A small coalition of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) advocates are still protesting the coming demolition of Fulton & Elliott-Chelsea (FEC) Houses in Manhattan, slated to begin early next year.
Fulton Houses is located on West 17th Street, blocks away from the city’s Google Headquarters and 14th Street’s Union Square. Elliott and Chelsea Houses are northbound past West 25th Street. FEC provides apartments to over 2,000 families.
NYCHA circulated FEC resident surveys in June 2023. About 29% (580 tenants) of the total eligible population participated in the surveys and of that, more than half opted for new construction, according to city numbers. Since then, advocates have collected 949 signatures from tenants opposing the demolition and continue to peacefully protest the demolition whenever they can.
Save Section 9, FEC Against Demolition, The Illuminator, and More Arts members came together this Tuesday for a day of creative advocacy. At the Hudson Guild Fulton senior center, the groups created linked paper chains to symbolically tie themselves to the buildings slated for demolition.
Resident Renee Keitt has lived at Elliott Houses for over 50 years. She said that the community has always been a mixed-income and mixed-use neighborhood that welcomed all people, despite the effects of gentrification. NYCHA is only speaking to the few hundred that agreed to new construction on the survey, not “the thousands” that oppose the demolition, she said.
Keitt was among the other advocates that draped themselves in paper chains in front of the FEC campuses, chanting and singing songs for passersby to hear.
“There’s no need for us to be taken out of the community,” said Keitt. “We don’t want to be demolished.”
Save Section 9 founder Ramona Ferreyra has been leading the fight against NYCHA’s privatization and demolition since last year. She’s been teaching residents at Fulton Elliott-Chelsea Houses how to lobby and protest on behalf of public housing, she said. She considers the demolition nothing more than a “land grab.”
The proposed demolition will be discussed in an upcoming community board meeting on Jan. 16, 2025 at 6:30 pm at the Hudson Guild Elliott Community Center.
I’m Celines from the FEC team and just to clarify Ramona has not been leading our fight. She’s been an ally and has provided support as much as our other allies and neighbors who’s also been supporting us in our fight. I appreciate the support that Ramona has been giving us but I like information to be accurate. Ramona leading our fight is not accurate.
whose*
So I am of the camp that says undergoing these moves probably isn’t the most pleasant or convenient thing in the world to do but at the same time, I do think public housing that is better aligned with the local street grid and more scalable and higher density is also a good thing. I think too that the mid-century, midrise design language is sort of showing its age in some places and rebuilding the projects within that venn diagram to a high-rise standard with certain amenities and efficiencies is a good thing.