Tenants Group Protests Margaret Chin

CHINATOWN, NY — A Chinatown tenants association protested outside NYC Council Member Margaret Chin's office on Thursday, ramping up its call for the representative to be voted out of office this September.

Protestors with the Bowery Tenants Association and other activist groups crowded on the sidewalk outside Chin's Financial District legislative office on Thursday afternoon, passing out fliers and blasting out calls for Chin to be voted out of office. The group, which was formed during an ongoing legal dispute between the tenants of 83 and 85 Bowery and their landlord Joseph Betesh, says that Chin hasn't done enough to stop the influx of luxury developers in the Chinatown and Lower East Side neighborhoods. Chin, who was elected in 2009, represents District 1, which includes Chinatown, the Lower East Side and SoHo, among other neighborhoods. She faces three challengers in September's election. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

The Bowery tenants pointed to a flier that they say was recently distributed throughout the neighborhood by Chin. The flier, which claims to have been created by Chin's 2017 re-election campaign, faults "outsiders" for preventing "the tenants at 83-85 Bowery from accepting a settlement that Public Advocate Tish James urged them to accept."

Last year, as tenants and Betesh hashed out their disputes in court, James encouraged the tenants to accept a settlement offer from Betesh, which would give the tenants 99-year leases if they agreed to temporarily move out for renovations. The tenants refused to accept the offer because the settlement did not specify by how much the tenants' rent would increase, according to Jinming Cao, a representative of the tenants association. The tenants group said on Thursday it was "infuriated" by Chin's fliers and the implication that the tenants were influenced by outsiders.

Antonio Queylin, a member of the activist group Lower East Side Organized Neighbors, faulted both Chin and Mayor Bill de Blasio for the spike in new developments coming to Lower Manhattan, which he said were pricing out longtime residents of the area. Among the most contentious recent developments in the neighborhood are the ongoing Rivington House scandal, in which city property that housed a senior home was sold to developers, and plans for multiple high-rise towers in the Two Bridges neighborhood. Chin has urged de Blasio to find a way to return the Rivington House property to the community while investigations into the deal continue.

"What we have is to have the whole Chinatown and Lower East Side protected from overdevelopment by luxury developers," Queylin said on Thursday. "We want to preserve low in come housing and we want to fight displacement on all levels.

Chin has opposed the plans for the towers and maintains that a legal halt to the construction can be found.

"Councilwoman Chin has spent almost her entire adult life advocating for her community, helping literally hundreds of tenants facing harassment and evictions by unscrupulous landlords," Chin spokesperson Marian Guerra said in a statement. "In fact, just yesterday she marked the passage of her legislation giving tenants, including those living at 83-85 Bowery, new protections to fight back against landlords like Joseph Betesh who harass tenants in order to drive them from their homes and their neighborhoods. Her door is open for the tenants of 83-85 Bowery, and will remain open for any tenant who feels harassed or threatened."

This post has been updated with additional information.

Lead image credit: Slaven Vlasic / Stringer / Getty Images Entertainment.