What NY’s Congressional Primary Candidates Have Said About NYCHA

 In several Congressional races, how best to continue funding, maintaining and improving conditions at the city’s more than 300 public housing developments have become hot-button issues.

New York is getting ready for another primary election Tuesday, with races for State Senate, State Assembly, Congress and some judicial positions on the ballot. 

In several Congressional races across the city, candidates’ stances on how best to continue funding, maintaining and improving conditions at the city’s more than 300 public housing developments have become hot-button issues. 

The federal government provides just over two-thirds of the New York City Housing Authority’s operating budget, meaning lawmakers in Washington have a significant role in allocating resources for the cash-strapped housing authority. 

For candidates in Congressional District 12, which covers Chelsea and parts of the Upper West Side, there’s the question of how to handle the stalled redevelopment project at the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses—plans which have been halted twice by courts. 

In District 13, which covers Harlem, northern Manhattan, and parts of the Bronx, the two leading Democratic candidates—longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat and challenger Darializa Avila Chevalier—went head-to-head in a heated debate on June 16, trading jabs and policy disagreements. 

East of that, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is facing a challenger vying to represent District 14, which covers the Bronx and parts of Queens. Her opponent, Marty Dolan, is pitching a plan he says would allow NYCHA residents to have more equity in their homes.

Here’s a roundup of the candidates’ plans NYCHA communities.

NY-12: The future of Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses 

Several candidates remain in a highly competitive race to represent the city’s 12th district, which contains some of Manhattan’s most affluent destinations, like Hudson Yards, Billionaires’ Row and Museum Mile. 

The district is currently represented by retiring Jerry Nadler, and covers neighborhoods including Morningside Heights, Chelsea, Roosevelt Island, Central Park and Times Square. The candidates running are Micah Lasher, Alex Bores, Jack Schlossberg, George Conway, Nina Schwalbe, Christopher Diep, Laura Dunn and Patrick Timmins. 

But four in particular are leading the race: Lasher, a current assemblyman often dubbed the “protege” of the district’s current representative; Bores, also a current assemblyman representing Manhattan’s east side; Schlossberg, a social media commentator and grandson of John F. Kennedy, and Conway, a lawyer whose platform includes a strong commitment to defeating “Trumpism.”

Between pencil tall skyscrapers encasing some of the country’s wealthiest homes, stand the brick buildings of Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses, a collection of public housing developments built between the 1940s and 1960s that, after decades of government underfunding, are now in a state of such decay with leaks, mold and asbestos that the city estimated they required nearly $1 billion in repairs in 2023. 

Over 4,500 residents who live at Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea are ensnared in a policy debate now familiar to many public housing residents: NYCHA’s push to convert thousands of its developments into the management of private companies in order to qualify for additional federal funding, which the housing authority desperately needs to chip away at its $78 billion repairs backlog.

When NYCHA forms a partnership with a private company, the development converts its funding from the Section 9 program to another federal program called Section 8, which comes with a higher government subsidy. NYCHA officials say this is a quicker and more stable route to paying for needed repairs than keeping apartments in Section 9, which Congress fails to fund adequately (and which Republicans in Washington are unlikely to boost resources for in the future). 

So far, NYCHA has converted more than 31,000 of its apartments to Section 8 under this initiative, known locally as the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT), including those at the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses. 

The redevelopment plan there calls for demolishing the existing developments, a total of 2,056 apartments, and replacing them with brand new apartments in six high-rise buildings, which all residents will have a right to move into once they open. 

New construction, expected to take three to four years once shovels hit the ground, will also include 2,500 market-rate apartments and 1,000 affordable units. Most of the new buildings will be built before old ones are demolished, meaning most residents will stay in their current homes until the replacements open. 

But residents in two buildings—including a senior-only residence called Chelsea Addition—have been asked to leave their apartments and relocate temporarily to new ones nearby to make room for construction. 

The plan has, for years, spurred fierce debate among tenants, some who support it and others who say they want NYCHA to repair the existing buildings instead. Dozens of seniors declared they’re not moving, and tenants and advocates who oppose the demolition have filed several lawsuits.  

Courts have twice paused plans for the project, most recently on June 11, when a judge issued a temporary restraining order on the project which will stay in effect until the court hears appeal—anywhere from two weeks to six months from now, according to organizers.

Candidates looking to represent the district in Congress have differing opinions on how to handle the repairs. 

“I want to get the federal government back, reinvesting in our public housing,” Assemblyman Lasher said in a debate on June 9. 

He said he’s in favor of the current redevelopment plan as he believes it’s the only way to ensure the homes remain livable. “I don’t think anyone wants to have gotten to the place we’re in,” Lasher said in response to a social policy researcher who asked about his stance on the project in a video posted to X a day later. “I think we’re at a crisis point at Fulton and Chelsea-Elliott and I think the plan on the table is the only viable path forward.”

Schlossberg has positioned himself with the seniors who refuse to budge. In March, he released a video where he’s seen meeting residents of Chelsea Addition, the senior-only building where tenants are being relocated during renovations. 

“This building is home to an elderly community. They should not be forced out of their homes,” he said. “We need to stop the demolition and get the private money out of here.” 

