Keep public housing public
On 9 April 2025, six New York City Housing Authority tenants and one Chelsea resident filed an updated Article 78 Petition, seeking a judicial review of Agency and City decisions to put all of the public housing stock in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan into privatisation, which would ultimately lead to their complete demolition.
The legal action, Weaver, et al., v. NYCHA, et al., is a refiling of a prior Article 78, which was dismissed without prejudice. The judge in the prior case issued a legal opinion that the issue was not yet ripe for review, though the prior petitioners disagreed. For lack of legal representation, we were unable to appeal the decision.
The updated refiling was filed pro se, and it included a City Charter § 1109 request for a preliminary judicial inquiry to examine why Agency and City officials appeared to give the RAD/PACT Landlord, a joint-venture including The Related Companies, an apparent exemption to the ULURP Process, which is a formal land use review procedure required when real estate development projects reach a certain scale or impact, when projects involve the disposition of City real property, or when projects involve public housing.
State Sen. Julia Salazar (DSA-Bushwick) was a no-show at her own fundraiser, which was ultimately cancelled due to our scheduled protest. Her supporters knew not to show up, or else their privatisation record on public housing would be exposed.
It appears that, yet again, the NYC DSA have their eyes on another scheme that would lead to a wholesale end of Section 9 public housing, the sole bedrock of true housing security in gentrified New York City.
Their latest artifice is the NYCHA Preservation Trust, a plan concocted by NYCHA CEO Gregory Russ with the support of then Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) and current Mayor Eric Adams (D-New York City). We know that the DSA, led by State Sen. Julia Salazar (DSA-Brooklyn) and campaign consultant Cea Weaver have been apparently negotiating with the Real Estate Board of New York for passage of alleged anti-eviction legislation that some portray as a roll-back of landmark rent laws passed in 2018. It’s been reported that Ms. Weaver was complaining that REBNY would not support for the “Good Cause” legislation in exchange for an extension of the corrupt and racist 421-a luxury real estate development tax abatement programme. Because the State Sen. Salazar and other DSA leadership have attacked autonomous organisers of public housing residents, it appears that the DSA may be using passage of the Preservation Trust as an inducement to get REBNY’s support for the Good Cause legislation.
Since his election, Mayor Adams has turned out to be a delusional, neoconservative nightmare, supporting the return of racist Broken Windows policing tactics and an end to all pandemic mitigations. It’s not known why the DSA would negotiate to support Mayor Adams’ real estate agenda, unless, perhaps, there was corruption involved ?
Join us to protest State Sen. Julia Salazar (DSA-Brooklyn) at her apartment on Monday night. Please bring supplies and prepare to spend the night outside. We plan to construct a homeless camp to demonstrate the consequences of displacement for public housing residents.
Date : Monday, 30 May 2022
Start Time : Meet at 6 pm
Place : 577 Van Buren St., Brooklyn
The last, few remaining members of Fight For NYCHA have filed a lawsuit as individuals to stop the unlawful RAD/PACT conversions taking place at NYCHA. The lawsuit, which takes the form of an Article 78 petition, reveals several ways that the City of New York, the Mayor, NYCHA, and the CEO of NYCHA are breaking the laws.
The lawsuit was filed pro se, meaning, we had no attorney represent us in the filing. Because this lawsuit is very complex, we need to hire an attorney. After we were turned-down by nonprofit legal groups, we had no choice but to raise money to hire experienced private legal counsel. As a result, we have set a goal of raising $15,000 from our Go Fund Me campaign to dedicate solely to legal expenses.
A generous donor has come forward to offer to match the first $1,500 in donations to our Legal Expense Fund. No matter the size of your contribution, it will be matched by our Angel Donor up to the first $1,500.
Fighting to save NYCHA is part of the larger struggle for social, legal, and economic justice. Your donation will empower tenants, who are on the front lines of a social movement to keep people from being displaced from public housing and to stop the liquidation of strategic, public assets. Donate to the Fight For NYCHA Legal Expense Fund now.
Greetings NYCHA Residents, we are Anonymous.
Since we sent our last message to you, we have been disappointed in your response.
The politicians you sided with are about to steal your homes and give them away to Stephen Ross, a billionaire supporter of Trump’s White nationalist agenda.
Already, we have heard that NYCHA residents are being denied pandemic rental assistance and are having trouble getting their lease renewals. With the eviction moratorium ending today, you have fewer protections.
