.

Even so, it has been a continuous fight over the ensuing sixty years to make sure that zoning in New York
City better reflect the physical characteristics of deed restricted neighborhoods. In 1998, a small enclave
of 65 detached single-family homes in Forest Hills just north of Union Turnpike known as Kew Forest was
threatened with the construction of a seven-storey apartment building which would replace a corner
house. The zoning in the area was R6, which allowed high-rise construction as-of-right. The
neighborhood banded together and created a voluntary civic group to fight the developer after they
discovered that, like the Kew Gardens deed restricted neighborhood (1909) immediately to the south,
they had intact deed restrictions that only allowed detached single-family houses. The case decided in
favor of the plaintiffs on May 16th, 2000, Kew Forest Neighborhood Association, Inc. v. Rita Lieberman et
al., was another landmark case in upholding deed restrictions as it not only permanently stopped the
construction of the apartment building in question, it forced the developer to remove the foundation
and rebuild a detached single-family house. At the same time, the neighborhood was also rezoned from
R6 to R2 by the Department of City Planning to further the goal of matching deed restricted
communities with more appropriate zoning. In addition, it created two major precedents that has had
important ramifications during the past two decades: a property owner or neighborhood association
does not have to have prior knowledge that the deed restrictions existed and are enforceable; and, any
newly created neighborhood association which represents the area affected by said covenants has the
standing to sue the violator.
As may be evident at this point, most deed restriction cases revolve around a central tenet: the
restriction that is being violated must be deemed enforceable in a court of law. For planned
neighborhoods in particular, this is determined by whether there has been a significant number of
properties within the area in question that no longer adhere to the deed restriction being challenged. As
described previously, neighborhoods such as Lefferts Manor, Forest Hills Gardens, Kew Gardens and
others all have a common plan with accompanying map and a list of specifics that define the parameters
of what is and is not allowed. And, as already discussed, these enforceable deed restrictions have
absolutely nothing to do with race, ethnicity or creed.

This brings us to the topic at hand: Broadway-Flushing. More than a century ago, the Rickert-Finlay
Realty Company developed four planned communities in northeast Queens along the Port Washington
(formerly Great Neck) branch of the Long Island Railroad: Bellcourt (1904) in Bayside, Broadway-Flushing
(1906) in that neighborhood, Douglas Manor (1906) in Douglaston and Westmoreland (1907) which
straddles the Little Neck and Great Neck (in Nassau County) border. Rickert-Finlay was extremely careful
in how they designed each area. All were geared towards a burgeoning middle class looking to escape
extremely overcrowded conditions in Manhattan (and to some extent, the urbanized areas of Brooklyn).
At the time, Manhattan had over two million people while Queens County had less than 200,000. With
the beginning of construction in 1904 and opening of the East River Tunnels in 1910 – which Rickert-
Finlay surely anticipated, as their offices were located at 1 West 34th Street in Manhattan – the real
estate company strategically positioned themselves to take advantage of a demand based upon new
residents willing to take a twenty minute commuter train ride to the heart of Manhattan for work, while
living in what was then a rural part of Queens County in newly-consolidated New York City.

According to a report written by the author in 2011 for one of the court cases defending the deed
restrictions in Broadway-Flushing, the “Rickert-Finlay Realty Company, founded in 1904, was critical in
shaping the pattern of planned suburban development in northeastern Queens and western Nassau
County in particular, and Queens County in general, for close to half a century…Broadway-Flushing,
Bellcourt, Westmoreland and Douglas Manor all have very similar covenants, written by the Rickert-
Finlay Real Estate Company from 1904 to 1907. Several hallmarks of the Rickert-Finlay deed restrictions
include setting a minimum cost for construction to ensure a higher quality of buildings; peaked rooves
to ensure a more varied and less urban roofline than was typical in New York City at the time; no fences
or walls in front of the buildings to ensure a continuous streetscape; and, deep minimum setbacks to
give the impression of an open rural landscape. Unlike other deed restrictions of the time, there were no
restrictions on ethnic or racial background.”

