Watch: ‘Support System for the Working Class’ Under Attack in Chelsea!
FEC tenants and neighbors begin to assembly on W. 26 in Chelsea before marching to Council Member Erik Bottcher’s nearby residence. Photos/Videos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
If New York City Council Member Erik Bottcher [D-3rd District] was home this weekend when outraged NYCHA public housing tenants came calling, he couldn’t have been very happy.
About 50 residents from the nearby Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses—many of them elderly, sick, or both—along with their supporters marched onto Bottcher’s W. 24th Street block at about 12:40 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 13, chanting and carrying placards denouncing the council member and his support for a looming plan to bulldoze their entire community in the name of “redevelopment” and “affordable housing.”
“They just want us out so they can put the rich people in,” 74-year-old NYCHA resident Doreen McGill told demonstrators.
FEC tenants and neighbors opposed to plans to demolish and “redevelop” the community cross W. 25 Street on Sept. 13.
If the demolition plan is not stopped—and quick—residents living in the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses [FEC], many of whom have lived there for the better part of their lives, will be forced to vacate their homes to make way for six new towers, each up to 39-stories tall, plus an array of other new buildings predominately consisting of market rate luxury housing.
Community Board 4 earlier this month officially came out against the planned demolition and reconstruction project that also seeks to bestow a 99-year lease on primary developer Related Companies to essentially do what it pleases with the incredibly valuable chunk of NYCHA real estate.
Related is the same outlet behind the sprawling Hudson Yards development now poised to gobble up more of Chelsea.
On Saturday, CB4 Land Use Committee member David Holowka carried a sign simply declaring, “We Deserve A Better City Council.”
IBT Local 808 Secretary-Treasurer Chis Silvera put a fine point on the FEC struggle calling NYCHA public housing “The support system for the working class” and saying, “we can’t afford to have Related—a multi-billion dollar organization—displace people.”
“I look around and see some people in wheelchairs…some of them look retired, living on pensions, Social Security—where do they go?” Silvera said. “This is our survival. We can’t afford to live in Hudson Yards. We can’t afford the high rent in Peter Cooper Stuyvesant Town, what it is today. We need real affordable housing for people on Social Security, for people that are on their pensions, for $15-an-hour people—we need affordable housing. We need to see a plan that is better than is being offered today.”
Ed Yood, chair of CWA Local 1180’s Committee on People with Disabilities, called Related’s demolition plan “discrimination against the elderly and the disabled.”
The first two FEC buildings slated for demolition includes the Chelsea Addition—a senior residence located on W. 27th Drive where distraught tenants have already been given 90-day vacate notices.
"Affordable housing is just as much a right for all peoples as the air we breathe and the water we drink,” Yood continued. “They say in New York City there are no neutrals here…you’ll either be for public housing—or a thug for the filthy rich one-percent real estate magnates, whose hero is bigot-in-chief Donald Trump.”
Related Companies founder Stephen Ross is owner of the Miami Dolphins football team, and has also acted as a mega-fundraiser for Trump’s presidency.
AFSCME Local 1707 retiree Paul Wilcox insisted Council Member Bottcher is not listening to NYCHA residents opposed to the planned demolition of their homes because he is only listening to “the sound of gold and silver in the pockets of Related real estate.”
CB 4 member David Holowka holds up a sign during Saturday’s anti-demolition rally critical of the New York City Council.
Saturday’s anti-demolition rally on W. 24 Street also included concerned FEC neighbors living in nearby Penn South and London Terrace who fear for their homes as well.
“Penn South supports the tenants of FEC Houses because we know once they get rid of them—we’re next,” tenant Tito Delgado said. “I remember when this community was working class, working poor. We had shoemakers here. We had bodegas. That doesn’t exist [anymore]. They want to get rid of us. They want to get rid of the people that built this city. We have to let Erik [Bottcher] and the other elected officials that sold out this community know that we will remember them.”
Michelle Spinner, a representative from the London Terrace Tenants Association, accused NYCHA of “exploiting the value of their Chelsea real estate to the extreme detriment of the NYCHA residents and the Chelsea community at large for money that will not even be used in Chelsea.”
FEC tenants and neighbors rally outside Council Member Erik Bottcher’s residence on W. 24th Street.
“Our electeds, most notably Erik Bottcher, betrayed us by cooking up a deal with NYCHA and the developers behind closed doors. They sold us out—vote them out,” she said.
Cash-strapped NYCHA is pursing the demolition of the FEC Houses through a so-called “public-private partnership” with Related Companies and Essence Development under RAD/PACT—the Rental Assistance Demonstration and Permanent Affordability Commitment Together programs.
Ever since the advent of RAD/PACT, however, McGill said the building she has happily lived in for more than 30 years is now “turning into a mess” and tenants are unable to get anything repaired.
Domincik Romeo, a local building superintendent and activist who is challenging Bottcher’s seat on November 4, pushed a cart to Saturday’s rally containing the incumbent’s “empty suit.” He dismissed Bottcher as a “transplant” who doesn’t care about the community or its working class ethos.
Caution, Seniors Live Here: struggling senior citizens were among the first tenants to be pressured into vacating NYCHA’s FEC Houses in Chelsea.
“People like Erik Bottcher who are not from here, who don’t share our memories and don’t share our values—it’s easy for them to take your properties away,” said Romeo.
Another FEC tenant named Doris Ruffin fighting forced eviction and the demolition of her home said she came to Saturday’s demonstration directly from dialysis treatment.
“I’m a senior citizen and I have medical issues,” she said. “They want to throw us out. They want to demolish the building. That’s not right. I came out today to let my voice be heard. I am a citizen of the United States of America—and Donald Trump can go sit on it.”
Work-Bites made repeated attempts to reach both Council Member Bottcher and Related Companies for a comment on this story—neither has responded.