Our Letter to Mayor Mamdani

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FEC Tenants Against Demolition

Representing the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea public housing residents against NYCHA and Related Companies' Demolition Proposal.


February 2, 2026


Dear Mayor Mamdani,

Congratulations on your recent election as Mayor of New York City. We recognize the immense challenges ahead and wish you success as you take on the responsibility of serving all New Yorkers. We hope your administration will address the urgent needs of working-class and low-income communities.

We are writing to introduce the FEC Tenants Against Demolition formally, our organizing body is composed of residents of the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses. We are a deeply rooted, intergenerational, ethnically diverse, and immigrant public housing community in Chelsea that is firmly opposed to NYCHA’s proposed demolition and privatization of our developments under the PACT program, in partnership with Related Companies and Essence Development.

For more than three years, we have organized alongside our community to stop this harmful plan, which threatens to dismantle stable public housing and displace our community.

Key facts NYCHA and its partners continue to ignore:

  • Two separate NYCHA developments have been improperly linked as one to facilitate demolition, despite each having its own history, infrastructure, and resident associations. 

  • The proposal would demolish 22 buildings, destroying 2,056 large family-sized apartments and directly impacting over 4,000 residents.

  • NYCHA claims resident support based on a non-legally binding survey in which:

    • Only 550 residents selected “New Construction” with the word “demolition” not used.

    • This represents just 16% of authorized residents across both developments (3,388 total).

  • This does not constitute meaningful resident participation, engagement, or consent.

In contrast:

  • FEC Tenants Against Demolition submitted a petition with 949 resident signatures opposing demolition to NYCHA and all relevant elected officials.

  • That number has now grown to over 1,000 resident signatures, clearly demonstrating overwhelming opposition.

  • Despite this, NYCHA is proceeding against the will of residents, with elected officials aligning with private developers rather than their constituents.

We have exhausted every democratic channel available:

  • Community Board 4 hearings,

  • City Council Committee on Public Housing hearings,

  • NYCHA Board and Annual Final Draft Plan Meetings,

  • Environmental Impact Statement meetings,

  • Press conferences, rallies, and protests.

At every forum, anti-demolition residents have consistently been the majority.

NYCHA’s core justifications have collapsed:

  • NYCHA and its development partners repeatedly claimed our buildings were “falling apart.”  In a letter to Community Board 4, Jamar Adams (Founder, Essence Development) and Jonathan Gouveia (EVP, NYCHA Real Estate) admitted that our buildings are structurally sound.

  • Residents were also misled about costs. We were told rehabilitation would be more expensive than demolition, $1.144 billion to  $1.9 billion, and now 2.4 billion is now the estimated cost of demolition. 

Demolishing and converting any NYCHA developments via the PACT program has harmful implications for the future of public housing in New York City.  Once converted to private management under the PACT program, residents continue to highlight the same unresolved issues and are losing the security they once had under their public housing section 9 lease.  The 2024 Audit report on NYCHA’s eviction processes conducted by the comptroller's office documented an increase in evictions under the PACT program as compared to section 9 NYCHA developments, leading to an increase in housing insecurity amongst residents.

Public housing is a crucial resource for low to moderate-income New Yorkers and has been for many decades. We are urging you to support our vision for keeping our community intact as NYCHA buildings and their land need to remain public. It’s what makes New York a liveable city for many low to moderate-income New Yorkers. Our NYCHA community is the only true affordable housing we have left in the city.  

We are asking you to stand with us as a growing number of New Yorkers are doing, and oppose this demolition and privatization plan.  We stand in coalition with our Chelsea community, who support our vision, such as Save Chelsea Public Housing and the Chelsea Neighbors Coalition.

We are looking forward to a response and the opportunity to introduce you to our community.

Sincerely,

FEC (Fulton & Elliott-Chelsea Houses) Tenants Against Demolition

stopfecdemolition@gmail.com

Cc:

Leila Bozorg

Cea Weaver