Honey Meerzon and Luis Romero came from different backgrounds but have many things in common. Their parents both fled oppressive government regimes in search of a better life for their children. They have both worked hard over the years to build successful businesses, and they both hope to leave a legacy for future generations. Luis and Honey own properties right next to each other in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Honey owns a rental property that houses four families, and Luis runs a successful tire and auto repair shop. Now, though, Perth Amboy wants to take Honey’s property and Luis’ business for no other reason than it wants different businesses instead.
Perth Amboy says that these properties are “blighted,” a convenient label it can use to justify taking the properties by eminent domain. But these properties are not blighted in any sense of the word. The city’s rationale for blighting these properties includes nothing more than passing references to minimal amounts of litter and the presence of a stray cat. But the government can’t take your property because someone saw a stray cat. That’s absurd.
What’s happening to Honey and Luis is just the latest instance of local governments abusing their eminent domain power by twisting the definition of “blight” so that it is rendered overly expansive and utterly meaningless. New Jersey law, the New Jersey Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution each demands more. So Honey and Luis have teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to fight back, save their properties, and restore their American dreams.
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Honey and Luis Build Their American Dream
Honey Meerzon’s family fled religious persecution in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and both her mother and father had a long and difficult road to America. Honey remembers her mother’s stories of her family being forced to leave, and of struggling to afford an apartment in a new country. Honey’s parents taught her from a young age to work towards financial independence, and to leave a legacy for the next generation.
Honey now owns a multi-family home at 505 Smith Street in Perth Amboy. They bought the home in 2016 after Honey’s split from her ex-husband left her in debt and in need of a way to care for her young children on her own. She saw the home as a way to build income, assert her independence, and provide for her children. And her investment paid off. Through property ownership, Honey has been able to gain financial stability and provide for her children. Today, the property is owned by Honey, her new husband Julian, and her mother Dina through an LLC. It is home to four units, each housing a family with young children, and 14 people in total. None of the tenants own vehicles, so they all rely on the home’s proximity to both their jobs, and local public transportation.
Over the years, Honey and Dina have invested over $150,000 in maintenance and upgrades to the property, including replacing the boilers, installing a new roof, installing new siding and, installing a French drain. Last year, at the request of the City’s fire inspector, she upgraded all of the fire alarms. Because the home is kept in good condition, Honey has a wonderful relationship with her tenants. They pay rent on time and have never complained or had any issues with the neighboring properties. It’s an ideal arrangement overall: the tenants get a well-maintained affordable home close to work, and Honey gets a steady stream of income and a step towards building her American dream.
Luis Romero fled communist Cuba with his family when he was just nine years old. Luis recalls his father running a small fruit stand in Cuba and being forced to stop when the government forcefully demanded half the proceeds. Things got better for Luis and his family, however, once they got to the United States. Luis’ father started working in an auto repair shop, and two years later, opened his own. It was there that Luis learned not only how to work with cars, but how to build a successful business.
Now, Luis owns Quick Tire & Auto, a tire and auto repair shop located on Smith Street right next to Honey’s property. Quick Tire & Auto has been in business since 1976, with Luis taking over for his cousin in 2004. For the past 20 years, Luis has run the business, which employs six people full time and services hundreds of customers each week. Luis now spends most of his time in Florida, leaving the day-to-day running of the shop to his longtime manager Mario. Like Luis, Mario’s family also came to America in search of a better life. Running Quick Tire & Auto has provided that better life for both of them.
Luis and Honey know firsthand what it’s like to live under oppressive government regimes. Their families both escaped burdensome, overreaching government years ago, to give their children a better life and a shot at the American Dream. Luis and Honey have worked hard to build that American Dream. But now, the City of Perth Amboy has other plans for the area, and they want to force Luis and Honey out to accomplish them.
Perth Amboy Votes to Take Honey and Luis’ Properties—Not Because They are Blighted, But Because They are Coveted
Behind Luis’ shop is a 44 acre plot of undeveloped land. It was home to a manufacturing plant decades ago, but has been vacant and abandoned since before Luis took over at Quick Tire & Auto. In 2023, the City of Perth Amboy reached an agreement with a developer to clear and develop the land for a project known as “Gateway,” to include a warehouse, a park, and mixed-use development. The Gateway project broke ground in 2024. The land where Honey’s property and Luis’ business sits abuts, but is not included in, the plans for the Gateway project.
And this made sense. After all, Honey’s home is occupied by four families, and Luis runs a successful business next door. Unlike the abandoned, undeveloped land that is to become the Gateway project, these are well maintained properties. The developer had, and still does not have, any plans to include Honey and Luis’ properties.
But something must have changed. In late 2024, Honey and Luis received letters letting them know that their properties were being investigated by the City Planning Board to see if their properties were eligible for condemnation. In other words, Perth Amboy was investigating whether or not it could take the properties by eminent domain. And the basis for this investigation? A New Jersey law that allows municipalities to take private property to clear the way for redevelopment, so long as that property is “blighted.”
In March 2025, relying on a blight study that did nothing more than recite statutory magic words, the Perth Amboy Planning Board voted to recommend to the City Council that they designate Honey and Luis’ properties, their American Dreams, as blighted. Despite widespread community support, and one very vocal dissenting City Council member, the council voted 4-1 to designate the properties as blighted, allowing the city to take the properties using eminent domain.
