Tenant Unions Calls Attention to Housing Hardships: Evicted Chinatown Renters Showed Up to Protest

Tenant Unions Calls Attention to Housing Hardships: Evicted Chinatown Renters Showed Up to Protest

On October 28th, the Citywide Tenants Coalition organized a demonstration in Harlem, demanding governmental agencies to recognize and remedy the citywide shortage of housing stock, unaffordability for low-income renters, and displacement of small businesses. CAAAV youth members along with Chinatown residents undergoing forced evictions attended and cited the 166 Elizabeth Street apartments as a powerful case of illegal eviction. The landlord used excuses to reject rent payment and cut off gas to remove low-income Asian and Hispanic renters. Small business owners faced a shared fate, finding themselves displaced so that the empty storefronts could be rented to corporations and larger businesses. Anti-gentrification protestors criticized the governmental authorities for failing to effectively intervene while using taxpayer money to fund large infrastructure and commercial projects that did little to benefit the struggling small businesses.

October 29, 2000

Source: 明报纽约讯 (Ming Pao New York)
Digitized by: Shutong Wu
Catalogued by: Laine Yu-Jing

Newspaper

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