Hey, Mayor Mamdani—Please Don’t Miss the Next Screening of ‘A Home Worth Fighting For’
Why in the world is socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani “moving forward” with plans to privatize and demolish NYCHA’s Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses? Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
Newly-minted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani certainly has had his hands full running back and forth to D.C. trying to make nice with Donald Trump and digging out from the Blizzard of ’26—but he really ought to catch a screening of “A Home Worth Fighting For” if he hasn’t already done so.
Director Natasha Florentino’s compelling documentary perfectly encapsulates everything that’s wrong with the Mamdani administration’s plan to demolish NYCHA’s Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea [FEC] Houses on Manhattan west side and hand over the keys to a private developer with a history of union busting.
Work-Bites caught a screening of “A Home Worth Fighting For” last week when it shown at Pratt Institute on West 14th Street. Some of the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea tenants fighting the demolition of their homes and the ongoing privatization of New York City public housing overall, and who are also prominently featured in the documentary, were in attendance as well.
During the Q&A, Renee Keitt, president of the Elliott-Chelsea Resident Association and FEC Tenants Against Demolition, talked about her unsuccessful efforts to get a meeting with Mayor Mamdani to discuss tenant opposition to the demolition scheme.
“Right now, he’s in a spot where he has to say why are you taking about having the lights on in NYCHA developments but you’re ready to demolish one,” Keitt said. “Don’t talk about immigrants because, basically, the people in Chelsea Addition, most of them, are immigrants. Don’t talk about Black women—and then not listen to one.”
The Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed Mamdani administration took ownership of the FEC demolition scheme earlier this month when Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, told residents that the new administration is interested in “continuing to move forward the plans here at Fulton Elliot-[Chelsea] Houses.”
Renee Keitt, president of the Elliott-Chelsea Resident Association and FEC Tenants Against Demolition, speaks out against demolition during a Nov. 8, 2025 rally outside Related Companies headquarters in Hudson Yards.
For those keeping score, the plans Weaver referenced are the same ones former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration had for NYCHA tenants in Chelsea. If allowed to proceed over tenant objections, a towering new complex of tony market-rate apartments will completely supplant the existing FEC communities stretching from West 16th Street to West 27th Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues.
Some 2,056 existing NYCHA apartments will be destroyed over the next two decades and their Section 9 tenants moved into new Section 8 housing units built on the site, which will then also include the addition of 2,500 new luxury apartments and approximately 1,000 units of densely-packed, so-called “affordable” housing units.
Tenants—including the senior citizens residing in the Chelsea Addition on W. 27th Drive—have already been subjected to a months-long campaign by NYCHA to push them out.
A Manhattan appeals court last week temporality put the brakes on the massive demolition project—but NYCHA is pressing full-speed ahead with the scheme and attempting to sidestep the city-mandated Uniform Land Use Review Procedure [ULURP] in the process.
And now it looks like they’ll have help from the NYC-DSA-endorsed Mamdani administration.
All this despite ongoing opposition from both FEC tenants and Community Board 4.
“People keep saying, ‘Oh, well…he just got in there,” Keitt continued at last week’s “A Home Worth Fighting For” screening. “[But] he knows [the issue]. He was the assembly person for the largest public housing in the United States.”
Before succeeding former Mayor Eric Adams this year, Mayor Mamdani was the Assembly Member representing the 36th District in Queens—home to the Queensbridge houses, the largest public housing development in North America.
Many in Chelsea had supported Mamdani’s mayoral run, hoping that the Democratic Socialist candidate would offer them something other than the public-private scheme former Democratic Mayor Eric Adams—and former Mayor Bill de Blasio before him—both advocated.
FEC tenants and their supporters maintain that the entire RAD/PACT scheme to privatize and financialize public housing is nothing more than a scam benefiting the rich at the expense of poor working class New Yorkers—and that repairing the existing FEC houses would be cheaper and make a whole lot more sense than tearing them down and “redeveloping” thriving communities.
“Where Are Our Electeds?” Fight for NYCHA member Marni Halasa during a Sept. 13, 2025 march on former City Council Member—and current State Senator—Erik Bottcher’s residence in Chelsea.
Others were never convinced Mayor Mamdani would ever offer FEC tenants anything different than what former Mayors Adams and de Blasio had in mind for them.
“There’s this cognitive dissidence that, to me, makes him appear like a fraud—because why are you going to take on this socialist label and then not really do what socialists would do?” Fight for NYCHA tenant activist Marni Halasa told Work-Bites this week.
Work-Bites reached out to the NYC-DSA to ask them about that “cognitive dissidence,” but we haven’t gotten a response.
We also reached out to the Mayor’s Office for comment on this story, but so far, we haven’t gotten a response from them either.
The mayor will have another opportunity to see “A Home Worth Fighting For” next week when the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies screens the documentary on March 5, at 6:30 p.m. A panel discussion will follow the screening.
Those interested in attending the free screening and panel discussion can click here to register.