After the Rickert-Finlay Realty Company and its successor, the Rickert-Brown Realty Company, folded in
the 1930s, a civic association was formed to defend the covenants and advocate for better
representation of the neighborhood in the political and civic life of New York City. The Broadway-
Flushing Civic Association existed for about two decades – from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s –
before going defunct. Approximately a decade later, the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association
was created to respond to the newly enacted Zoning Resolution and the 1963-1964 World’s Fair held in
nearby Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. With very specific boundaries encompassing approximately
1300 properties bounded by 155th to 170th streets and 29th/32nd avenues to Northern Boulevard and
Crocheron Avenue, the organization’s main goals continue to be to “defend the newly-rediscovered
Rickert-Finlay covenants within their association boundaries, which are stricter than municipal zoning
but have to be defended with court actions. In the past decades, these deed restrictions have been
upheld through numerous court challenges and have been a major source of continued stability
throughout the community. Other quality-of-life issues that the association has been active in
include…the pursuit of zoning reforms which will more closely adhere to the Rickert-Finlay covenants.”

Broadway-Flushing, along with its sibling organizations the Douglas Manor Association and the
Westmoreland Civic Association, have continuously defended their deed restrictions. This is due to the
fact that, while the Department of City Planning has in recent years made efforts to more closely match
the city’s zoning to each neighborhood, there are instances where this doesn’t happen.

For example, the R2 zone matches many areas with Rickert-Finlay covenants in certain general ways, in
terms of lot size, detached housing and other aspects. However, an R2 zone requires a minimum front
yard setback of 15 feet while the Rickert-Finlay covenant requires 20 feet. In 1987, a developer in the
Westmoreland neighborhood tore down one house to build three. The developer began construction
with 15 feet front yard setbacks, and the Westmoreland Association demanded that he instead abide by
the deed restrictions which mandated the 20 feet setback.

According to the filed case, Westmoreland Association, Inc. v. West Cutter Estates, Ltd, decided on
January 13th, 1992, “A building permit was granted to the defendants by the New York City Department
of Buildings…enabling them to construct a house on each of their three building sites. The plans showed
front-line setbacks for each house of only 15 feet. The defendants’ construction of the houses on the
property in question in violation of the restrictive covenant requiring a front-line setback of 20 feet
prompted the association’s litigation for permanent injunctive relief. As set forth in the complaint, the
restrictive covenants, including that pertaining to the frontline setback, were imposed in furtherance of
a general plan to preserve the tract for restricted residential use. The defendants refused to abide by
applicable restrictions, notwithstanding a demand for compliance by the Westmoreland Association.
Construction was halted by order of the Supreme Court…Considering all of the circumstances, the court
correctly found that the equities balanced in favor of granting the injunction. The defendants learned,
prior to closing, that at least a portion of their property was subject to the restrictive covenant in
question. Despite such notice, and despite the protests of the Westmoreland Association, they
proceeded at their own risk to build the three houses in violation of the restrictive covenant. There is no
indication either that the defendants acted in good faith or that the association acted with unclean
hands. On the contrary, the association informed the defendants of its objection to any violation of the
covenant prior to the defendant’s receipt of city approval for their building plans. The wrong committed
by the defendants in this case was committed with full knowledge that it was in violation of the
restrictive covenant governing front-line setbacks.” The developer of the three houses, partially built at
the time of the decision, had to remove five feet from the front of the buildings due to the court’s
decision, regularly cited in other cases of its kind to the present day, in favor of the Westmoreland Civic
Association.

During the past three decades, Broadway Flushing Homeowners Association has also had multiple cases
where violations of their deed restrictions resulted in litigation. The first, Broadway Flushing
Homeowners Association v. City of New York, was decided in 1988 in favor of the association. In this
case, it was a reaction to a city-created issue. In 1961, the Department of City Planning had zoned a
portion of the covenant area north of Northern Boulevard for commercial development. The deed
restrictions prohibit commercial use of any kind. Alarmed by potential demolitions because of this
mismatch between the deed restrictions and municipal zoning and negotiations to remove the
commercial overlay falling on deaf ears, they successfully sued the city. The decision made important
case law, as the decision stated that just because the association didn’t necessarily know about the
commercial overlay potentially harming their deed restricted area it “does not result in forfeiture of the
right to enforce the Covenant in present and future situations.”

