Eight months since Elizabeth Street Garden was hit with an eviction notice, and 12 years since the City announced plans to turn the plot of land it owns into affordable housing, the garden has so far avoided destruction—while forestalling the construction of 123 apartments for low-income seniors in Lower Manhattan.
The fate of Elizabeth Street Garden has now become a litmus test in the 2025 mayoral election. Andrew Cuomo told the New York Times it would be a "mistake" to shutter the garden. Zohran Mamdani told the paper that the housing project, a "LGBTQ friendly" development called Haven Green, should go ahead and be built. Mayor Eric Adams, who used to be firmly in favor of evicting the garden ("We need to house New Yorkers") recently hired a first deputy mayor who has put those plans on ice, while Adams insists that "nothing has changed."
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro have begged Mayor Adams to save the garden. Patti Smith did the same thing, in song. Meanwhile, former City Planning Commissioner Carl Weisbrod and housing czar Alicia Glen wrote that keeping the garden would be a "betrayal" of municipal governance. Philosophy professors and "abundance agenda" YIMBYs spar over the societal value of green space versus the imperatives of the housing crisis.
One subset of New Yorkers we don't often see quoted in stories about Elizabeth Street Garden: seniors. Specifically, seniors who are in need of affordable housing downtown, or who currently live in affordable senior housing. What do they make of this debate? We decided to interview some ourselves.
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