Asked to remove political signs last month from the windows of his rental condo, a San Francisco man refused and the condo managers eventually conceded that a state law protected his right to post the signs. -db
San Francisco Chronicle
October 29, 2010
By Bob Egelko
When Elliot Kamin posted a couple of political signs last month in the window of the condominium he rents near San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, the condo association dropped by within 24 hours and told him to take them down. Otherwise, he said, the association threatened a fine of $2,000 a day.
“To you it may look like freedom of expression,” Kamin said he was told, “but to us it looks like junk.”
Maybe so, but it’s legally protected junk. A 2003 state law requires homeowners associations to let condominium residents post “noncommercial signs, posters, flags or banners” on their property.
Kamin said he cited the law to the Ocean Beach Homeowners Association, which shrugged it off for several weeks but paid attention when the American Civil Liberties Union sued on his behalf Oct. 14.
Later that day, the association agreed to let him repost the signs, one opposing Proposition L, the proposed sit/lie ordinance, and the other on a judicial election.
“I want people to know they have a right to freedom of expression even if they do live in a condo association,” said Kamin, an optometrist who came to the United States with his Russian refugee parents as a child in the 1970s.
It was all a misunderstanding, said Kevin Wiley, president of CitiScape Property Management, which manages the 152-unit beachfront development.
He said that Kamin’s first encounters were with volunteer board members unfamiliar with the law and that when Wiley learned about it, he told the board that Kamin “had every right to place a political sign in a political season.”
It’s a reminder that the placards that have cluttered utility poles and freeway off-ramps for the past few months carry messages that people have the right to display where they live, even if someone else owns the surrounding property.
“Free speech in California doesn’t stop at the condo complex gates,” said Linda Lye, the ACLU attorney who handled Kamin’s case.
She said a similar law allows sign posting by residents of mobile home parks, and noted that the California Constitution, unlike its national counterpart, protects free expression – such as leafleting and picketing – in private shopping malls.
Different rules, however, apply to apartments.
When the Legislature passed a bill in 2006 that would have permitted renters to hang a single political sign on their door, window or balcony within 90 days of an election, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it.
“Freedom of speech is integral to a democratic society, as are private property rights,” Schwarzenegger said in his veto message. The bill, he said, “offers no clarity on the rights of property owners to control the appearance of their property and protect the environment for other tenants.”
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