There’s no way that Stephen Ross is going to fix your apartments without a price. He no doubt plans to bulldoze your homes the way lands get cleared elsewhere.
We’ve also learned that many lawyers are afraid to sue Eric Adams and NYCHA to stop RAD/PACT conversions, because they know that judges won’t hold the City of New York and NYCHA accountable. Behind your back, lawyers admit they protect corruption.
The only way you are going to keep your homes is for you to fight for them.
We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.
On the third day of being in office, Mayor Eric Adams (D-New York City) faced a barrage of criticism in a report published in the Guardian. He was exposed for being personality-driven instead of policy-driven. He was expected to keep exploiting identity to his personal advantage over helping the communities, which elected him to office. And he was expected to continue the sell-out of public housing.
Mayor Adams’ critics spanned across the focal points in progressive politics, from the Working Families Party to institutional nonprofit groups, like Make The Road New York.
“His focus is going to be on his big-money donors. That’s been his track record all along. That’s not a secret,” said a member of Fight For NYCHA.
Critics of Mayor Adams were validated, in part, by questionable appointments made by Mayor Adams to top administration roles : scandal-tarred Philip Banks III to serve as deputy mayor for public safety ; Bernard Adams, the mayor’s younger brother, to serve as deputy commissioner at the NYPD ; and Brooklyn political-fixer Frank Carone to serve as his chief of staff.
The appearance that Mayor Adams was rewarding his supporters with patronage jobs came as Mayor Adams attacked individuals in front-line service industries, like restaurants, as “low-skill workers.”
Mayor Adams faced new questions about his ethical judgment after it was revealed that his transition team included an officer for one of the landlords of the Bronx apartment building that was the site for a deadly fire last week-end. Rick Gropper is an officer of the Camber Property Group, one of the owners of the apartment building’s operating company, Bronx Park Phase III Preservation LLC.
In the face of the obvious conflict-of-interest, Mayor Adams has promised to “investigate” the cause of the fire at one of the properties of one of his key political supporters.
Many are worried that, as Mayor Adams tries to do damage control over so many scandals and controversies, he’ll be unfocused to formulate sound public health policy in the face of the uncontrolled Coronavirus pandemic. In a show of no-confidence, hundreds of public school students walked out on classes on Tuesday to highlight unsafe conditions in schools ; they are calling for a remote education option until the Omicron variant outbreak subsides.
For almost three years, we tried to organize public housing tenants to stop the RAD and PACT conversions of NYCHA public housing. We were undermined by politicians and political candidates, nonprofit groups, lawyers, and even residents themselves, who put self interest ahead of the well being of our communities.
The time for collective organizing was barely taking off before it came to an end.
As a result, Mayor Bill de Blasio has given away Fulton Houses, Elliott Houses, Chelsea Houses, and the Chelsea Annex to the Hudson Yards developer and Trump billionaire donor, Stephen Ross.
Hudson Yards apparently wants to expand and is planning to annex public housing in order to build more luxury housing in Chelsea. As you know, the High Line Park, Chelsea Market, and Hudson River Park are amenities that the élites want for themselves. They don’t want public housing residents in their neighborhood.
We predict the Hudson Yards take-over will lead to evictions, as have happened following other RAD and PACT conversions. If you are beginning to get worried, then maybe it’s time you really started working collectively with those, who have been rejected, slighted, and defamed by politicians and the political candidates. After all, the leaders you have been listening to have led you to this point. The people, who you were not listening to, are still fighting.
The time to correct your course is very limited. It’s up to you to work together to fight for a future that fully-funds NYCHA, because Eric Adams promises to be more of the same.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) was busted by NBC News in an investigation one year after the “defund the police” movement led to his promise to cut $1 billion from the budget of the New York Police Department and to use that funding stream, instead, to make “some transformative changes at the department,” in the words of Mayor de Blasio’s chief enabler, Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Chelsea).
Not only did the $1 billion cut made in June 2020 never materialise, but an additional $200 million was added to the NYPD budget in June 2021, according to NBC News.
Last year, outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city council moved to cut roughly $1 billion from the police’s $6 billion budget and invest it in youth and social services. De Blasio wrote in a tweet then that “Our young people need to be reached, not policed.” But just a year later, officials adopted the city’s largest budget ever, at $98.7 billion, for fiscal year 2022, which included a $200 million increase for police spending.
