Opinion: NYC deserves more tenant champions serving on the City Council

From LeFrak City to East Elmhurst, from Jackson Heights to Corona, the neighborhoods that make up District 21 are home to the working-class, immigrant communities that keep New York City running. Like many neighborhoods across our city, these are neighborhoods built on care – where people look out for one another, raise families in rent-stabilized apartments and organize to make sure their neighbors are fed, housed and loved. This is the community I have called home for the last 35 years. I am raising my children in LeFrak City, and I have fought alongside the tenants here for years.

But while our communities are doing everything they can to survive, billionaire landlords like the LeFraks and the real estate industry are doing everything they can to hold onto their power. The LeFrak Organization, one of the largest landlords in New York, has a long and well-documented history of mass evictions, neglect and treating tenants like profit margins. Now they’re teaming up with the Real Estate Board of New York, which is funneling money into our local elections through their super PAC, Jobs for New York.

In City Council races across NYC, REBNY and Jobs for New York have already spent millions of dollars in ads and mailers to elect City Council members who will promote the needs of large developers, instead of the voices of working-class New Yorkers. They want to elect council members who will defend their business interests and stop any progress toward tenant protections and building more deeply affordable housing.

NYC deserves better. New Yorkers deserve council members in every borough who understand the struggles of tenants and answer to their needs.

Our communities need representatives who will fight for deeply affordable housing, stronger enforcement, better constituent services and a city that doesn’t push out the very people who built it. Not someone who will take cues from developers or treat NYCHA residents as an afterthought. We’ve seen what happens when the real estate lobby controls the narrative, and we’ve seen how powerful our communities can be when we push back together.

The stakes in this year’s elections are real, as the cost of living and raising a family in NYC has continued to surge. NYC needs public leaders rooted in the people – not someone who shows up just for photo ops, but who shows up for basement tenants fighting to stay housed, for NYCHA residents demanding basic dignity and for working families trying to survive in the city they helped build.

The future of NYC is worth fighting for. And we won’t let it be sold to the highest bidder. Collectively, we need to stand up against mass evictions, gentrification, and special interests by electing City Council members who will fight to make NYC more affordable.