After the association won, the city rezoned a narrow strip of land to remove the commercial overlay and
became decidedly more friendly to the association’s goals of matching the zoning as closely as possible
to the deed restrictions. As such, in 2004 and 2009, the Department of City Planning did just that,
rezoning much of the Broadway Flushing neighborhood to stop the threat of lot subdivisions in
particular. However, even with the cooperation of the city government, not all lots were able to be
protected by municipal zoning alone.

The most recent case, Broadway Flushing Homeowners Association, Inc. v. Eastern NY Enterprises, Inc.,
decided in July of 2013, stopped a developer from subdividing a large corner lot to build two houses.
The lot, 120 feet by 100 feet, could be subdivided into two lots according to the R1-2A zoning, which
allows houses on 60 feet by 100 feet. The developer was warned by the association prior to the
demolition of the existing house that they would go to court because his plans would violate the deed
restrictions. Indeed, in the decision by the judge, he stated that subdividing the property would “violate
the Rickert-Finlay Covenant, which requires houses on corner properties to be at least 80 feet wide by
100 feet long, and non-corner single family homes be on lots of at least 60 feet in width and 100 feet in
length, thereby leaving defendant’s 120 x 100 foot lot twenty feet short of being in compliance with the
Covenant…Covenants are not unenforceable just because they are more restrictive than zoning laws.
Parties claiming a Covenant is unenforceable, i.e. the Defendant, has the burden of proof in establishing
such unenforceability. Defendant has to establish that the restrictions in question do not remain vital
and relevant to the ongoing ambiance and character of the neighborhood. The Court accepts the
Plaintiff’s position that the restrictions continue to serve a legitimate purpose, especially as it relates to
corner lots, to allow for the continued ambiance afforded the community by open and unobstructed
views. The purpose remains as compelling today as the day it was created. In fact, this open-air view is a
substantial reason that homeowners are attracted to this area. Therefore, the Plaintiff has met their
burden of showing the continued vitality of the Covenant today.”

A key benchmark in the enforceability of deed restrictions remains how many properties have had
unchecked violations and what percentage of the total deed restricted area remains in compliance. As
the judge stated in this case, there is “no proof that the Plaintiffs acted in bad faith or selectively singled
out Defendant for enforcement of the Covenant, nor is there any proof that Defendant was duped or
mislead into believing his building plans would be approved by the Association. The out of compliance
number of homes is relatively insignificant with only 1.5% within the whole BFHA area, and only 5%
within the Section 26 area, since the advent of the BFHA in 1964. Perhaps most importantly, there is no
evidence that any corner lots within the Covenant area are out of compliance.”

Similar outcomes in other cases were based upon the intact nature of the deed restrictions being
challenged. In Lefferts Manor, more than 94% of the houses remained single family; in Kew Forest, 63 of
65 houses remained detached and 58 of 65 houses were still single-family in nature; in Westmoreland,
100% of the houses have at least a twenty-foot front yard setback.

As can be ascertained from the above discussion, a high compliance rate is an important factor in the
upholding of deed restrictions, particularly as not all covenant issues can be regulated or rectified by
municipal zoning. If compliance is low, it can lead to the extinguishing of a portion of the deed
restriction by the courts or, in rare cases, the entire covenant. Therefore, vigilance by vested individuals
or associations with standing is necessary to maintain compliance, particularly when there are property
owners purposefully and flagrantly violating an enforceable covenant. This brings us to the third case
that Broadway Flushing Homeowners Association won – and it is directly related to the article in
question.

In 2005, a homeowner in Broadway Flushing built a seven-foot high concrete and stucco wall in violation
of the Rickert-Finlay covenant which clearly states that “no fence except hedge, or shrubbery will be
permitted within 20 feet of the front line or side street line of any lot.” The resulting case, Broadway-
Flushing Homeowners’ Association, Inc. v. Anthony Dilluvio, spent seven years wending its way through
the courts until decided permanently in favor of the association on July 11th, 2012. The key portion of
the decision states that “we reject the appellants’ further contention in support of their motion for
summary judgement that the covenant should not be enforced because it is ambiguous…the party
claiming that a restriction is unenforceable bears the burden of proving it. Here, the appellants failed to
meet their burden of proving that the covenant was unenforceable. The evidence showed that the
purpose of the covenant was to benefit and preserve the open yard, as well as the ‘unobstructed, open
character of the neighborhood, unimpeded and unburdened’ by man-made structures, such as a fence
or, in this case, a concrete and stucco wall.”