In New York City, the #DefundTheNYPD movement, like respective movements across the nation, grew out of the George Floyd anti-racism protests in 2020. Mayor de Blasio promised to use the money to help youths and other social service programs. As Mayor de Blasio’s term in office comes to an end, nobody knows what happened to his broken promises for funding racial and social justice.
Mayor de Blasio has been accused of using his bi-racial family to co-opt the language of social movements and as a political cover to defend or expand race-based policing — even as he has rejected calls to hold the NYPD accountable for homicides and other acts of brutality committed by the police. As NBC News noted, Mayor de Blasio said, “Our young people need to be reached, not policed.” But that turned out to be another one of his lies. In a review of Mayor de Blasio’s two terms in office, the New York Daily News reported that Mayor de Blasio leaves behind a legacy of corruption and neglect on housing issues.
Fight For NYCHA have long argued that sources of Government funding could be found to fully-fund NYCHA. For decades, the racist divestment of public housing led to a gargantuan deficit in NYCHA’s capital repairs budget. Our funding ideas were workshopped and packaged as a People’s Budget that has been updated over time. One of the items in our People’s Budget was to defund the NYPD by $2 billion and to use that money to bond the capital repairs at NYCHA.
Duplicitous politicians and nonprofit groups continue to say they care about NYCHA, but then they corruptly take advantage of the lack of funding to benefit their donors. As Mayor de Blasio begins to reportedly wage a campaign for New York governor, he has awarded the RAD/PACT conversion at Fulton Houses and Elliott-Chelsea to the Trump billionaire backer and Hudson Yards developer, Stephen Ross.
Because protests have not worked, the last few members of Fight For NYCHA have sued Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City), the City of New York, NYCHA CEO Greg Russ, and NYCHA to stop the RAD/PACT privatisation of public housing !
It’s been almost three years since Fight For NYCHA was formed. In that time, the activism to save public housing in New York City has been beset by division, sectarian politics, ego, obfuscation, and subversion. We had AOC refuse to stand-up to Mayor de Blasio’s use of RAD/PACT and the Blueprint to sell-out NYCHA. We had other Electeds approve of the sell-out of public housing, and they never faced any consequence for having participated in the sell-out of public housing. We had socialists and other sectarian groups promote the use of Section 8 vouchers to the disadvantage of public housing residents, which was shameful and a form of betrayal, because that was certainly no way to show class solidarity. Rather than confront Mayor de Blasio, some activists formed YouTube talk shows to promote themselves. Other groups, like Movement School, sought to use NYCHA activism as a cover for membership drives that was entirely divorced from a commitment to an outcome to saving Section 9 public housing. We also endured selfish political candidates, seeking to use NYCHA issues for their political campaigns, only to turn their backs once their campaigns floundered. Other political candidates, like Marni Halasa, used NYCHA activism for press clips ; it didn’t matter that she was leading/misleading residents in the wrong direction. All that mattered were her media mentions.
The lawsuit we filed was largely based on the lawsuit filed by Beep Gale Bewer (D-Manhattan) to stop the infill development at Holmes Tower, which she won after Mayor de Blasio backtracked from the unlawful plans for the real estate development in the Upper East Side.
We had no choice but to file this lawsuit after activism to mobilise public housing residents failed in New York City due to many “community groups” and nonprofit orgs running interference for Mayor de Blasio and other corrupt Electeds. Remember how one nonprofit hosted Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) at a Black church in Brooklyn after it came to be known he supported the sell-out of public housing in Chelsea. Even after we exposed the truth of how some Socialist Democrats were collaborating with Mayor de Blasio in his scheme to end all Section 9 public housing, it came to a shock to many that it took direct action in the face of the DSA to put a halt to the Blueprint.
The lawsuit, filed as an Article 78 Petition, revealed that Mayor de Blasio’s implementation of RAD/PACT was illegal, since the way that Mayor de Blasio is rolling-out RAD/PACT conversions violate the City Charter and the New York State Public Housing Law. The City Charter and the Public Housing Law require large-scale projects, like RAD/PACT conversions, to be put through the ULURP Process. But Mayor de Blasio, NYCHA, CEO Russ, and the City of New York did not follow the laws. In respect of the RAD/PACT conversion of Fulton Houses and Elliott-Chelsea, the lawsuit made a showing that the de Blasio administration admitted that they decided to act outside of the ULURP Process.
