Aging, Homelessness, Poverty: The Saga of Habitat for Humanity’s Haven Green vs The Elizabeth Street Garden

In my role as President of a struggling park, I witness too many elders who are: homeless and sleeping in the Park, or living in crammed and unsafe shelters, or those working elders who live in shelters as the only housing they can afford, or those who are housed, but lonely due to living in walk-ups that they can rarely or easily navigate to be with others, or the seniors who died because they were unable to get down stairs or the ones who died of loneliness for the same reason, or the evicted Italian grandmother who used to live in a building promised for an Italian Museum – instead sold for profit – (there was no where to find her a home nearby) or the Stonewall elders whose rents were hiked beyond their ability to pay, or those forced to leave the only community they know and helped build, or the seniors who don’t speak English and rely on this neighborhood’s ability to understand them, or the increasing numbers of elders scrounging in the garbage collecting cans to redeem for change in order to survive.

I believe it is a key part of my organization’s mission to speak up on their behalf.

– K Webster

*photographed people are blurred or taken from the back to protect identities.

“Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.”

Patti Smith

“When the doors finally open, more than a hundred lives will be, would have been permanently, changed for the better, and at least 50 human beings will not suffer the horrors of homelessness”

Ross Barkan, Craine’s NY

The Elizabeth Street Garden only became a garden when the lessee heard it was to be slated for affordable housing. Until then, it was his private parking lot, dog run and marketplace for luxury artifacts – rented (expensively) for movie shoots, commercials and fashion shoots for Vogue.

The Haven Green site was planned to be shared affordable housing with open green space. For over ten years many have waited for this senior housing to be built in Little Italy. Some died waiting for it.

Instead we are offered ‘housing’ in as yet unvetted, and some contested, places which will take years to build, if it is built at all. And a chilling effect on any reputable organization willing to risk ten years to (possibly) build affordable housing.

Meanwhile, the crushing lack of affordable housing, homelessness, and elder poverty rage on.

– Applications for affordable senior housing in NYC are over 520,000 and growing.
-We had almost 93,000 homeless New Yorkers in December.
– The number of single adults ages 65+ in the city’s main shelter system more than doubled from 2014 to 2022.
– Poverty rates for older adults: Manhattan 16.3%. AARP

-Citywide, the number of older adults living in poverty surged by 40.9 percent over the past decade. Overall, 18.4 percent of the city’s older adults live in poverty. Center for an Urban Future
-65% of older New Yorkers surveyed live on less than $15,000 a year. 32% don’t receive social security. One in five older women live below the poverty level”. LiveOnNY

Speaker Adrienne Adams:

“Amidst a severe housing and affordability crisis, Mayor Adams’ First Deputy Mayor Mastro, and their administration have betrayed New Yorkers who are in desperate need of affordable homes. Their political interference to stop the building of Haven Green’s 123 units of deeply affordable housing for older adults, with 14,000 square feet of public space, is yet another example of this mayoral administration’s capitulation to special interests.

This shows the Mayor’s Charter Revision Commission to be the height of hypocrisy and a sham for ignoring the role mayoral administrations play in obstructing new housing for New Yorkers. The Mayor is not only overturning a housing approval by the Council from six years ago, but also denying homes to older adults, as he fails to address our housing crisis with this decision.”

Large Incomes. Meager Affordable Housing Built in CB2

-Median household income in 2022 was $165,380, about 113% more than citywide median household income ($77,550)
-Over the last decade, 1,453 units were built in [CB2]. 92% were market rate. 7% income-targeted.

ESG supporters comments

“It’s very whimsical” “wonderful wonderland.” CB2 member: “Our Belgian blocks/cobblestones are our contribution [instead of affordable housing]” “lives in Midtown but visits the beloved urban oasis frequently.”
“I think that culture of care is something that kind of is missing from a lot of spaces in our world” “Losing this garden is tantamount to “community and ethnic cleansing [to applause] ” “My dog loves this place” “There will not be one blade of grass in the garden that’s proposed”

Proponents

Advocates are well-housed preservationists, movie stars, photographers, ‘radical’ musicians, housed individuals (some in protected affordable housing). Some major media reporters, for-profit real estate entities and nearby recent upscaled shops. Vocal supporters with PR firms, the lessees who charge handsomely to use this city-owned space for movies and fashion shoots (see Vogue), fluent in English, and those with housing affordable to them (whether adjacent $3.5 million condos or the affordable housing abutting this site, and [problematically] a NYT article using children who had little chance of hearing why an affordable housing/shared open space might be desirable (“your grandmother will be able to stay nearby”?).

One prominent newspaper took a reporter off the story when the Garden found a Tweet that seemed too sympathetic to the housing.

How does the preservation of a city-owned site, solely for a garden, sound to those who are in desperate need of accessible housing they can afford?

What reporters climbed the stairs of fourth floor walk-ups or went into the shelters here to find out? To ask for their views?

What of the elders who don’t speak English, who if offered housing at all, are offered it in another borough, away from communities they built and the languages they speak?

What of the elders with those poles across their backs swinging huge plastic garbage bags full of painstakingly collected bottles from the trash?

Or those elders living in shelters, or elders who’ve lived here before it became fashionable who can no longer get down the 4 flights of stairs? Or Puerto Rican, Italian and Dominican elders who were pushed out of Little Italy by the gentrification brought by many who support “only a garden” without affordable housing?

Intimidation

Or those who could not withstand the booing they were greeted with when did they openly ask for Haven Green’s affordable housing? Or greeted with suspicion, like the Chinese elders who came in support of funding for greater affordability – described as being “bussed in”? Or the father of Black children who wanted to support the housing but left without speaking as the well-heeled crowd booed anyone in favor of it? Or the Chinese elders who don’t speak English, who if offered housing at all, are offered it in another borough away from their communities and the language they speak?

What of those for whom it is already too late?:

86 year old Adele Sarno whose landlord evicted her from Grand Street home of 50 years, the elderly woman who died from smoke inhalation in a fire in a 4^th floor walkup on Mott Street. Or a former CB2 member, Tom, pleading with his colleagues to build housing as he was getting priced out of his home (now passed away). Or the Stonewall elders who survived the AIDS epidemic and Covid, now trying to survive the housing crisis. Or the Gay -Rights activist: “I live in a six-floor walkup, and for the past year and a half, I’ve been in court with my new landlord.” Or in the very first meeting in 2014? on this: the Italian woman and her grandson who, shaking, asked for housing since her husband could no longer get downstairs – after a room full of supporters with a power point presentation, signs, and a movie star in a PR short film told us it was for the best. Or the 89 year old volunteer caretaker of a beautiful GreenThumb garden two blocks from this site who found affordable housing in upper Manhattan but must take an hour long bus ride (each way) almost daily to get to his former neighborhood, using a walker – despite his heart condition.

The view from a former homeless person:

“I think people usually use the term ‘homelessness’ without ever really being able to understand what it means…the single worst bodily aspect of homelessness is exhaustion…sleep-deprivation, hunger, and a constant need to remain on the move… finding somewhere to simply be…nowhere that offers dryness, safety, cleanliness, warmth and comfort…

but…the real and deepest damage of homelessness: the loneliness……It’s the experience of being utterly unwanted, of your very presence being an undesirable commodity in all places and all situations. Wherever you are, as a homeless person, you are unwelcome.”

– Rachel Moran, Paid For

You may see Versailles.

But all I hear is: “Let them eat cake”.

K Webster