In addition, the court made it clear that they were aware that the defendants knew about the covenant
and went forward with illegal wall anyway, stating that “where the plaintiff provided clear and
convincing evidence of the covenant and its scope, where the appellants had knowledge of the covenant
but chose to continue their construction, where the plaintiff suffered irreparable harm in the form of
the obstruction of the open views intended by the covenant, and where the equities are balanced in the
plaintiff’s favor, the Supreme Court correctly granted a permanent injunction.”

Why would the New York State Supreme Court; the Appellate Division; and the Court of Appeals all vote
unanimously in favor of upholding the prohibition on fences, walls and other physical barriers on front
and side yards in Broadway-Flushing even though they are allowed under municipal zoning? Because A)
the deed restrictions are stricter than zoning and are enforceable, and the law states that either zoning
or deed restrictions prevail, whichever is stronger; and B) they are enforceable because there have been
no unchecked violations, as clearly seen in this decision from eight years ago.

In fact, until this court case, there were no violators of the fencing prohibition in Broadway-Flushing.
And, once that was decided in the association’s favor, there were no unchecked violations until the last
year, when the three properties in question decided to “go rogue” and willingly ignore the Rickert-Finlay
covenants even after multiple attempts by the association to resolve the situation without legal action.

Of the 554 properties within the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association boundaries that are
encumbered with the Rickert-Finlay covenant, these are the only three that are violating the fencing
restriction.

Now that it has been established that the deed restrictions in Broadway-Flushing are enforceable and
recently acted upon successfully multiple times, a closer examination of the allegations made by both
the Gothamist reporter and the subjects within bears a closer look:
- Yili Huang has lived in Broadway-Flushing and known about the Rickert-Finlay covenant for more
than a decade. He chose to violate it after the court case was decided in favor of the association.
It should be noted that his claims of creating a safer environment for his children are odd, as the
fence is open on both sides and would not stop his children from running into the street. Mr.
Huang’s allegation that other houses have fences and that they “less attractive” may be true,
but they are not located in the covenant area.

- In addition, Mr. Huang’s allegation that another person has not been sued happens to be white
is both racist and incorrect, as that owner’s fence is outside of the covenant area. As can be
seen from the lawsuits referenced above, the association enforces the deed restrictions
regardless of race, creed or ethnicity.

- The reporter’s claim that Flushing is “already overwhelmingly Asian – 71 percent, according to
the latest census data. Whites make up 8 percent” is incredibly revealing as to the agenda of this
article. Firstly, Flushing is an enormous geographical area with well over 200,000 people. North
Flushing, the area north of Northern Boulevard, has a different set of demographics than the
rest of Flushing. A subsection of North Flushing, Broadway-Flushing itself is an incredibly diverse
neighborhood, with no one ethnic group predominating. The Broadway Flushing Homeowners
Association has over 450 families as paid households out of a neighborhood with approximately
1300 families, or about 33%. This is far and above most voluntary civic associations (as opposed
to vested homeowner associations where membership is mandatory due to collectively owned
property, such as Forest Hills Gardens, Douglas Manor or Bayside Gables), where membership
typically does not exceed 10% of the population. In addition, many of the paid members are of
Asian American heritage and participate in the association at the level of their choosing.

- Henry Wang’s comment that the covenant preceded the advent of cars is incorrect. Mass
production of the automobile began in the United States in 1901. Also, Broadway-Flushing was
designed as a “railroad suburb” with easy and quick access to Manhattan through its own Long
Island Railroad station.

- Wang’s other comment that “It’s not 1906 anymore” is a classic argument by defendants that a
deed restriction is no longer enforceable simply because it’s old – an argument that has been
consistently denied by the courts. Also, the house that Mr. Wang demolished to build his house
did indeed have a fence but did not violate the covenant as it was more than 20 feet from the
front or side of the property.

