Opinion: NYCHA residents deserve modern, brand-new homes

As public housing residents, we believe we deserve to reap the benefits of the powerful progress that has fundamentally reshaped the Chelsea neighborhood in recent years, despite some outside voices advocating for us to be left behind. We have felt the impact firsthand of decades of deferred maintenance and disinvestment.

That is why we stand strongly in support of a redevelopment project that will bring beautiful, brand-new homes to all 2,056 families currently living at Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses, while ensuring that the truly affordable rent we’re guaranteed as NYCHA residents will continue in perpetuity.

However, there are outside advocates who are coming into our community with patently false claims, using the false label of “privatization” to argue that the PACT (Permanently Affordability Commitment Together) project is really just a scheme to get us out of the neighborhood that we’ve grown up in and contributed to our whole lives. They have come into our community with such animosity and vitriol that some of our neighbors are too frightened to express their own desires for this project to move forward.

The opposition to this important redevelopment project is based on misdirection, and does not have a suitable alternative for getting us the resources our homes need. We know, because we wanted this plan and we helped create it over the past several years.

We have been part of one of the most community-driven public housing projects our nation has ever seen: We participated in a Resident Review Committee that designed the Request for Proposals to improve our homes and our quality of life, we interviewed the potential developers who would carry out our vision, and we then helped to select the winning team. All the while, we worked with independent, expert advisors who made sure we had all the information we needed.

And it wasn’t just the Tenant Association who participated in the process and weighed in with our wants, needs, and ideas – it was so many of the NYCHA residents who live here, including the numerous residents who said that new construction over rehabilitation of the current buildings is the best path forward.

That’s because we know better than anyone the terrible condition of our buildings, which were built nearly a century ago and haven’t gotten the investment from the federal government that we desperately need since Jimmy Carter was the president.

We are the residents who have to live with leaking roofs and moldy walls, elevators that can’t take you upstairs when you’re hauling groceries home, a freezing cold home in the winter when the heat goes out and forbidding lobbies without functional security.

And we are the ones who need modern homes where we can care for our families. We too desire cutting-edge, sustainable technologies that power and protect our homes; brand-new community centers that lift up and empower with their services and offerings; and the security of knowing that we and our homes aren’t going anywhere, firmly rooted by the promise of public housing and the power of a quality place to live.

This project should move forward based on our lived experiences and a genuine desire to improve conditions for New Yorkers. It should not be delayed or denied based on political opportunism.

For far too long, opportunists who do not live at Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea have spread misinformation and fear-mongered about the project, pretending to speak for our entire community, when they are nothing more than a vocal minority. Their opposition is driven in large part by selfish concerns about construction noise and obscured views in one of Manhattan's wealthiest neighborhoods – and not by the needs or priorities of the residents who actually live here.

We’ve made it so far already, and we want to keep going forward on this path we’ve forged. At the same time, we’re not going anywhere and will always call Chelsea home. We hope the Mamdani administration and NYCHA will continue to stand with us so we can benefit from progress – don’t let those without our best interests at heart disrupt our vision and plan for better homes, a better community, and a better life.

Let the reconstruction and the transformation begin!