NYCHA’s New Playbook for Public Housing ‘Must Be Stopped’
Memorial to Marina Aloy inside the lobby of the Chelsea “senior building.”
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By Joe Maniscalco
A humble memorial appeared inside the lobby of NYCHA’s Chelsea Addition on W. 27 Drive in Manhattan earlier this week honoring the life of a beloved neighbor who recently passed away with the threat of eviction weighing heavily on her heart.
The fond remembrance to Marina Aloy consists of just four simple candles set around a small pot of yellow Calla Lillies and placed against the similarly yellow tiles lining the Chelsea Addition’s modest interior.
Aloy lived on the 4th floor of what most everyone in the Chelsea community simply calls the “senior building.” The brief text printed on a white sheet of paper Scotch-taped to the wall directly above the loving remembrance to Aloy is written in four languages reflecting the diverse population of elderly residents who call the Chelsea Addition home.
“We deeply mourn the passing of our dear neighbor Marina Aloy,” it says in English, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.
Aloy, according to her neighbors, fought a five-year battle against cancer, but died last month full of worry about where she would live if the New York City Housing Authority and its private development partners succeeded in forcing her and her neighbors out of their apartments.
FEC tenants and their supporters rally before heading into court on Wednesday.
That vacate plan is all part of the what the outgoing Adams administration and its real estate backers call the “new playbook” for the way public housing is done in the City of New York.
Chelsea Addition tenants and their supporters call that model of so-called "public-private partnerships” nothing less than the “financial-ization” of public housing and the “selling out” of vulnerable low income-communities of color throughout the city.
The Chelsea Addition is one of the first two buildings to be marked for demolition so that Related Companies—the people behind the colossal Hudson Yards redevelopment nearby—and Essence Development can take over NYCHA’s Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea [FEC] public houses located on the west side of Manhattan and supplant them with a towering new mix of mostly market rate luxury housing.
But to do that, NYCHA first has to clear the building of its elderly tenants who are refusing to leave. FEC residents—including the senior citizens still living in the Chelsea Addition—took their case to court on Oct. 15, in an effort to block the bulldozers and wrecking ball from moving in.
Despite the legal proceedings, vocal community opposition, and Community Board 4’s earlier decision to reject the demolition plan—neighbors say NYCHA has nevertheless launched an all-out campaign of fear and intimidation meant to compel Chelsea Addition tenants to leave their homes.
Tenants pushing back against NYCHA’s efforts to force them out of their apartments meet up outside on Centre Street this week after a judge considered their case.
NYCHA and its partners have sent tenants frightening vacate notices, dispatched ominous white trailers to the FEC campuses, and conducted ground testing operations that are the precursor to demolition.
Aloy reportedly received a vacate notice telling her she had to leave by Sept. 15, and died just a few days before the deadline arrived. Neighbors say other tenants who decided to move have suffered serious falls after relocating and had to be hospitalized. Another man known as “Roger” is said to be a few years shy of 100, and is being forced to contemplate his next move.
“For the last three months we’ve been living every day in despair and constant anxiety,” Chelsea Addition neighbor Yu Story said outside court on Wednesday. “We are constantly being dogged by stress and anxiety and paranoia surrounding these circumstances.”
She added, “Only 11 days left until our 90 days to relocate are finished. Some people have moved away, some people have stayed. The purpose here is to drive everyone away to places they are unwilling to relocate and live in. The sick are sick, the hurt are hurt—and those who have passed are dead.”
Harlem physician Dr. Jessie Fields, representing the Independent Committee for Community Action, called the looming demolition plan in Chelsea both unnecessary and harmful to the health of FEC tenants and surrounding community.
These white trailers started appearing on the grounds of the FEC public housing campuses.
“It must be stopped,” Dr. Fields told Work-Bites. “It’s a shame. It’s corruption. The City and NYCHA are pushing this—and Mayor Eric Adams pushed it. He’s gone—so they should stop it.”
FEC tenant advocates George Weaver and Marina Halasa said that they were both threatened with physical violence at a Fulton Houses tenants meeting on Tuesday night when they attempted to engage with residents who wanted to learn more about the pushback to the demolition plan.
“Last night, they told the tenants they had to sign a new Section 8 lease in 10 days or else it’s gonna go market rate—and if you can’t pay you’re gonna be evicted,” Halasa said. “It’s so horrible what they’re doing to low-income seniors and disabled people.”
Seniors living at the Chelsea Addition not only fear never being able to return to their apartments, but also losing their Section 9 tenant protections, which are more robust than Section 8.
Penn South resident Len Polletta insisted that renovating those FEC apartments in need of repair would be a lot quicker and cheaper than demolishing the entire community. Something CB 4 Land Use Committee member David Holowka has also pointed out.
“The facts are there for everyone interested to see,” Polletta said this week. “Both NYCHA and Related know this—so why is this demolition project being planned and pushed? And why does it have the support of all Chelsea’s elected officials? It’s clearly a land grab.”
FEC tenants and supporters lambasted Council Member Erik Bottcher, Assembly Member Tony Simone, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, and Congress Member Jerry Nadler before heading into court on Wednesday for blindly supporting the demolition plan and ignoring the will of their constituents who oppose the plan.
Work-Bites also reached out to New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams to learn her position on the proposed demolition plan in Chelsea—but her office declined to comment.
NYCHA also refused to comment on this story.
The Judge presiding over Wednesday’s Article 78 proceeding indicated that he is likely to dismiss the case due to the petitioner’s use of Grok in preparing the necessary filings. FEC tenants and their supporters took that as kind of win because it will essentially allow them the opportunity and the time to file a “do-over.”
On a deeper level, Polletta also said that bulldozing “deeply affordable buildings” in Chelsea is an example of a system that is “okay with destroying people’s lives and families—if it means more profit in [developers’] bank accounts.”
“Corporate landlords who have hundreds of buildings and their allies in the banking industry have turned our housing stock from shelter—which we all want and need—to a source of profit and income,” he said.
Mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa appeared at one point during Wednesday’s pre-court rally in Foley Square and attempted to advocate a plan floated by the late Jack Kemp, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, that would supposedly help tenants buy their own apartments. The Guardian Angels founder and radio personality said he opposed the demolition plan, and when pressed, also voiced support for the preservation of Section 9 housing protections.