Few places illustrate New York City’s contradictions like the corner of 27th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan. Look west and see a parade of tourists walking the High Line, the chic elevated park, while the angular, glassy buildings of the $25 billion mega-development Hudson Yards tower to the north.
To the south, though, are the brownish brick apartment buildings of the John Lovejoy Elliott Houses, built and run by the city since 1947 and left to slowly deteriorate.
Now, a fight over the future of the Elliott Houses and three nearby public housing developments, all in the trendy Chelsea neighborhood, is escalating, in a high-stakes test of the city’s responsibility to its lowest-income residents. The outcome is likely to shape the future of a public housing system that is home to more people than the entire population of Pittsburgh.
The conditions in the four developments, together known as the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses, have grown so dire, and repairs so costly, that the city wants to tear them all down and build them anew. The effort would be one of the most ambitious attempts to improve conditions in the aging developments run by the New York City Housing Authority, and a high-profile example of a broader push to place them under private management. Scores of public housing developments have been torn down across the United States, but it has almost never happened in New York.
The $1.2 billion project calls for replacing the Chelsea developments’ 17 apartment buildings with six high-rises and allowing existing residents to move into them. But to make the finances work, the city also wants to add nine new mixed-income buildings, which would include roughly 1,000 affordable apartments and 2,400 luxury units, to the complexes.
That could yield a potential windfall for the developers, which include Related Companies, the creator of Hudson Yards and one of the highest-profile real estate firms in New York City.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani supports the project, arguing that it would help address the city’s housing shortage while raising money for public housing that probably isn’t going to come from anywhere else. Other supporters include the city comptroller, Mark Levine, the council member who represents the area, Erik Bottcher, some tenants and a host of pro-development groups and housing think tanks.
But the plan has also prompted a backlash from some public housing residents and neighborhood groups, who have denounced Related’s involvement and questioned whether demolition is needed at all.
A judge last week put the proposal on hold until at least June, in response to one of two lawsuits that are pending against the project. The court is expected to hear fuller arguments that month about how long the development should be paused, in a case that could ultimately determine the fate of the entire effort.
“The court’s ruling creates an opportunity — an opportunity to pause, reassess and ensure that any path forward is truly resident-centered,” Chris Banks, the chair of the City Council’s Public Housing Committee and a staunch opponent of the plan, said in a statement after the ruling. He said the fight was “about how we treat public housing communities across this city.”
For residents like George Figueroa, 79, a retired transit worker who has lived in the Fulton Houses for more than 50 years, the fight is the latest in a long line of apartment-related headaches. Mr. Figueroa has endured leaks, regular encounters with rats and a faulty elevator — he wants a new apartment building, and supports the demolition plan.
“We’re surrounded by million-dollar condos and townhouses,” he said. “We just want a piece of the pie.”
But Renee Keitt, who is president of the tenants association for the Elliott-Chelsea Houses and has lived there for more than 40 years, said there were other ways to solve the developments’ problems. She argued that the city could use other vacant lots in Manhattan for new housing. And she took issue with the plan’s consolidation of almost 20 residential buildings into just six.
Ms. Keitt and others fighting the project have asked to meet with Mr. Mamdani. Given his stances, she said, she had expected him to back their push to preserve their housing.
“So why are you for the demolition of it?” she said.
The problems in NYCHA buildings have accumulated over decades, resulting in an astonishing shortfall. In 2023, the housing authority estimated that the system needed almost $80 billion to make repairs and upgrades across its portfolio, which includes nearly 180,000 apartments in more than 330 developments citywide.
One solution involves shifting dozens of developments over to private management through a program known as Permanent Affordability Commitment Together, or PACT. So far, around 170 developments with some 44,000 apartments have moved or are being converted through PACT.
The program transfers developments from being governed by one federal housing law, Section 9, to another, Section 8, which has been more stable and receives bipartisan federal support. Under Section 8, tenants pay rent with housing vouchers. NYCHA can then borrow large sums of money against that revenue to finance upgrades.
But the city’s plan for the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses would go further. In 2023, the city estimated that the developments needed more than $927 million in repairs and renovations, according to the housing authority, which has argued that full reconstruction would cost roughly as much as rehabilitation. (Opponents have questioned the city’s data.)
Under the plan, every tenant who currently lives in the more than 2,000 apartments at the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses would have a new apartment built for them, city officials say. They would still be guaranteed a rent that does not exceed 30 percent of their annual income. NYCHA would own the land.
Revenue from the luxury apartments that would be built would help pay for the more affordable units. The city would otherwise have to spend large sums of money to subsidize low-cost apartments in Chelsea, a high-demand area.
If the entire redevelopment goes as the housing authority has planned, there would be more than 3,400 new homes added to the complexes, with about 2,400 of them renting at market rates. The median monthly asking rent on a new lease in the neighborhood was more than $5,800 in February, according to the listings platform StreetEasy.
NYCHA officials have said that the city will look to replicate the model at other developments.
Leila Bozorg, the city’s deputy mayor for housing and planning, said in a statement that both Republicans and Democrats at the national level had regularly decreased funding for public housing, leaving the city with few options.
“It would be irresponsible and unconscionable for any landlord to leave such capital needs unaddressed,” Ms. Bozorg said.
The project’s development team, which includes Related and another real estate firm, Essence, has already been working to solve issues at the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses, said Jamar Adams, the founder and managing principal of Essence. It has added security guards and cleared more than 200 rat burrows in hopes of building trust with residents.
“We fully expect to clear these last hurdles and are committed to delivering on the promise of this project and all that it will deliver for New York City,” Mr. Adams said.
Still, many residents remain unconvinced.
The city says most new homes will be built before the old ones are demolished, but that is not the plan for the Chelsea Addition building, which is set to be torn down first. Most residents have already been relocated to other parts of the developments, but a couple dozen are refusing to move, in protest of what they say is an eviction.
On a recent afternoon, several residents said in interviews that they had a hard time trusting NYCHA, and did not fully understand why the agency was unwilling to renovate the buildings while they stayed there.
Sal Velazquez, 67, has lived in the Elliott-Chelsea Houses for 52 years. His rent, he said, was $65 when he moved in. Today, it’s $1,300 — too much for a two-bedroom apartment in a building that has routine problems.
Mr. Velazquez said that he agreed that something needed to be done to help the residents, and he even described the renovations as “a good thing.”
“But, you can’t trust them,” he added, referring to NYCHA.
Of the lawsuits filed to stop the project, two were dismissed, including one that was tossed last year because the residents who filed it had, according to the judge, used artificial intelligence to help write legal papers.
Two other suits are still active, including the one that led to the order that ground the project to a halt. In that case, residents and neighborhood groups, among others, said that the city did not have the authority to build market-rate apartments on land owned by the public housing system. They also argued that the city did not get the right permissions to pursue the project.
For now, the effort is in limbo. NYCHA and Related say they expect to win in court, and that the project will move forward shortly after the June hearing.
The earliest the entire development would be completed is 2041, the housing authority has said.
Mr. Figueroa, who is turning 80 later this month, said he felt “discouraged.”
“I want to be able to live in a brand-new building, with all the amenities, comfortably — living in Chelsea before I die,” he said.
Mihir Zaveri covers housing in the New York City region for The Times.
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