As time passed, we knew that litigation, like this, would be our last resort, if social movement building failed in the face of sectarian opposition. We ask for support, as we make it clear that all other groups must set aside self-interest and self-promotion for the common good of all. And that means seeing to it that Section 9 public housing is saved from privatisation. This must be made a priority, at long last.
Date : Monday, Nov. 15
Time : 9:30 am
Place : Supreme Court, New York County, 60 Centre St., Room 130
Updated 12 Nov 2021 13:55 The Defendants have filed motions to dismiss our Article 78 petition. We need to work together to put a stop to RAD/PACT once and for all !
With corporate centrists U.S. Sen. Joseph Manchin (D-WV) and U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) opposing any racial-justice aspect to the domestic agenda of President Joseph Biden (D), the promise made by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) to fully-fund the backlog of capital repairs in the Nation’s public housing stock appears to be in jeopardy.
Sens. Manchin and Sinema have succeeded in cutting the much-reported $3,5 trillion Budget Reconciliation by almost one-half, a report published by the New York Times has claimed. The cuts came after U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA 07) agreed to scaling back President Biden’s domestic agenda to appease the corporate centrists in her own party.
Before the agreement to the cuts by U.S. Rep. Jayapal and other Democratic Party leaders, the texts from the Budget Reconciliation were expected to make whole the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, which faces estimates greater than $40 billion in its capital repairs budget to make up for decades of racist divestment.
Activists have had to take to kayaks to float out to Sen. Manchin’s yacht to beg him to support President Biden’s domestic agenda, and activists have followed Sen. Sinema into a restroom and confronted her aboard a flight and after its landing over similar demands.
Throughout, Majority Leader Schumer had refused to accept responsibility for the opposition coming from within his own caucus. Privately, members of Fight For NYCHA and a former affiliate coälition, NYCHA Is Not For Sale, have demanded that Majority Leader Schumer ditch the filibuster, or at least fire the Senate parliamentarian, since these acts would mean Majority Leader Schumer was going to bring discipline to his caucus and counter GOP obstructionism.
But Majority Leader Schumer has appeared content to allow fringe members of his own caucus to threaten President Biden’s domestic agenda, generally, and the long-overdue funding for NYCHA, in particular.
With Sens. Manchin and Sinema holding their own President hostage, and the President (and his Senate Majority Leader) seemingly helpless, others have been looking out for their own interests.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA 12) let U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA 43) replace U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY 07) as the author of the text of the funding bill for public housing, despite Majority Leader Schumer’s professed preference for U.S. Rep. Velázquez’s text.
The political jockeying is expected continue, as we learn whether U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14) will follow through with whispers of a primary challenge against Majority Leader Schumer in next year’s Midterm elections. In the months leading up to the passage of the Budget Reconciliation, U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez rejected calls for progressive gains in favour of allying with corporate Democratic Party leadership.
However, if the new National funding for public housing falls even one penny short of the $80 billion goal, public housing residents should not view any possible primary challenge by U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez against Majority Leader Schumer as an ends to saving Section 9 public housing from condemnation by neglect. Long ago, we saw U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez abandon without apology her own make-shift pubic housing bill. It’s important to note that AOC’s text to save public housing did nothing to stop the RAD/PACT or Blueprint sell-out of public housing. Few have forgotten that AOC even refused to take a stance on the privatisation of public housing at a Bronx town hall meeting.
Were U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to challenge Majority Leader Schumer, she would nominally be basing her primary campaign on the pretexte of the collapse of President Biden’s domestic agenda on Majority Leader Schumer’s watch. But her real aim would likely be to keep expanding her own political machine in New York State to serve herself.
Even before the Budget Reconciliation was passed, and then undermined, by Democrats, Democrats aligned with AOC were eager to use NYCHA’s financial woes as the basis for a complot to support the scheme by Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City) for a wholesale replacement of Section 9 public housing with Section 8 rental assistance vouchers that would have ended the New Deal promise of public housing.
Amidst the desperate machinations to profit from the obstructionism coming from within the Democratic Party, Majority Leader Schumer is likely making the political calculation that nobody will fault him for failing to enforce discipline within his own caucus, especially since not even AOC has appeared disciplined on saving NYCHA public housing.