NYC Tenants: ‘Mayor Zohran Mamdani Doesn’t Believe Public Housing is Worth Saving’
Public housing tenants [some seen here marching on former City Council Member Erik Bottcher’s office in Sept.] are urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to back repealing the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate to help fund NYCHA. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani doesn’t believe public housing is worth saving, according to tenants pushing back against ongoing plans to demolish 18 NYCHA buildings on the west side of Manhattan.
“[Cea Weaver, Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants Director], is the prefect example of the folks that are coming into this administration and are spreading policies and recommending actions to the Mayor that actually harm working class communities of color and the poor,” Save Section 9 founder Ramona Ferreyra told Work-Bites and other reporters at City Hall on April 10. “Cea does not believe public housing is worth saving, therefore, the Mayor doesn’t believe public housing is worth saving.”
“Democratic socialist” label or not, current New York City Mayor Mamdani, like his predecessor Eric Adams, appears all to ready to hand over the keys to the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses [FEC] to Related Companies—the deep-pocketed Chelsea developers behind the massive Hudson Yards development—so the communities can be razed to the ground and reimagined as mix of so-called “affordable” housing units and market rate luxury apartments.
“Cea has worked instead to push something called “social housing,” which is segregated housing that will not include people that earn less than 30% AMI [Area Median Income],” Ferreyra continued on Friday. “So, you will have more people in the shelter, less people getting apartments, more private landlords getting subsidies, and people will not be able to afford rent created under this fake umbrella of ‘socialism.’
True socialism, Ferreyra said, is Section 9 housing—the federally-created program established in 1937 that to this day maintains the strongest tenant protections in the nation, but would be stripped from Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea residents should the demolition and privatization scheme advance.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani doesn’t believe public housing is worth saving, according to Save Section 9 founder Ramona Ferreyra.
“That’s why [Cea Weaver] and the Mayor should be supporting the Stock Transfer Rebate Act and the repeal of that so that we can actually give NYCHA the $2 billion they need annually,” Ferreyra said.
New York State collected the Stock Transfer Tax for more than 75 years between 1905 to 1981 when it started rebating the minuscule one-tenth of one-percent levy back to Wall Street at the dawn of the Reagan era.
Current legislation from Assembly Member Phil Steck [D-110th District] and State Senator James Sanders, Jr. [D-10th District] seeks to repeal the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate, which, according to James Henry, Yale economist, tax expert and former Chief Economist at McKinsey & Co., would generate anywhere from $40 billion to $75 in needed tax revenue for the people of New York State—every year.
Five percent of those monies—as much as $3.75 billion annually—would be earmarked for the sole purpose of helping the New York City Housing Authority to fulfill its mission of preserving and maintaining Section 9 public housing.
Mayor Mamdani, however, has eschewed helping to repeal the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate, instead electing to pursue new taxes—including an already rejected 9.5% property tax increase—as well as a 2% personal income tax hike on millionaires, and a 1.8% hike on corporations.
At the same time, the Mamdani administration has allocated as much as $663 million in the upcoming fiscal budget to help NYCHA grease the skids for further privatization.
East New York Nehemiah Homeowners Association member Yvonne Daniels urged Mayor Mamdani on April 10 to abandon efforts to increase property taxes on homeowners like her and her Brooklyn neighbors.
“This $663 million that [Weaver] actually advised [Mayor Mamdani] to give to public housing only gets us to 22,000 vouches of project-based Section 8 for one year,” Ferreyra argued in front of the City Hall steps. “With that money they could renovate an entire development. Wagner Houses [in East Harlem] is the worst NYCHA property in New York City. That is 1,200 units that would be rehabilitated and provide housing for the next 100 years. It doesn’t make sense. It is not affordability.”
Assembly Member Steck calls repealing the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate is the “most efficient” way to get the money NYCHA needs to save Section 9 public housing.
“This tax was in effect from 1905 to 1981 and it caused no harm and was immensely helpful to the people of the state,” Assembly Member Steck told Work-Bites. “It's only one-tenth of one-percent, so I don't understand what the Mayor's objection to it is. I do know that he's working very hard to assuage the wealthy and the Governor [Kathy Hochul].”
And while the Assembly Member supports taxing the rich, he says the new income taxes Mayor Mamdani is talking about simply do not come close raising the amount of revenue repealing the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate would generate.
“I don't think the City of New York can be dependent on taking money out of the State budget to help bail out New York City,” he continued. “When, for example, the Mayor was able to get money for three-year-old Pre-K and some two-year-old childcare from the State—in my district, 50% of the families who are in public school do not have access to pre K. They have to buy Pre-K privately. Mr. Mamdani, who is a socialist, certainly should understand the need to treat people who are of modest means equally.”
And that, according to Assembly Member Steck is exactly what repealing the Stock Transfer Tax Rebate accomplishes.
“The stock transfer tax treats everyone in the State, and everyone in the United States, and everyone in the world who trade stock in New York equally,” he said. “Most of the people who pay it are not New Yorkers. Most of the people that trade stock in New York are from other states and other countries. It's a much more preferable method to go about raising revenue than anything else that I've seen on the agenda.”
New York City municipal retiree and tenants’ rights activist Lizette Colon said that she still trusts in the new Mayor’s commitment to his 8.58 million constituents—but that it’s up to everyday New Yorkers to hold him accountable.
“It is our duty as citizens to keep pushing our Mayor to stay on the right track,” she told Work-Bites. “We must not give up on holding him and all the elected officials accountable so that together we can live in a better NYC for all.”
Work-Bites made repeated efforts to reach both the Mayor’s Office and the New York City Housing Authority for comment on this story—both those efforts have gone ignored and unacknowledged.
A five-judge panel of the state Appellate Division last month extended a temporary restraining order preventing the New York City Housing Authority from proceeding with its plan to demolish and privatize the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses. But the court battle continues.
FEC tenants fighting the demolition plan won a further victory late Monday afternoon when Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division, First Department Dianne T. Renwick denied NYCHA’s latest attempt to get around the temporary existing restraining order.
The case will next go before a five-judge panel on May 4.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect FEC tenants’ latest court victory over NYCHA’s demolition plan.