About 26 elderly NYCHA residents are refusing to vacate their homes at a Chelsea complex slated for demolition, with one tenant warning, “They’re gonna have to knock this building down with me in it.’’
The residents of the senior-only building, one of 17 structures that make up the Fulton-Elliot Houses in the heart of the fashionable Manhattan neighborhood, are resisting the city’s relocation plan. Their move would clear the way for a $1.2 billion effort to tear down and rebuild the entire housing complex.
“I’m not going anywhere!” said 67-year-old Doris Ruffin, who has lived at Fulton-Elliot since 2002.
“They’re gonna have to knock this building down with me in it,” she told The Post.
Ruffin, who previously worked security at Columbia University and Yankee Stadium, was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. She was forced to leave her job and now has no kidney function, requiring dialysis three times each week.
When Ruffin first heard about the demolition proposal in 2021, she said the news initially overwhelmed her.
“At one point in time, I just gave up, and I said, ‘Whatever. If it happens, it happens,’” she said.
“But then I said to myself, ‘Why are you giving up so easy? You’re fighting cancer. You’re fighting with the dialysis. So why not fight for your home?’”
The city offered Ruffin a smaller NYCHA apartment elsewhere in the complex until her replacement unit is completed, a process not expected to finish until at least 2028.
But Ruffin, who uses a walker, said the apartments she was shown were significantly smaller and too narrow for her walker to pass through. She also raised concerns about her safety.
“It’s safe in this building,” she said. “In the other building that they wanted to send me to, that’s not safe at all.”
She also pointed to differences between the buildings’ elevators. In her current residence, she said, the doors open automatically. The building she was offered has just one elevator, and residents must pull the door open themselves.
The Fulton-Elliot demolition is part of a massive public-private housing redevelopment project expected to begin this year. Since the plan was first announced in 2021, it has drawn opposition from City Hall critics, NYCHA tenants and neighborhood activists.
The existing buildings were judged to be in such poor condition that the city partnered with private developer Related Companies to replace all 2,056 apartments. The redevelopment would also add 3,000 mixed-income and market-rate units.
Related and city officials have emphasized that 96% of current tenants will be able to remain in place until their newly built apartments are ready. The senior-only Chelsea Addition, however, is among the 4% of residents who must move before construction can proceed.
“They thought they were vulnerable, and they thought they were dumb,” said George Weaver, a Fulton Houses resident and activist opposed to the demolition.
“And let me tell you about them seniors: They’re well-organized, and they’re not dumb,” he said of his neighbors.
A NYCHA representative said relocating residents from Chelsea Addition was considered the most practical option because larger buildings elsewhere in the complex house a “substantial population” of seniors.
Yu Story, an 80-year-old tenant who lives in a spacious, modern one-bedroom apartment, rejected the idea that she should have to leave.
Story said the senior building is so secure and tightly connected that many residents do not even feel the need to lock their doors.
She has lived in the neighborhood for more than two decades and moved into the senior building after witnessing a gunfight in another Fulton-Elliot structure in 2023.
“Why do you want to demolish here? Why do you want to demolish the beauty? You just fix it.”
NYCHA issued initial 90-day notices to the tenants of Chelsea Addition in July 2025, warning them of their upcoming mandatory relocation.
Both Ruffin and Story claimed they have received multiple threatening notices from NYCHA since.
Tenants have the right to a full hearing before an impartial hearing officer ahead of their lease being terminated, a move that has yet to happen. Chelsea Addition is slated for demolition as soon as all of the remaining tenants have moved out.
A formal eviction notice granted to NYCHA would give law enforcement the right to physically remove tenants.
A representative for Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the administration continues to support the development because the “NYCHA tenants support safe and healthy homes and the investment that his been denied to public housing for far too long.
“For decades, the federal government — under both Democratic and Republican administrations — has systematically starved public housing of the resources it needs,” spokesman Matt Rauschenbach told The Post.
“Without the additional resources made available through Section 8 conversions under PACT and the Preservation Trust, there is no viable path to making the comprehensive repairs that NYCHA residents across the five boroughs need and deserve.”
All of the tenants and advocates the Post spoke with of the buildings argue that independent studies have shown the buildings are structurally sound and are only need of renovations.
A rep for NYCHA said the group is still working with Chelsea Addition residents who need to relocate.
