{"id":379146,"date":"2025-11-14T20:49:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/379146\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T20:49:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:49:16","slug":"developers-want-to-privatize-new-york-city-housing-authority-tenants-resist-peoples-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/379146\/","title":{"rendered":"Developers want to privatize New York City Housing Authority, tenants resist \u2013 People’s World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Developers\t<\/p>\n

NYCHA tenants gather at rally <\/p>\n

Developers want to turn New York City Housing Authority into privatized apartments; this is what the tenants of Chelsea-Elliott Houses, located at 441 W 26th St in New York, and Fulton Houses, located at 421 W 17th St, New York, say. For years, tenants and organizations, including the Save Section 9 (SS9) coalition and the Committee for Independent Community Action (CICA), have fought to stop privatization. On October 8th, 2025, members from buildings across Manhattan and Brooklyn held a rally to demand an end to the privatization of NYCHA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is no secret that NYCHA continues to be underfunded, and this has caused numerous problems for residents. For example, recently, a boiler exploded at the Mitchel Houses\u2019 NYCHA campus in the Bronx, which<\/a> had preexisting expired permits and other violations on the building. However, the underfunding of NYCHA continues to be used as a tool by both representatives and developers to transition<\/a> NYCHA from public to private management.<\/p>\n

Private hands want to own NYCHA\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

For the majority<\/a> of the 528,000 authorized NYCHA tenants, 306,691 of those live under a Section 9 program. This means that the building is owned and operated by the housing authority of the federal government, where rents are set to 30% of an individual\u2019s income. Many tenants in the developments worry about <\/a>the possibility of their buildings being placed into Section 8, a program where developers and banks become owners of the buildings and might lease the land from a government authority. For the tenants, this program, packaged within<\/a> the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) and Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) programs, opens up the possibility for privatization and displacement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of these private agencies, Essence Development, desires to own and manage these buildings. This company<\/a> says it hopes to \u201ccombine government programs with private sector resources to build and preserve communities and unlock tremendous value.\u201d Many argue that the company not only hopes to acquire this building, but also to remove tenants and demolish it in order to open it up for private development.<\/p>\n

\"\"Tenants rally in New York City.| Joel Fiengold<\/p>\n

The company says that the building will be fully affordable, but tenants are saying that only 70% will be for affordable housing. It\u2019s worth stating that this term, \u201caffordable housing,\u201d is used as a way to advertise mixed-income buildings and increased rent as a working-class option. The other 30% of land will be turned into market-rate apartments, which were previously NYCHA. Essence Development\u2019s intention is to remove enough tenants that the agency can do what is called a Finance call, where they show<\/a> a certain majority of tenants are proposing their own demolition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To push their agenda, the Essence Company has used intimidation tactics to pressure tenants to leave and relinquish their apartments. Renee Keitt, a 62-year-old lifelong resident of Chelsea-Elliott houses, says that this company and its subsidiary<\/a> Housing Opportunities Unlimited have \u201ccontacted tenants\u2019 family members, attempted to access private records including tenants\u2019 birth certificates and social security cards, and will bring boxes to senior citizens\u2019 apartments, demanding they move out.\u201d The company has also told lies, such as that if tenants don\u2019t sign a project-based lease, they will automatically pay fair market rate rent.<\/p>\n

The truth about\u00a0 privatization\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The truth is that going from section 9 to section 8 housing opens up the possibility for privatization. In a 2024 audit report<\/a> entitled New York City Housing Authority\u2019s Eviction Processes, Comptroller Brad Lander said that eviction rates post conversion from NYCHA to PACT increased exponentially. One example of such a change<\/a> was the Ocean Bay apartments in Rockaway, Queens, where evictions have nearly tripled in the last three years due to the transition from public to private management.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However much Essence Development wants to change management, this decision is not one they can make. For this change to occur, a \u201cRequest for Proposal\u201d would<\/a> need to be submitted officially from NYCHA. Even though this has never happened and Section 9 rent remains the same, it has not stopped Essence from spreading misinformation to tenants to make them think privatization is automatic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What is the solution?<\/b><\/p>\n

The tenants at Chelsea-Elliott argue that the solution is not privatization, but rather investment. Tenants have fought and said, \u201cYou don\u2019t get to redevelop an area without having tenants involved.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is also why tenants have come together with other NYCHA buildings in other boroughs. The issue of privatization is not limited to only Chelsea or Manhattan, but can be seen all over New York as private housing capital seeks new opportunities for development.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As Mayor Zohran Mamdani is sworn in in January, residents at NYCHA buildings all over New York City are sending a message to his administration: defend tenants from the threat of privatization and invest in NYCHA. As one NYCHA tenant said, \u201c When you take care of the buildings, you are also taking care of health. This is about defending people who have lived here for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCONTRIBUTOR<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jacob<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NYCHA tenants gather at rally Developers want to turn New York City Housing Authority into privatized apartments; this…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":379147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[852,5229,7065,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,181889,39403,1439,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-379146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-affordable-housing","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-housing","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-tenant-organizing","18":"tag-tenant-rights","19":"tag-u-s","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115550026420163040","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}