- Jazz Chen, who built the new house at the northwest corner of 167th Street, was not just
“dealing with the community’s issues with the design of her house” as she stated in the article;
the original design of the house had a flat roof, which violates the deed restrictions in
Broadway-Flushing. Ms. Chen was told this by the association and, rather than face a lawsuit for
violating the covenant and potentially having her house construction be held up for years in
litigation, she had her architect redesign the roofline. Once she understood that the covenants
were real and enforceable, it seems she made the decision to not violate the fencing provision
as well.
 - Mr. Huang may have tried to reason with the members of the Broadway Flushing Homeowners
Association, but not at the meeting that this author attended where Mr. Huang was also in
attendance. Mr. Huang was somewhat rude and disruptive, interrupting the meeting at times
with extremely aggressive and loud behavior and language, some of it borderline racially
insensitive. It is true that he offered to take the fence down when his children were older, but
that does not change the fact that his fence violates the covenant.

- The Reverend Blaine Crawford of Church on the Hill clearly does not understand the covenant. It
is true that it does not apply to every house in the neighborhood; it is untrue that it depends on
“house and lot sizes.” The covenant only covers the parcels of land developed by the Rickert-
Finlay Realty Corporation and is a single contiguous area.

- Every resident of Broadway-Flushing has access to the covenants. The full Rickert-Finlay
Covenant of 1906 is published on the organization’s website. It’s possible that Mr. Crawford has
never looked at the covenants, as he is the pastor of a church that lies outside of the covenant
area. In that case, his lack of understanding of the deed restrictions would not make him an
appealing choice to be a mediator between adversarial parties.

- Mr. Crawford stated that “he saw the association as trying to create standards similar to those
in other suburban neighborhoods in Queens, like Douglaston Manor.” Mr. Crawford continues
to not understand the covenants or the neighborhood itself, as the deed restrictions of
Broadway-Flushing and Douglas Manor are almost identical due to the fact that they were both
designed and implemented by the Rickert-Finlay Realty Company in 1906.

- Mr. Crawford bemoans the fact that “we’ve sometimes lost more neighborly ways of interacting
with each other.” While this may be true, the association has only chosen to pursue legal action
after its outreach to the violators to remove their fences without legal action had been ignored
repeatedly.

To summarize, the reporter for Gothamist paints a picture that is both untruthful and incredibly harmful
to the Broadway-Flushing neighborhood and other deed-restricted communities throughout New York
City (and beyond). Each neighborhood which has active and enforceable deed restrictions remains
incredibly diverse, in terms of their demographics. When promoting race as the defining factor in an
article, perhaps Gothamist should consider this instead:

Lefferts Manor in Brooklyn has been a majority African American neighborhood since the late 1950s,
prior to its landmark 1960 legal decision. It remains so to this day, despite a recent influx of new
residents that have added diversity to its ethnic mix. Is Lefferts Manor racist for enforcing its deed
restrictions?

As of 2020, the population of other deed-restricted communities in Queens such as Forest Hills Gardens,
Bayside Gables, Douglas Manor and Westmoreland are all between 30 and 60 percent Asian-American.
These are some of the most celebrated – and expensive – communities in New York City. They routinely
go to court to uphold their deed restrictions. Are all of these organizations and neighborhoods racist?
The Kew Forest Neighborhood Association, founded by a Chinese American couple named Hing Lai and
Tina Chan, organized their exceptionally diverse neighborhood to uphold their newly discovered deed
restrictions to stop a 7-storey apartment building under construction by a Russian American developer
that would have significantly altered the character of their neighborhood. Would you consider them and
the neighborhood association that they founded racist?

The Gothamist website and its parent organization, WNYC, should be very concerned about how this
piece was written. Frankly, using ethnicity and race as a lens through which this article is based upon is
insulting to its readers and could be considered racially divisive in itself, not to mention slanderous
towards the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association and its membership. Conflating a refusal for
both longtime and new residents in a deed restricted neighborhood to follow established and fairly
straightforward rules that have been enforced for over a century – and have only had to be litigated
three times in 114 years up to this point – with racial bias is dangerous, particularly without getting both
sides of the story. Most respected journalists and news agencies make a serious effort to do just that –
or at least get a full sense of the facts on the ground. It seems that, in this instance, Gothamist came up
short on both counts.

Paul Graziano is an urban planning, historic preservation and land use consultant who co-authored the
contextual re-zonings in northeast Queens a decade ago; placed 1,330 buildings on the National and
State Register in the Broadway-Flushing Historic District; and is qualified as an expert land use witness
specifically on the topic of deed restrictions and covenants by the New York State Supreme Court. He is
also a native and life-long resident of North Flushing.