Layla Law-Gisiko Vows to Keep City Council Run Alive; Calls Special Election Tally a Referendum Against Chelsea Demolition
Anti-demolition candidate Layla Law-Gisiko, seen here with Chelsea supporters, as well as former State Senator Tom Duane [l] and U.S. Congressional candidate Jack Schlossberg [r], is still in the race to win Erik Bottcher’s vacated District 3 City Council seat. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City public Housing advocate Layla Law-Gisiko may have lost her bid to win last month’s special election to fill Erik Bottcher’s vacated District 3 City Council seat, but the vote once again proved that Chelsea residents reject plans to demolish their community.
“Something really important happened in this special election for the City Council,” Law-Gisiko told supporters gathered outside Fulton 11 on West 19th Street this week. “The tenants at Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea [FEC] have spoken and they have said it decisively—they do not want demolition.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, like his predecessor Eric Adams before him, supports the privatization and demolition of the FEC Houses on the west side of Manhattan despite opponents who insist the scheme will not only devastate the community, but will also be used as the blueprint to privatize public housing nationwide.
FEC tenant activist Tito Delgado calls on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to meet with residents challenging demolition plans in Chelsea.
“I lost my sight, but not my vision. I see that the city has abandoned us,” FEC tenant activist Tito Delgado said at Wednesday’s W. 19th street rally “They never talk about poor people. It’s always the middle class. God bless the middle class, but we’re part of this community, too.”
NYCHA workers were busily emptying out apartments inside Fulton 11 in preparation for the planned demolition as Law-Gisiko vowed to remain in the City Council race when the upcoming Democratic Primary rolls around in June.
The winner of that contest will determine who holds the District 3 Council seat from 2027 to 2029. Botcher—another supporter of demolition and privatization—vacated his City Council seat after winning a spot in the New York State Senate back in February.
Former State Senator and City Council Member Tom Duane gets set to address Wednesday’s anti-demolition rally on W. 19th Street.
Law-Gisiko captured 20 percent of last month’s special election vote running as the only candidate in the race—including Mamdani pick Lindsey Boylan—steadfastly opposed to handing Related Companies the keys to the FEC Houses and letting private developers level them in preparation for a new mix of luxury and so-called “affordable housing” units.
The scheme is all part of the city’s RAD/PACT conversion plan stripping public housing tenants of their Section 9 protections and putting them in the hands of private developers, including Related Companies, the deep-pocketed developers responsible for the gleaming glass towers rising over nearby Hudson Yards.
Tenants at Elliott-Chelsea cast 124 ballots in last month’s special election to fill Bottcher’s District 3 Council seat—104 of those votes went to Law-Gisiko. Fulton Houses tenants, meanwhile, cast 152 ballots—101 of those votes went to Law-Gisiko.
NYCHA workers haul a refrigerator and other items out of Fulton 11 while supporters for Layla Law-Gisiko’s City Council run rally against plans to demolish the building.
The anti-demolition candidate also won in every election district representing the Penn South houses located between W.23rd and W.29th streets in the first round of voting.
Law-Gisiko called the results “unequivocal” and a “referendum” against demolition.
“The people have spoken—not through a consultancy survey, not through managed meetings, and not through a glossy brochure—but through the ballot,” she said.
FEC tenant activist Celinas Miranda said “NYCHA marched to the voting booth and the majority of the FEC voters chose Layla.”
“We turned out in strong numbers to support the only candidate that’s firmly against demolition,” she said. “The results weren’t even close. They were decisive. But city officials insist on putting on their blinders and are turning their backs on the NYCHA community. This is why we need to vote for Layla. We have a second chance this June. She is the only one who has spoken up against the demolition of NYCHA in Chelsea.”
Former State Senator and District 3 City Council Member Tom Duane said that there are so many “bad things” about the FEC demolition plan, “it is beyond me why Mayor Mamdani would support this.”
“I’m a Bernie guy,” Duane continued. “He’s a socialist. Mamdani, the mayor, says he’s a socialist. But NYCHA is actually one of the great socialist experiments that we have. It would be far, far less expensive to renovate than to tear down more than 20 buildings and replace them with extremely despicably-high hi-rises, which would destroy the character of the neighborhood—and would also, by the way, segregate those tenants who were previously protected by Section 9.”
Architect and Community Board 4 Land Use Committee member David Holowka has also long-argued that renovation would be cheaper than demolition.
“Think of it this way,” he told Work-Bites last summer, “if you took the skins off the existing buildings and completely emptied them out, took out the elevators and all the mechanical systems, and just left the structural skeleton, and then started by re-cladding them, putting in entirely new systems, mechanical systems, elevators and completely new interiors within those skeletons—that would be far, far less than the cost of new buildings because the new buildings have to replicate the excavations and the foundations and the structural engineering and the pouring of all of those concrete frames—which are in perfectly good shape. It just doesn't make sense.”
CB4 considered the demolition plan in forensic detail before ultimately rejecting it in September.
Work-Bites made repeated attempts to reach the Mayor’s Office for a comment on this story, but those efforts were all unsuccessful.
Delgado also renewed FEC tenants’ call on Mayor Mamdani to meet with them and talk about their opposition to the demolition plan.
“Mamdani needs to step up and talk to the tenants,” Delgado said. “We cannot afford t lose public housing. Let me tell you what’s gonna happen because I’ve seen it happen already on the Lower East Side. If we lose public housing here that’s the model for the rest of the country. This is much bigger than us.”
U.S. Congressional candidate Jack Schlossberg also attended Wednesday’s rally outside Fulton 11, and threw his enthusiastic support behind Law-Gisiko’s City Council run in June.