Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll look at a fight over whether to renovate or replace four public housing developments in Chelsea. We’ll also get details on the new home of the National Action Network, a civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton.
A fight over four public housing developments in the trendy Chelsea neighborhood is escalating. It’s a high-stakes test of the city’s responsibility to its lowest-income residents, according to my colleague Mihir Zaveri. The city sees the buildings in the four developments, together known as the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses, as too run-down. It wants to demolish them all and build replacements, a $1.2 billion project that would add nine new buildings with roughly 1,000 affordable apartments and 2,400 luxury units. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, supports the project, saying that it would help address the city’s housing shortage while raising money for public housing. But there has been a backlash from some residents and neighborhood groups who question the involvement of developers, including the Related Companies, the creator of Hudson Yards. Last month, in response to a lawsuit against the project, a judge put the proposal on hold until at least June. I asked Mihir for a closer look at the issues involved. Why did the city let these buildings deteriorate? Over decades, the needs of these aging buildings have gone up while the actual money coming from the federal government has gone down. That has been the story of public housing in America in recent years, whether we had a Democratic or Republican administration in Washington. The city has been trying to deal with the problems of aging buildings in public housing by shifting to private management, which allows the city to use the federal Section 8 program to raise money to actually do long-needed repairs and rehabilitation. There hasn’t been any political commitment at the national level to spending the kind of money it would take to make these developments good places to live again. It’s actually pretty remarkable that New York City has spent as much as it has to keep them in — it’s hard to say decent condition. But other cities have not had even that commitment. How bad are they? This is contentious. Some people who live there, and advocacy groups, insist that things are not that bad, that the city is overblowing the problems to pave the way for demolition. The New York City Housing Authority’s assessment is that there are more than $900 million in capital needs. I find it hard to believe that anyone would say that these buildings are in good condition. You can see that there are no locks on the exterior doors. You can talk to people who say, “I know somebody who has a wall missing, and it hasn’t been repaired.” People are dealing with leaks. They’re dealing with rats and a host of other problems that are routine to them but that people who don’t live in those buildings would be shocked by. The city did a survey of residents a couple of years ago, and, again, this is in dispute — opponents say the survey wasn’t done properly. But it indicated that people wanted new buildings, they wanted new amenities, they want a rooftop they can use like any other new apartment building in New York. They want community centers. They want gyms. You can see how that would be alluring. Yes, but of all the housing projects in the city, why do such an ambitious project at that one? It seems like there’s some willingness to accept this kind of project there, and also it’s in Chelsea. The land is valuable. You cannot build apartments only for public housing residents; you can build luxury apartments on the same site. Those would be high-rent units. You’d add almost 3,500 new apartments. About 1,000 of them would be affordable housing, which doesn’t always mean cheap, but those apartments would be restricted to people with certain incomes. Then there would be about 2,400 market-rate units. If you go on StreetEasy, market-rate apartments in Chelsea are about $5,500 a month for a one-bedroom, and you can get much more expensive. What kinds of logistical challenges would this present? “Disruptions” might be a better word, and “nightmares” might be even better. Does the housing authority have enough vacancies to move everyone into apartments that are currently empty? It’s absolutely disruptive to the lives of people who live there. But if you ask the city, the answer is that if they rehabilitate and remodel, more people would have to move and NYCHA would have to find more vacant units. According to the city, they’re going to build the new buildings first, then demolish. The idea is not to have to relocate a lot of people during the process but to say, “Here’s a new home you can move into” — before they have to move out of their old units. There are something like 17 apartment buildings across the four developments. There will be only six in the new plan for public housing residents, so they’ll be taller and larger buildings. But there are two old buildings with 100 to 150 units that they will have to demolish first, just to make space for the new construction. The people in those two buildings were being relocated until the court put things on hold. WEATHER Expect a mostly sunny day with a chance of showers. The high will be around 53. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low around 33. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Wednesday (Passover). QUOTE OF THE DAY “It’s scary to think, over the years, how many times I could have been intoxicated and didn’t know it.” — Mark Mongiardo, a former athletic director from Sullivan County, N.Y., who was diagnosed with auto-brewery syndrome by Dr. Prasanna Wickremesinghe of Richmond University Medical Center on Staten Island. In patients with that condition, microbes in the gut produce too much ethanol during digestion, making them drunk — as if they had consumed alcohol. The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Sharpton moving his civil rights group to a new home
“I ain’t gonna be no more famous,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said. “The question is, What do I leave?” One answer to that question is a new home for his National Action Network, which has long rented an office on West 145th Street in Harlem. Now the organization is purchasing the Faison Firehouse Theater, where West 124th Street and Hancock Place merge, and will rename it the House of Justice Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Workshop. The purchase and renovations are expected to cost $5 million to $7 million. Jackson, who died in February, was a mentor to Sharpton, who was once a divisive figure because of his sometimes inflammatory rhetoric. Sharpton sees the new center as a way to push back against gentrification in Harlem, where the Black population has been declining for years. METROPOLITAN DIARY The haircut
Dear Diary: It was a Friday evening in March, and I desperately needed a haircut. I booked an appointment at 6:30 p.m., the last slot available that day, at a nearby barbershop, and got it done. The next morning was particularly windy, and I couldn’t find my winter hat. Running out the door, I grabbed a baseball cap and stuffed it in my jacket pocket. Later that afternoon, as I was heading for the Bedford Avenue subway stop, the wind picked up, making for a brisk walk. I pulled the baseball cap over my head, the hood of my sweatshirt over my ears and the hood of my jacket over them both. It looked foolish, but it was effective. I got on the train and was still shivering when it passed under the East River and arrived at the First Avenue stop. The doors opened, and a man got on. I recognized his face but couldn’t immediately place it. I looked down, trying to jog my memory. Then I looked at him again, and it clicked: my barber from the day before. At that moment, he turned and nodded to me and then glanced at my excessively covered head. “It was that bad, huh?” he said. — Philip McHugh Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Want to see more of our expert reporting in your Google search results?
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