\u201cI\u2019m not going to move,\u201d he said recently, speaking in Cantonese through an interpreter. \u201cI\u2019m 93. If you\u2019re going to move to a general [public] housing, it\u2019s not going to be good. It\u2019s not going to be healthy. It\u2019s not going to be safe. I feel I don\u2019t have that many years left.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wu and his wife are among 24 households in NYCHA\u2019s Chelsea Addition refusing the authority\u2019s demand to relocate twice while their building is demolished and replaced. The authority insists the dual moves are necessary first steps in its grand plan to demolish 18 NYCHA buildings in Chelsea and replace them with 15 new towers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If all goes as planned, the new buildings will house the displaced residents of Chelsea Addition and the Fulton, Elliott and Chelsea Houses, and add another 2,500 market-rate apartments<\/a> and 1,000 permanently affordable ones.<\/p>\n Under this $1.2 billion project, the mega-developer of the nearby Hudson Yards, The Related Companies, and their partners, Essence LLC, would handle demolition and construction. NYCHA would maintain ownership of the properties but turn over management of the buildings to their private sector partners.<\/p>\n The first phase of the plan, which requires the demolition of Chelsea Addition and one nearby building, was slated to start this spring. But the entire plan is on hold as one lawsuit contests the legality of all of it and another fights the eviction of the seniors who are resisting moving, including Wu and his wife.<\/p>\n \u2018There Was War\u2019<\/p>\n For Wu and his wife, NYCHA\u2019s proposed move is a traumatic prospect, after a long and momentous journey from the cities of China\u2019s Guangdong province to the streets of Manhattan.<\/p>\n Wu was born in 1934. When he was still a child, the Japanese army invaded China, in a brutal occupation until their surrender to the Allied Forces in September 1945. During the conflict, Wu received just three years of intermittent elementary school education.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo middle school. No high school,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was a war. We were fighting Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n Four years after the war\u2019s end, Mao Zhedong and the Chinese Communist Party came to power. When he was in his 30s, Mao unveiled the Cultural Revolution<\/a>, a campaign to purge what he declared were capitalist influences compromising his vision. Across China, fighting between factions erupted, and in 1968, a series of massacres took place in Guangdong Province where Wu lived.<\/p>\n Wu declined to further discuss his years in China except to say, \u201cI\u2019m 93 years old. I\u2019ve seen quite a few kings.\u201d Asked if there were any he admired, he replied, \u201cNot one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n He married Qiong Zhong and the couple had one daughter, Li Ching Wu. All three emigrated to New York City, with Jin Tao Wu and his wife arriving when he was 60 in 1994. Soon he found a job cutting string in a Garment District factory.<\/p>\n Wu retired a few years later and the couple\u2019s sole income became Social Security. They lived in Chinatown off Canal Street, which is where they resided on Sept. 11, 2001, when Islamist terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the resultant fallout blanketed the surrounding neighborhoods, including Chinatown, with toxic dust.<\/p>\n Later the couple signed up for NYCHA\u2019s waiting list and snagged an apartment in the Taft Rehab Houses on W. 117th St. near Columbia University. This was Wu\u2019s first experience with the Housing Authority\u2019s<\/a> general population developments \u2014 and it did not go well.<\/p>\n In the summer of 2021, Wu heard knocking at his door.<\/p>\n \u201cI opened the door and they pushed their way in and robbed the place,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI called 911. The police couldn\u2019t catch him. They asked if we were scared. Of course we were scared.\u201d<\/p>\n He says his neighbor knew the robbers and wouldn\u2019t cooperate with police. Because of that, he says, NYCHA granted their request to transfer to an all-seniors development. In August that year, they moved into a cozy one-bedroom in Chelsea Addition.<\/p>\n The building sits across from athletic fields where children from a nearby public school fill the air with their voices during recess on school days. The street is otherwise quiet, as their fellow tenants are all over 60 and there\u2019s a security guard assigned to patrol the building and the surrounding area seven days a week. Many of Wu\u2019s neighbors are, like him, immigrants from China who speak little English.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is better here. It is peaceful. No harassment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It is also where he and his wife expected to spend their final days. They live off of a combined Social Security income just short of $1,500 a month while paying NYCHA around $450 in rent \u2014 the required 30% of income all public housing<\/a> tenants pay.<\/p>\n Their circumstances do not allow them to venture far from their apartment.<\/p>\n Wu\u2019s wife, suffering from dementia, has on occasion become lost in the neighborhood. Wu presents a five-page document listing 44 medications that he must take for a daunting conflagration of medical conditions that includes heart disease, kidney disease, asthma (related to his exposure to 9\/11 toxic dust<\/a>) and diabetes. He relies on a walker.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"NYCHA's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/031726_chelsea_addition.jpg\")
Chelsea Addition residents are being asked to move out of their homes so that the NYCHA complex can be redeveloped, March 17, 2026. Credit: Alex Krales\/THE CITY<\/p>\n![\"90-year-old](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/042026_chelsea_addition_couple-2.jpg\")
Having survived World War 2 and China\u2019s Cultural Revolution, 93-year-old Jin Tao Wu says efforts to force him from his apartment in the Chelsea Addition public housing development is the biggest crisis of his life. Credit: Greg Smith\/THE CITY<\/p>\n