Instead, Schlossberg proposes forming what he calls the “Fix it Now Caucus,” which would aim to speed up repairs at NYCHA buildings, though his campaign website contains little detail on how.

“I want to make sure we protect and fully fund Section 9 here in New York City,” Schlossberg said in an April interview with West Side Rag. “We don’t have to choose between development and public housing.”

As for the other candidates, in an interview with the New York Editorial Board, Bores said he thinks “projects like that can be a great thing,” but insisted “they have to be approved by the residents, and I have concerns about the vote that was held among the residents,” at Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea.  

Schwalbe has positioned herself against the demolition, posting videos meetings with residents who are leading the legal opposition and accompanying them to court. 

NY-13: Darializa neck-to-neck with five-time incumbent 

The race for NY-13 has been heating up between the two leading Democratic candidates: current district Rep. Espaillat, a five-term incumbent, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, a first-time candidate backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America. 

According to a Mercury Public Affairs poll released on Friday afternoon, Espaillat was leading the race, and the candidates were separated by a margin of about 8 percent.

In a punchy debate on June 16, the two touched on their ideas for addressing NYCHA’s capital repair backlogs and future funding. Each was asked if they support programs like PACT—as well as the newer Public Housing Preservation Trust—which convert public housing funding from Section 9 to Section 8.

Chevalier said she doesn’t support the conversions because she believes there is a “need to make sure that public housing remains public,” calling for continued support for NYCHA campuses still in Section 9, so that funding for those apartments doesn’t shrink even more.

Incumbent Rep. Espaillat highlighted NYCHA’s dire need of renovation funds. “In order to preserve the conditions of the apartment, you have to do the envelope of the building,” he said. “And that, of course, requires capital dollars.”

To raise those dollars, he advocates for redistributing federal funds allocated for ICE, increasing the number of Section 8 vouchers available, and strengthening the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency that primarily funds NYCHA and which the Trump administration wants to cut funding for.

“HUD also has to be rescued because right now it’s being dismantled by the Trump administration,” Espaillat said during the debate. 

Chevalier says she supports the Green New Deal for Public Housing, a plan proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Delia Ramirez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, which would invest up to $234 billion over 10 years to transition all of the country’s public housing stock into zero-carbon homes.

“This is the district with the most public housing units in the country. We need to actually make sure that we are delivering dignified housing for them,” Chevalier said in the debate. “We need to also make sure that we are creating pathways to home ownership.”

NY-14: AOC faces a challenger (again) 

Chevalier isn’t the only candidate proposing home equity options for NYCHA residents. 

Marty Dolan, a former Wall Street insurance executive and self-described “business doctor,” is running against District 14 incumbent Ocasio-Cortez for the second time, after losing to her in 2022 for the seat, which spans Queens and the Bronx.

On May 30, Dolan spoke to a small crowd of NYCHA residents and tenant association leaders at an event organized by residents, and proposed his plan, called “Getting REAL with the Projects,” which he says would utilize New York City’s pension funds to provide NYCHA residents with money they could put toward home ownership opportunities. 

“They’re supposed to do things that are good for New York,” he said, of the city’s five pension plans. “If they had to issue 2,000 or 3,000 mortgages that were 50 percent loan-to-value mortgages, that had a guarantee against them, that’s nothing. They could do that very easily.”

Dolan said his plan would provide NYCHA residents with $75,000 they could put toward either buying their current apartments or investing in a new mortgage in the private market. He pointed to a regulation within the federal Section 9 program, titled Part 964, which states that residents should have access to homeownership opportunities.

Under current regulations, NYCHA residents have few options to buy the properties they rent. One is through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Homes program, which launched after the administration transferred more than 700 homes to NYCHA in the late 1970s. The housing authority has helped some 300 residents become owners of the properties in the decades since. 

Dolan acknowledged that it would be difficult to manage buildings under his plan, since individual units would fall under different ownership. If enough residents were interested, he suggested, they could use the home equity funds from the initiative to move into a new building where each could own a unit.

Carmen Quinones, a resident and former president of the tenant association at Frederick Douglass Houses in the Upper West Side, told City Limits she endorses Dolan for the seat because, “he’s been there for us when he wasn’t running for anything.”

A pathway toward homeownership is an idea that appeals to her, she said. “I’ve been here 40 years, I’ve paid for this apartment over and over and over. My mother had this apartment before me,” Quinones said.

The incumbent, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, currently leads the race by a landslide, polls show. She’s also leading polls as a potential presidential candidate in 2028. 

When it comes to NYCHA, she introduced the Green New Deal for Public Housing, which would provide funding to electrify and secure renewable energy sources, like solar panels, for all public housing buildings across the country. The deal would create up to 14,000 jobs per year while reducing carbon emissions, its sponsors say.  

In a 2024 New York Times op-ed, Ocasio-Cortez warned about the risks of the federal government outsourcing development of its housing stock to private markets and companies, and advocated for legislation that would build more social housing—affordable homes built by the government. She also pushed to repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which prevents construction of new public housing units.

The primary election will take place Tuesday, June 23. You can check to see if you’re registered to vote here, and find your poll site information here.

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