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"WE WILL FIGHT, FIGHT
TO THE END!"
Leandra Manon
THE FULTON HOUSES
“We will fight fight to the end! We will fight fight till we win!” Chants could be heard between 17th street and Ninth Avenue. Residents of the Fulton Houses rallied on September 27th in the Chelsea District to share their concerns over Mayor Bill De Blasio’s plan to turn Fulton Houses into a mixed income private residency. The fear of displacement is high for Fulton residents. Mayor De Blasio’s 2.0 program promises to “preserve and strengthen public housing”, but many residents aren’t buying it.
“I think the money is there. I think this was all set up approximately 15 years ago and they’ve [NYCHA] been neglecting the tenants which they shouldn’t be” said one Fulton resident. “We pay our rent and that rent should be going back into fixing our homes and they’re not. What they want to do is privatize the whole neighborhood. Why? Because it’s a money maker.”
Not only are NYCHA residents concerned, but so are their neighbors at Penn South, officially known as Mutual Redevelopment Houses. Penn South resident, Joyce Willcox, marched alongside NYCHA residents in support, voicing her concerns about De Blasio’s plan. “We have a relationship with NYCHA and Chelsea, they’re our friends, we’re related. Friends and neighbors don’t let people lose their housing. We feel this is a community issue.” Willcox continued stating that she feels as though gentrification has a big role to play in this dilemma. “If you gentrify NYCHA it’s going to accelerate gentrification for all of us. If you privatize NYCHA, my Co-op is going to be on the list sooner or later...we want to keep Chelsea for the community, not for real estate developers.”
Many others would think that privatization would be a good thing. Residents hoped that privatization would eventually bring in better service and better service makes for better quality of living. The real issue with this plan is the lack of better judgement . According to WNYC, “The Housing Authority awarded a contract to a company that's owed property taxes for more than a decade.” The Kraus Organization, a large family-owned real estate firm, has been tasked to fix and renovate the NYCHA buildings, but ironically enough owes $150 million to the city of New York.
The history of the Kraus debt crisis stems back to the 1990s. In 1998, the New York Times ran an article on Herman Kraus detailing what led to the organization's debt. “Back then, the company was under scrutiny for hiring its own companies at an expensive rate to do everything from maintenance to legal work and then requesting rent increases based on high operating costs.” At that point, Kraus owed $11 million to the city due to the fact that he stopped paying municipal taxes, but somehow continued winning rent increases.
Leandra Manon
According to WNYC, there has been immense pressure for the administration to adhere to their promise of fixing NYCHA buildings. “The de Blasio administration has announced that it intends to turn over one third of the city's public housing stock — about 62,000 apartments — to private companies.” Because of this, NYCHA has been scavenging for large companies to handle the size of the job, even if that means their history isn’t so clean.
Manhattan borough president, Gale Brewer, isn’t exactly ecstatic by the idea of having large companies handling NYCHA due to the fact that the residents' best interest may not be at the top of their list. Brewer suggests for NYCHA to contract with more non-profit developers, ones that will look out for the residents' needs.
“People don’t understand. They’re like oh yes I want brand new things, who doesn’t? But not at the price of being evicted and you’re gonna be homeless,” says Mary McGee, president of Fulton Houses independent tenants association committee. “People don’t understand the severity of these programs. NYCHA and the city of New York are trying to cover it up, but it’s not a good deal.”
As the marching continued, so did the chanting, garnering attention from the public, many stopping to question the purpose of the march. NYCHA residents later stopped in front of the Maritime Hotel where a projection was set up to display information on the crisis NYCHA residents, especially those at the Fulton Houses, were going through. “60,000 NYCHA Units Are At Stake”, “Housing Is A Human Right” and “Don’t Demolish Fulton Houses” were just a few statements put on display.
“We will fight the city of New York and we will fight NYCHA to the bitter end because public housing is a human right.” says McGee. “This crowd is getting bigger and bigger as we are protesting. It started out with a handful of us and we made noise and we’ve been heard and that’s what people don’t understand. Your voice matters.”
Leandra Manon
Leandra Manon
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