New York Chinatown Residents Join Lower East Side Groups to Fight for Community Waterfront Development

6/25/08

New York City plans to transform the East River waterfront. While community-oriented space is critically needed for the Chinatown and the Lower East Side communities, developers are pressuring city planners to transform it into a space primarily for wealthy residents and tourists. There have also been barriers to meaningful participation in development and planning processes, threatening a loss of affordable housing, increased harassment of low income residents, threats to affordable services (with one example being the possible sale of Pathmark to a luxury developer), and a lack of open community space for youth and families free of over-policing and harassment.

Area to be developed

Community groups and tenants associations have formed a coalition, the O.U.R. Waterfront, to defend the situation of the area’s residents. Its slogans are NO to luxury development!, NO to gentrification and displacement!, and YES to community needs! It has further defined principles of open space, community-accessible piers and pavilions, jobs, long-term sustainability, and community involvement.

The Coalition has recently organized community events and press conferences to call attention to their issues.

“We love community art and public art that everyone can enjoy, but we believe that the City needs to be as enthusiastic and committed to meeting the real and many needs of low-income residents, who are facing the pressures that tourism, gentrification, and displacement bring to our communities,” said CAAAV Chinatown Tenants Union organizer Helena Wong.

The Coalition includes CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, Chinatown Tenants Union, Good Old Lower East Side, Public Housing Residents of the Lower East Side, the Urban Justice Center, Asian Americans For Equality, Hester Street Collaborative, and Lower East Side Ecology Center.

Comments on this Article? Go to our forums