BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer
Above: Institute for Justice senior attorney Scott Bullock receives a T-shirt with an anti-eminent domain message at a press conference in the MTOTSA neighborhood on Aug. 30. At right: State Public Advocate Ronald Chen announces that he will join the legal battle of MTOTSA residents to save their homes. The light rain falling couldn’t dispel the feeling of optimism among a group of beachfront homeowners and supporters gathered on Ocean Terrace in Long Branch last week.
The homeowners had gathered for a press conference at the Institute for Justice (IJ), a public interest law firm, and state Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen officially joined their fight to save their homes which stand in the path of the city’s redevelopment.
“I feel so positive,” said Anna DeFaria, an 80-year-old resident of the neighborhood that’s come to be known as MTOTSA, consisting of Marine Terrace, Ocean Terrace and Seaview Avenue.
DeFaria spoke softly at the press conference due to laryngitis but has been very vocal in defending her home of 46 years.
PHOTOSBYMIGUEL JUAREZ staff “I bought this home with my husband, who has since passed,” DeFaria said. “We thought we’d stay here for the rest of our lives. Now, they think they can come and take what’s ours. They can’t. We’re going to win this.”
DeFaria is one of several MTOTSA residents battling the city in the fight to save their homes from being taken through eminent domain.
The group is being represented by attorney Peter Wegener, who will be joined by IJ, Arlington, Va., which will act as co-council in an appeal of state Superior Court Judge Lawrence Lawson’s decision supporting the city’s right to take oceanfront properties from homeowners for use by a private developer who will replace them with upscale condominiums.
Scott Bullock, senior attorney with IJ, said at the Aug. 30 press conference that the eminent domain case in Long Branch represents an abuse of power.
“This is all so rich people can live in multimillion-dollar condominiums on the shore in New Jersey,” he said, “and that is wrong and unconstitutional, and it will be stopped. The terrible decision [made by Judge Lawson] will be appealed.”
MTOTSA resident Lori Ann Vendetti speaks at the press conference while attorney Peter H. Wegener (l-r), IJPresident Chip Mellor, and IJ attorneys Bullock and Jeff Rowes listen. Inset: Bullock (center) speaks at the press conference. Lori Ann Vendetti, another of Wegener’s clients, whom Bullock called “one of the true heroes in this battle,” said that she feels vindicated now that she and her fellow appellants have the support of both IJ and Chen.
“We’ve come this far and we’re not stopping,” she said. “We’re not going to stop until eminent domain abuse stops here and throughout the country.”
Vendetti said that for over three years she has attended every meeting of the City Council to fight to keep her home.
“I’m going to fight ’til the end,” she said. “If you can’t fight for what you believe in this world, life isn’t worth living.”
The press conference was held in front of Vendetti’s Seaview Avenue home that, like others in the neighborhood, is threatened with condemnation to clear the way for the city’s beachfront redevelopment.
IJ President Chip Mellor said at the press conference the city is committing “an outrageous injustice against this Long Branch community.”
“As of today,” he said, “this neighborhood is ground zero for the fight against eminent domain abuse, not only in Long Branch, but throughout the state.”
Making a surprise announcement at the press conference, Chen said his office would also weigh in on the side of the beleaguered homeowners by filing an amicus brief in the appeal.
“We think the appellate division should take a hard look at the process,” Chen said, “and at the fairness of the judge not allowing discovery and testimony from the property owners.
“I don’t think an area should be considered blighted until there’s been a full look,” he said. “I don’t think there was a full process here.”
Chen issued a report in May calling for major reforms to the laws governing the use of eminent domain for private redevelopment in New Jersey communities, such as Long Branch.
Wegener said that he welcomed the IJ attorneys and the help they have offered as co-council to the case.
“There is no question in this instance that the powers that be in the city of Long Branch did not follow their own redevelopment plan,” he said. “This area was designed to be in-fill. The plan was to preserve these homes, and the city didn’t follow its own plan.”
The MTOTSA residents are claiming that when they were first informed of the redevelopment plan 10 years ago, they were told that their homes would be preserved, and any new development would take place around them.
“We will be asking that the condemnations be declared unlawful,” said Jeff Rowes, a staff attorney with IJ, “or that the case be sent back to trial court.”
The case was brought to state Superior Court and was heard by Lawson last spring.
In Lawson’s decision, released in July, he stated that the city had acted within the parameters of the state constitution when it called for the use of eminent domain in condemning property along the beachfront for sale to a private developer for the explicit purpose of demolishing the existing modest, single-family homes and building high-end condominiums.
According to Bullock, IJ will represent the homeowners at no cost, leveling the playing field, he said, since the city’s legal fight is funded by the developers.
Bullock said that IJ’s briefs must be filed by mid-October, and expects that arguments before the three-judge Appellate Court panel will take place early next year.
Bullock said most likely, if the Appellate Court decides in their favor, the case will be returned to trial court, and probably end up back in Lawson’s court.
“It would be a plenary hearing,” said Rowes, “where we would be able to present evidence and testimony. If it goes back to trial court, no matter what, someone will be unhappy, and someone will appeal.”
Rowes said that IJ will be arguing two main constitutional points in the appeal.
“The most important constitutional argument,” he said, “is that the taking of nonblighted homes from nonblighted neighborhoods to give to a private party is not public use. The other constitutional argument is that the government can’t rent out, contract away or give up its power of eminent domain to a private party.”
Rowes said that IJ will also be arguing one statutory point, which would be that the state law requires that blight designations must show substantial evidence of blight.
“MTOTSA is just not blighted,” said Rowes. “The city is looking at blight in one part of the city to justify condemning property in another part. The city shouldn’t be able to piggy-back blight from one part of the city to another.”
Rowes said that Wegener is expected to argue the conflicts of interest the MTOTSA group is claiming on the part of the city.
The conflict of interest that is claimed involves Arthur Greenbaum, of the law firm Greenbaum, Rowe, Smith, Raven, Davis & Himmel, who represented the city in condemnation proceedings while Greenbaum was a director and shareholder of developer Hovnanian Enterprises, which is the contract purchaser of the properties being taken for redevelopment.
Chen’s argument on eminent domain is that it should be used only within very strict guidelines.
“It is clearly intended to limit the government’s ability to take property,” he said at the press conference. “The reason we are here is because there are several important legal issues to be resolved.”
Bullock has said repeatedly that what is happening in the MTOTSA neighborhood makes the City of Long Branch the poster child for the abuse of eminent domain.
“At the very least,” he said, “these people have to get a day in court. One of the most outrageous aspects of this is that it would be so easy to preserve this neighborhood. Look around this neighborhood. This is not a blighted neighborhood.”
Bullock said that IJ’s ultimate goal is to have the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. The City of New London (Conn.) overturned.
In that decision, the court decided in a 5-4 decision that the proper use of eminent domain should be determined by the individual states, and that the state constitution of Connecticut supported the taking of private property through eminent domain in order for it to be handed over to a private developer in the name of economic development.
Despite the letdown that many MTOTSA homeowners felt, Wegener said that the Kelo case might have been just what this fight needed.
“When the Kelo case came down,” he said, “many of us were somewhat disappointed in that opinion. In all honesty, it may have turned out to be the wake-up call that many people needed. Many people were dumbfounded that in this country, your home is not protected. It runs against the grain of everything Americans hold sacred.”