But neither Honey’s property nor Luis’ business is actually blighted. Not by any common understanding of the term, and not by any permissible interpretation of New Jersey law. The city is relying on a flimsy and overly broad definition of the term blight, so that it can take these properties using eminent domain, and give them to a private developer to be included in the Gateway project. Simply put, Perth Amboy doesn’t want these properties because there’s something wrong with them. They want them to be gone because they envision something better in their place.
When Honey and Luis heard the City Council’s decision, they felt like they were being erased. They didn’t think it was fair that the city could take their properties and their livelihoods. So they have now teamed up with IJ to challenge the bogus blight designation and save their properties from eminent domain.
New Jersey Law Requires More Than Just “Magic Words” To Take Property
To designate property as blighted in New Jersey, a government must come forward with substantial, credible evidence of conditions like “dilapidation,” “obsolescence,” “overcrowding,” or “faulty arrangement or design.” The law also requires the government to put forth substantial, credible evidence that these conditions be so widespread and dangerous that they are “detrimental to the safety, health, morals, or welfare of the community.” This is a high bar, and governments should have a high bar when they are taking private property.
The blight study relied on by the Perth Amboy Planning Board and the City Council, on its face, says all the right things. It lists all the applicable characteristics of blight, asserts that those characteristics exist in the area, and asserts that they are detrimental to the community. But a closer examination of the City’s blight study reveals not only that it is factually inaccurate, but that it is nothing more than words—a blight designation built on a house of cards. The study puts forth no substantial, credible evidence of any of the conditions required by New Jersey law, nor does it actually show that these conditions cause detriment to the community.
For example, the study relies on imprecise property boundaries, calling the area behind Luis’ garage (where he has a structure to store tires), a vacant lot. The litter and refuse that the study says exists on Luis’ property is actually on the lot behind his, which was not even included in the blighted area. The study makes much of conditions like litter and feral cats, that are either easily removable (indeed, as of earlier this year the litter had been removed) or inherently transitory, without alleging at all that Honey’s or Luis’ property is dilapidated, unsafe, or unhealthy. It is absurd for a local government to say it can take your property because of a piece of trash or a stray cat. But that is what Perth Amboy is doing by characterizing minimal amounts of litter as blight.
Because it cannot point to anything that is actually structurally unsound or unsafe about either property, the study focuses instead on things like setbacks and lot sizes, which, while legal, do not conform to current zoning standards. But all that means is that Honey’s property and Luis’ business could not be built the same way today as they were originally. That is not a justification for blight and not a reason for the government to take property using eminent domain. Indeed, if non-conformity with current zoning laws was reason enough to justify a blight designation, much of Perth Amboy, and, in fact, forty percent of Manhattan, could be blighted and taken by eminent domain.
Finally, the study relies on the number of police reports at both Luis’ and Honey’s address. Typically, a high number of police incidents indicates a high crime, potentially unsafe area. But a closer look at the data reveals that most of these reports are simply traffic accidents or traffic stops happening on Smith Street, completely unrelated to the condition of either property. Penalizing law-abiding property owners with a blight designation because the police may occasionally make a traffic stop outside makes no sense and certainly can’t be what New Jersey lawmakers had in mind when they sought to clean up blight.
What you won’t find in the city’s study is any evidence of real blight. The study shows no evidence of dilapidated buildings, unsafe structures, or any conditions that are dangerous to the community. It merely recites the words in the legal definition of blight and asserts that that definition applies to these properties, with no explanation of how or why. And despite protests from Honey, Luis, and dozens of neighbors that showed up to support them, the Perth Amboy Planning Board and City Council decided to designate these properties as blighted based on its study alone.
New Jersey law, the New Jersey Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution, require more than just magic words. So IJ is suing the city of Perth Amboy to remove the bogus blight designation from Honey and Luis’ properties. Because if a government wants to take property using eminent domain, it must come forward with more than words. It needs real evidence of actual blighted conditions causing actual harm. Honey and Luis are not just fighting to save their own American Dream, but that of every property owner in Perth Amboy and all of New Jersey.
The Litigation Team
Honey and Luis are represented by IJ Deputy Director of Litigation Robert McNamara and IJ Attorney Bobbi Taylor, alongside Joseph Grather of the New Jersey firm McKirdy, Riskin, Olson & DellaPelle, PC.
The Institute for Justice
Founded in 1991, the Institute for Justice (IJ) is a nonprofit, public interest law firm that defends property rights nationwide. In New Jersey alone, IJ has won three high-profile eminent-domain cases, saving the longtime family home of Atlantic City piano tuner Charlie Birnbaum, defeating the city of Long Branch’s attempt to take a working-class neighborhood under a bogus blight declaration, and protecting homeowner Vera Coking from the state’s attempt to turn her home into a private limousine parking lot for the Trump Casino. IJ also represented Susette Kelo and other homeowners in New London, Connecticut to save their homes from being demolished due to eminent domain abuse in the now infamous Kelo v. New London. Following the Kelo decision, IJ has worked to reform eminent domain laws and fight eminent domain abuse all over the country. IJ is also currently defending property and business owners fighting bogus blight designations in Mississippi, and Missouri, and homeowners in Georgia who are being threatened with eminent domain for a private railway.
