Newark Tenants, Landlord Wage War Over Bulletin Boards (PHOTOS)

NEWARK, NJ — To those who don’t live at the Pavilion Apartment complex in Newark, the pair of enclosed, metal cases that used to be on display in the lobby of the building may have looked just like a couple of bulletin boards.

But many of the building’s tenants say that when management tore them down earlier this month, they crossed a line. And they’re not going to take it lying down, they told Patch.

Tenant complaints are not a new part of life at the Pavilion Apartments on Martin Luther King Boulevard in Newark, which have seen allegations of maintenance woes and renter intimidation that go back decades.

According to the Pavilion Tenants Association Executive Board, the latest salvo in the tenant-landlord struggle took place on July 19, when maintenance workers at the Pavilion took crowbars into hand and ripped down a pair of tenant-owned and managed bulletin boards off the wall of the lobby because their content wasn’t “community-related.”

The 24x36 bulletin boards – which the building's owners granted to tenants as part of a 2012 settlement agreement – had become a magnet for complaints about the alleged conditions at the apartments.

According to the settlement agreement, the tenants association had the right to control the bulletin boards, distribute notices by hand at the premises and place flyers under tenants’ doors.

For their part, the tenants association agreed not to post any other notices in the common areas of the buildings, including hallways, elevators and laundry rooms.

The agreement makes no mention of the type of content that is allowed on the bulletin boards… or not allowed.

On July 17, the tenants association got an official cease-and-desist letter from management, demanding that they stop posting “statements of an inflammatory and overtly hostile nature” on the boards.

“The inappropriate tone and purpose of such information cannot reasonably be deemed to constitute or relate to legitimate association business, and is wholly counterproductive to its stated mission,” wrote Derek Reed, the attorney representing the building’s owner, Pavilion Broad Street LLC.

In the letter, Reed called the association’s allegations of maintenance issues at the property “grossly exaggerated,” and charged that they are “specifically intended to harm Pavilion’s business.”

The letter gave the association 24 hours to comply, or management would “remove the enclosures altogether.”

They were taken down the next day.

‘NO LIVABILITY ISSUES’

“Those boards were posted on our client’s property,” Reed told Patch. “They weren’t being used for what they were supposed to be used for, and they were asked to remove them.”

Reed said that there weren’t any plans to put the bulletin boards back up, but he added that they were available for the association to take back whenever they wanted.

Here’s what Reed had to say about the allegations of management and livability issues:

“The [flyers] that were posted certainly weren’t any livability issues. In fact, I believe that the tenants association called several representatives from the City of Newark in an attempt to give some substance to what they were saying… I’m not aware of any violations that were issued at the property as a result of that phone call.”

Reed added:

“A lot of the issues that the tenants are complaining about are cosmetic issues… many don’t have merit. Our client works diligently to maintain the property. With buildings of this size, there’s always going to be small issues. There are more than 1,000 people living there. I think the tenants association – the few members that are exaggerating these issues – are taking things out of context. And I think that if you talk to the vast majority of the folks in the community, they’d say it’s a great place to live.”

But the Pavilion’s tenant representatives told Patch that management’s actions with the bulletin boards were a “malicious” violation of their right to free speech and a blatant show of disrespect for the 2012 settlement agreement.

“They are slumlords,” tenant liaison Janise Afolo said about the Pavilion’s owners.

Afolo said that the battle of the bulletin boards actually has roots back to before the 2012 settlement agreement, when the association’s then-president Sam August faced harassment and got threatened with eviction for posting flyers in the common areas of the two Pavilion buildings.

“Pavilion is a rent control building that is being charged market rate rent,” Afolo told Patch. “Up until September 2014, Pavilion owners charged 4 percent rent and they were still doing the bare essentials. So now the rent increased by the CPI and the bare essential is being done.”

“We deserve better,” Afolo said.

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Photos: Pavilion Tenants Association Executive Board