Last year, after more than a decade dwelling in a residential enclave of North Flushing, Yili Huang and his wife decided they wanted to install a fence around their front lawn for safety reasons. They had two young children, and 35th Avenue, the busy two-lane road in front of their house, had grown increasingly perilous in recent years as the site of multiple car accidents.
The matter was personal. Huang's own father had been killed when he was hit by a driver while walking in Manhattan. As an anesthesiologist, Huang is all too familiar with the trauma inflicted by pedestrian-car collisions.
So after spending time researching the zoning and examining the fence of a neighbor, the couple installed what they thought was a tasteful white picket fence.
"The white picket fence. It's the symbol of the American dream," Huang said.
But what had seemed like a practical and legitimate renovation has turned into a legal battle started by a local homeowners association against the couple and two other homeowners. At issue is a 1906 covenant that bans fencing on certain properties, the enforcement of which has drawn accusations of racism: in a stark divide, the homeowners association's officers are all white, while the three homeowners being sued are Asian. Fueling their allegations is the fact that the neighborhood features many homes surrounded by fences, several of which are chain-linked and considerably less attractive than their fences.
Huang pointed out that the home whose fence they modeled theirs after has not been sued—that owner happens to be white.
"It's beyond the fence," Huang argued. "People need to know the community and America is changing, and some people are struggling with that fact."
Flushing, however, is not a neighborhood that is at a tipping point in terms of demographics. The neighborhood is already overwhelmingly Asian—71 percent, according to the latest census data. Whites make up 8 percent.
The conflict has illustrated how a vocal minority can still wield power in ensuring that a community complies with design standards. Founded in 1964, the Broadway-Flushing Homeowners Association is a volunteer organization. Membership, which requires a $25 annual fee, is optional. The group holds events like tree lighting ceremonies, communicates with elected officials, and spearheads beautification efforts. But according to the association's website, it also has another specific mission: alerting the community "to apparent violations of current zoning laws and Rickert-Finlay covenant provisions."
An early 20th century developer, the Rickert-Finlay company built many of the original residences in the area, which at the time was mostly farmland. A letter sent by the association to Huang in July explained that the Rickert-Finlay company had envisioned "an open, suburban perspective" were many lawns ran contiguously together.
"Fence limits, which apply to many corner plots, are a small price to pay for this suburban ambiance," the letter continued.
The home owned by Henry Wang, another homeowner who is being sued by the homeowner's association for violating the covenant that prohibits fencing. The fence in question is the brown one in the back.
John Low-Beer, an attorney who has dealt with covenant issues, said that prior to the existence of zoning, some owners or developers wanted to ensure a
"quality of life and certain look" and wrote restrictive covenants into property deeds. Across the country, there were restrictive covenants that barred blacks and other minorities from buying properties, a form of redlining. Following a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1948, racist covenants are no longer legally enforceable.
But covenants about design or architectural standards are a different matter. "Those are upheld by the courts routinely," Low-Beer said. But he added that homeowners could argue in court that the conditions had sufficiently changed so as to make the covenant irrelevant or impractical.
Huang and Henry Wang, another neighbor who is being sued, said that such is the case with their covenant, which preceded the advent of cars.
"It's not 1906 anymore," Wang said. "We're a century past that!"
Like Huang, Wang said he suspected the lawsuit was racially driven since he had completed building his house roughly two years ago and the previous house that had been there had a fence.
Although the community has been generally harmonious, tensions over architectural designs have flared up from time to time, often over newly built homes. Next door to Huang, an Asian couple who recently purchased and built a brand new house were openly ridiculed and warned about their modern design choices.
Reached by phone, Jazz Chen said she recalled that when they were building the home, a white neighbor warned them about the style, saying "You guys better be careful."
In the summer of 2018, the fencing around the construction site was vandalized several times, each time with the words, "This really ugly." At one point, Huang's wife saw it and snapped a photo.
Chen, who moved in last April, said that after dealing with the community's issues with the design of her house, she elected not put up a fence around the property, adding that she wanted to avoid trouble. But she too said she felt the harassment had overtones of racial discrimination.
Despite repeated attempts to arrange a phone interview, Kevin Morris, the association's president, did not speak to Gothamist by publication time, saying he wanted to confer with the association's attorney before commenting.
Huang said he had tried to reason with Morris and the other members, attending one of their monthly meetings, and explaining to them why he wanted to install the fence. He said he even offered to take down the fence once his children, ages 7 and 5, were older.
Later, he asked a minister at the local church to try to mediate the dispute.
The Rev. Blaine Crawford said that according to his understanding, the covenant does not apply to every house in the neighborhood and that it depended on house and lot sizes. However, he added, "It’s unclear to many of the residents of this neighborhood what the rules of the covenant are."
He said he saw the association as trying to create standards similar to those in other suburban neighborhoods in Queens, like Douglaston Manor.
"Kinda like a gated community without the gates," he said.
He expressed disappointment with the association's decision to pursue legal action.
"I think we tend to default in many ways today to trying to solve disagreement and conflicts through legal means," he said. "Not to denigrate lawyers, but I think we’ve sometimes lost more neighborly ways of interacting with each other."
Tom Huang, a neighbor across the street who is not related to Yili, grew up in the neighborhood. He recalled that for the most part, it was a diverse community that generally got along, minus name-calling in school. "You chalk it up to childhood," he said.
He called the lawsuits stupid, adding that there had been "tons of accidents" in recent years along 35th Avenue. Several residents said the rising slope of the street impeded visibility.
Huang, a 37-year-old paramedic, lives in the very same house his parents bought in 1987. He described the house as a proud achievement for his dad who started out by working as a delivery man for Chinese restaurants.
He said his parents, who eventually became restaurant owners, left the house at 8 a.m. and came home as late as 1 a.m. During the 1990s, they decided to replace their roof. Rather than go with a standard design, they imported materials from China and installed a dark red pagoda that features a small sculpted dragon.
"It was the peak of their success," he recalled.
But neighbors were not fans. "I was told that it was not very well liked when I was a kid," he said.
At one point, he remembered his parents receiving an official letter from the city inquiring about permits. Apparently, someone had complained. But while they may have talked about discrimination at home, they were too busy to confront it.
"They were not really around to deal with gossip," he said. "They just cared that the bills were paid."
Correction: The story has been revised to state that the homeowners association's officers, rather than members, are all white.
