Foe of Plan to Tear Down Elliott-Chelsea Houses Certified as Winner after Bitter Tenants’ Battle
NYCHA finally certified Renee Keitt as the winner of the hotly contested battle for president of the Elliott-Chelsea Houses Tenants Association over Darlene Waters. The certification came 17 days after Keitt won a four vote victor over the longtime incumbent.
| 17 Jan 2025 | 01:35
Seventeen days after Renee Keitt appeared to win a narrow four-vote victory over longtime incumbent president of the Elliott-Chelsea Housing Tenants Association, NYCHA has certified Keitt’s win. (
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The Adams’ Administration wants to get the city out of the landlord business and has a plan to turnover the Elliott-Chelsea Houses to a private developer who would tear down and rebuild on the site where the complex now stands in the West 20s with a mixture of low income, middle class and luxury apartments. (
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An opponent of the multi-billion-dollar plan to tear down the Elliott-Chelsea Houses and rebuild them as a mix of low-income, middle class and luxury housing has been elected president of the development’s tenant association, he New York City Housing Authority ruled.
NYCHA rejected a demand by the incumbent, Darlene Waters, to rerun the election, which she lost by four votes on January 2, and declared the challenger, Renee Keitt, the winner.
Keitt had centered her campaign on opposition to the rebuilding plan, which Mayor Adams has hailed as a potential model for restoring public housing in New York City. The city has portrayed tenant support as a centerpiece of the plan, but Keitt argued that tenants were not kept well informed.
Walters, the long time tenant leader, had been a strong advocate for the redevelopment, in which a private developer would rebuild the entire 20 building campus. The city said virtually all of the present tenants would move directly from their present apartments to new apartments built as a first phase of the project on vacant land within the campus.
In later phases, the current buildings, which date back decades, would be torn down and replaced with luxury and middle-class housing.
On January 2 Keitt defeated Waters 70 to 66. Waters quickly protested that the election was tainted by flyers from Keitt’s campaign that gave the wrong date for the election, thus suppressing the vote.
Keitt said this was “absurd,” and “after careful review,” the housing authority rejected the claim.
“The facts do not warrant overturning the election,” NYCHA said. “Therefore, the protest has been denied, and the election will be certified.”
In her campaign, Keitt spoke about how she grew up in the Elliot Chelsea Houses and, like many residents, depended on the apartments to maintain a residence in Manhattan. She is a food service worker and an active community gardener at locations including Chencita’s Garden, Kelly Street Garden and Lydia’s magic Garden.
The election is of importance far beyond the 20-building low-income housing development in the west 20’s. When it was built in the 60’s and 70’s the project was crammed between the Hudson rail yards to the north, the deteriorating docklands to the west and the meatpacking district to the south, where meat was still packed.
But now it sits on some of the most valuable real estate on the planet, just east of the High Line.
The city wants to capture that value, and address the deteriorating condition of the Elliot-Chelsea Houses, by allowing a private developer to demolish the complex and cram in many more new units in a mix of low income and more expensive housing on the same footprint.
Mayor Adams has said he would like this to be a model for repairing all the deteriorating public housing in New York and reduce the city’s profile as a landlord.
“This plan was always the dominant issue in the election,” said Keitt’s lawyer, Charles Weinstock, “and Ms. Waters one of its most ardent supporters.” Keitt campaigned against the redevelopment.
The city and the developers, led by Related Companies, have said they believed they had strong tenant support. So, the defeat of Waters would be a setback for the plan, although how big a setback is uncertain.
“No doubt, Ms. Water is frustrated by her loss to Ms. Keitt,” Weinstock wrote to NYCHA asking that the election of Keitt be affirmed.
“But her argument–that a single clerical error in a small percentage of Ms. Keitt’s campaign materials, quickly corrected, constitutes ‘a deliberate effort to confuse voters’ and requires NYCHA to nullify her election victory–is absurd.”
The error was made by a third-party printer and the inaccurate flyers, in Spanish, were sent to residents that Keitt’s campaign viewed as likely to support her, Weinstock said.
“Ms. Waters provided no evidence that she was prejudiced by the error,” Weinstock argued. “The campaign distributed these cards to a list of residents who had recently signed a petition opposing NYCHA’s plan to demolish the Elliott-Chelsea Houses–in other words people who were already warmly disposed toward Ms. Keitt, who also opposed the demolition plan.”
Weinstock added: “It’s far more likely that the errors depressed the turnout for Ms. Keitt than Ms. Waters.”
The correct date for the vote was widely disseminated, including by the tenant association itself, Weinstock noted. “In addition,” he said, “just before the election, the Campaign made calls to the same residents it had given the uncorrected cards to–those who had signed the anti-demolition petition–and told them the correct day to vote.”
NYCHA delayed certification of Keitt’s victory after Waters protested.
The city has said that all residents of Elliott-Chelsea Houses will be offered apartments in the new buildings. Most will be able to remain in their present apartments while the first of the new buildings are built, the city and the developers have said.