Public Housing Tenants Confront NYCHA’s Harassment in Chelsea As Electeds Remain Mute
Elderly Chelsea Addition residents attempt to engage NYCHA’s Jamie Rubin at the close of Wednesday’s board meeting before being ushered out by security. Photo/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
The New York City Housing Authority does not yet have the green light it needs to go ahead with plans to demolish the Fulton & Elliott-Chelsea public houses on Manhattan’s west side, but tenants say that hasn’t stopped them from telling residents the buildings are coming down and they have to go.
FEC tenants and their advocates testifying before NYCHA’s November calendar meeting earlier this week said city officials continue to harass residents with frightening phone calls and visits at all hours of the day and night pressuring them to relinquish their Section 9 housing protections and relocate.
“Even yesterday afternoon after I finished my dialysis, someone from HOU came to talk to me about ‘when am I gonna sign because the building is going to be knocked down,’” 66-year-old cancer patient Dolores Ruffin told the NYCHA board on Wednesday.
Many of the FEC tenants refusing to sign new Section 8 leases and relocate to other areas of the public housing complex—including the senior citizens living in the Chelsea Addition located at 436 W. 27th Drive—are extremely vulnerable New Yorkers surviving on severely limited incomes.
Unable to compel them from giving up their truly affordable apartments, however, NYCHA has begun suing individual FEC public housing tenants in New York County Supreme Court seeking monetary damages. The Chelsea Addition’s apartment directory has also been cleared. Residents say the delivery of their mail has been interrupted, too, and they are now being forced to pick it up at the local Chelsea Post Office.
“There is one incidence of a 90-year-old tenant who HOU came and forcibly packed her belongings in boxes, which she was completely against and sobbing,” tenant advocate Marni Halassa testified. “Then the police came and said that the building was sold, even adding more to her anxiety.”
Work-Bites reported on that incident here.
NYCHA’s plan, in collaboration with the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD], involves turning the FEC public houses located between 9th and 10th avenues over to private management under the Rental Assistance Demonstration and Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (RAD/PACT) programs.
It would further lease the land under the FEC public houses to Related Companies, the developer of the massive Hudson Yards site located nearby. Related would then, over the next 16 years, gradually demolish all the FEC buildings. It would replace them with six new towers, three in each project, to rehouse the current tenants, and add nine or ten new buildings of mixed-income housing—30% so-called “affordable” and 70% market rate.
A draft environmental-impact statement for the project estimated current market-rate rents in Chelsea at $6,000 a month. Rents for the so-called “affordable” apartments would vary, but would average about $2,270 for a studio and $2,916 to $3,240 for a two-bedroom apartment. About 120 households would have to be relocated until the first new buildings are completed.
Some FEC tenants, according to advocates, now pay as littles as $200 or $300 in rent.
“This has not been accepted by HUD to this date. This demolition proposal is just that—a proposal. But somehow, NYCHA, Related, and Essence [Development] have been moving ahead as if it’s a legally binding contract,” Elliott-Chelsea Tenant Association VP Celinas Miranda told the NYCHA board this week. “This whole process you all have insisted is resident led—but the fact is a majority of the tenants have consistently rejected this demolition plan.”
NYCHA is doing everything it can to force out tenants—many of them elderly—from their apartments on the campuses of the Fulton & Elliott-Chelsea public houses. Photo/Steve Wishnia
Community Board 4 officially rejected the demolition plan back in September and FEC tenant advocates say they have a petition signed by roughly 950 residents opposing the demolition plan. They are demanding a binding vote on the project by tenants. Local elected officials at the local, state, and federal levels, however, have all ignored those demands, and are siding with the private developers.
Attorneys arguing NYCHA’s case in court Nov. 5 called the public-private partnerships associated with the RAD/PACT programs the “best option” for NYCHA’s aging public housing stock.
FEC tenants opposing demolition insist what’s happening in Chelsea is nothing more than a naked land grab by greedy private developers. Instead of being treated as a cash cow for NYCHA, they insist on routine maintenance and repairs, and renovation as originally proposed.
“It’s a shame to see that our electives have sold us out,” former Elliott-Chelsea Houses tenant Luana Green said. “It's a shame to talk about affordable housing, which is a joke, and a word that should be erased from the from the dictionary.”
Other FEC tenants testifying before the NYCHA board on Nov. 19 talked about the further acts of intimidation and coercion they are experiencing, as well as being shown new apartments with water damage, and personal property going missing during relocation.
"Many are signing only out of fear and believing that it is a requirement,” Miranda continued. “Tenants are being misled—including seniors. Those who agreed to leave after the first 90-day warning were supposed to get the better apartments. But in actuality, left their former homes and relocated into smaller, less desirable ones. As a result, some were made to trash most of their furniture.”
NYCHA officials testifying at this week’s board meeting forecasted a balanced budget over the next five years thanks in no small part to the fiscal benefits they expect to garner from the RAD/PACT programs system-wide.
“The plan has been cloaked in confusion and selective secrecy for a long time,” London Terrace Tenants Association President Inge Ivchenko told the NYCHA board. “The [earlier FEC tenant] survey was flawed, it was biased. It used a QR code that seniors don’t understand, revealed nothing, and took advantage of the disadvantaged, in fact. A 20-year plan—this is a long project—it’ll affect the entire neighborhood and population.”
Last week, a Civil Court judge blocked NYCHA’s latest efforts to force two elderly FEC tenants out their apartments.
Many FEC public housing tenants supported Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in his successful race to succeed outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, and are now hoping the new mayor’s democratic socialism will translate into a better deal from them—and some respect.
“We need officials that listen to the voice of the people,” Ivchenko continued. “The ones that we have now are ignoring their voices. They say they want these people to live with dignity—now they are quiet while the elderly are being sued to get them out of where they live. Where’s the dignity in that?”
A one point during Wednesday’s meeting, a NYCHA board member threatened to close the proceedings after attendees clapped in support of testimony highlighting NYCHA’s coercive tactics against FEC tenants.
“We will have people removed from the room if we cannot get through the public comment portion,” that same board member later warned.
Work-Bites has made numerous unsuccessful attempts to reach the Mamdani campaign about NYCHA’s plan to demolish the FEC Houses. HUD, meanwhile, referred all inquiries to NYCHA when contacted.
Both city officials and the feds have reportedly supplied letters of support for the demolition plan. NYCHA anticipates HUD’s approval to demolish the FEC public houses will come by year’s end.
FEC tenants opposed to the demolition plan, meanwhile, have begun organizing daily pickets on the public housing campuses urging their neighbors against signing new Section 8 leases and relocating.
They will be back in court on Dec. 4 to challenge the plan further.
Those interested in helping to fund the legal battle are urged to contribute to the FEC tenants’ GoFundMe page. Click here to find out more.
—Additional reporting by Steve Wishnia