High octane celebrities Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Patti Smith waded into a fight to keep the Elizabeth Street Garden, a whimsical greenspace near Little Italy, from being turned into affordable housing on Thursday, penning letters to Mayor Adams and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
The stars join a group of New Yorkers, including area seniors and elementary school children, in a last-ditch campaign to prevent the garden from being turned into a high-rise.
“I understand that housing is now a major concern in this city,” Scorsese wrote, referencing his childhood growing up in Little Italy. “But what I know is that there is nothing else like this garden in the neighborhood.”
The city-owned lot, between Elizabeth, Mott, Prince and Spring Streets, was vacant for years before being turned into a sculpture garden. Privately operated, the space hosts movie nights, musical events and yoga classes for tourists and locals to enjoy in the dense neighborhood.
“Affordable housing and greenspaces are both essential assets and should not [be] pinned against each other… Our great city is in danger of becoming a developer’s unchecked haven,” wrote Patti Smith, referencing the garden’s “flourishing fig trees, flowers and ivy frame historical sculpture.”
“I support increasing the availability of affordable housing (community leaders have identified alternate locations for development), but l’m also passionate about preserving the character of our neighborhoods,” De Niro said.
The tussle over the garden comes amid a housing crisis and record homelessness in New York City. Attempts to meet the dire need for more affordable housing usually meet fierce community pushback.
Proponents of the city’s planned development, called Haven Green, have labeled those trying to save the space as NIMBYs, while those fighting to keep it highlight the scarcity of public green space in the neighborhood.
Ahmed Tigani, HPD’s first deputy commissioner, said the tense situation is an example of hard difficult it can be to build affordable housing. He called the project a “win-win” because the project balances both 123 units of affordable housing for seniors and 14,000 square feet of public open space.
“It’s always been something that has a track record of working and will work on this site,” Tigani said. “At the end of this we have an opportunity to take one step forward in the affordable housing crisis.”
In 2019, the City Council voted to turn the lot into affordable housing for seniors, with retail space and a new headquarters for Habitat for Humanity New York City on its ground floor. After multiple lawsuits delayed the plan, the New York Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the city in June, allowing the city’s plan to proceed. The green space could be gone as soon as September.
“While many well-housed people focus on what may change for them, we are focused on creating homes and green space that will transform the lives of generations of seniors enduring housing insecurity,” Sabrina Lippman, CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City, said in a statement. “There are no alternative sites for these homes, only additional sites to help build more desperately needed housing.”
City Councilmember Christopher Marte said he was appreciative of the celebrities lending their support to the local issue and hoped the Adams administration would “do the right thing” by finding an alternative site for the housing.
“I really think we need affordable housing, but we shouldn’t be hitting the limited green space that we have at this location with affordable housing,” Marte told the Daily News. “There’s a number of sites that we’ve been asking the mayor and HPD to transfer the funds and development funds from this site.”
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