Barbara Chocky, Stalwart Upper East Side Housing Advocate, Dies

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Barbara Chocky, a community leader who fought for affordable housing and defended the Upper East Side's most vulnerable residents during a decades-long career in public service, died on Tuesday at the age of 81.

The cause was leukemia, with which she had been diagnosed less than a month ago, said Elaine Walsh, a longtime friend of Chocky's and fellow member of Community Board 8.

Over the years, Chocky worked everywhere from Hunter College to the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, but it was the community board that took up the biggest chunk of her life. She was CB8's longest-tenured member, serving since 1981 and sitting through untold hours' worth of public meetings.

"She was a short woman but a very powerful woman," Walsh said. "She had her fingers in a lot of different things."

Chocky was born in Brooklyn but spent most of her life on the Upper East Side, where she worked for State Assemblyman Peter Berle in the early 1970s. When Berle left office, Chocky campaigned for his eventual successor, Pete Grannis, spending many an election season knocking on doors, standing on street corners and traipsing through parks on his behalf.

"She was indefatigable," Grannis told Patch this week, recalling Chocky staying up late to write campaign literature as fellow volunteers struggled to stay awake.

"There was Barbara at midnight, having her fourth cup of black coffee," Grannis said.

Though she held a nursing degree, housing was the issue that came to dominate her life's work. In the 1980s, Chocky served on the city's Rent Guidelines Board as an advocate for tenants — and briefly landed in the political spotlight in 1984, when then-Mayor Ed Koch removed Chocky from the board due to her alliance with his rival, City Council President Carol Bellamy.

"If you're asking me if Barbara Chocky was not reappointed because she's a member of Carol Bellamy's staff, the answer is yes," the mayor told the New York Times.

That was one of more than a dozen instances where Chocky's name appeared in the paper of record between 1979 and 2003 — many of them coming during her tenure as chair of Community Board 8 in the mid-1990s. In that role, Chocky was quoted objecting to a neighborhood "bar crawl" that drew rowdy crowds to the East Side; opposing a plan to build a rail link to LaGuardia Airport at East 59th Street; and voicing skepticism about a 1994 plan by wealthy real-estate interests to send 500 private guards into the neighborhood to deter crime.

"It's like a minigovernment, a small group controlling an awful lot of money and power," Chocky told the Times.

That was typical of Chocky's attitude, said Chuck Warren, who served with her on the board for nearly 40 years. Chocky, he said, was an "old-fashioned liberal in the best sense of the word" — devoted to progressive politics but also free speech and tolerance.

In one instance, Warren recalled, Chocky helped defeat a proposal to limit fast-food businesses on the Upper East Side, which some board members favored but which Chocky felt "smacked of elitism." She was a defender of street vendors, admiring how they diversified the neighborhood's streetscapes even as some board members considered them a nuisance.

Perhaps most notably, Chocky pushed hard to open a drop-in homeless shelter on East 77th Street in the 1980s, despite strong pushback from neighbors who packed a community board meeting to heckle its proponents. In the end, Warren said, the shelter opened and fit seamlessly into the neighborhood.

"She was always trying to help people that needed help," Warren said. "She felt very strongly about that."

That populist streak was on display when medical centers like Lenox Hill and Memorial Sloan-Kettering visited the community board to seek support for their campus expansions. Chocky took the opportunity to quiz the hospitals about why they did not accept patients on Medicaid, Walsh recalled.

"She would ask, 'Why should we support hospitals that will not take the insurance that most New Yorkers have?'" Walsh said.

In later years, Chocky embraced her role as the community board's elder stateswoman, mentoring younger members like Rebecca Dangoor, whom she impressed with her wide-ranging local knowledge.

"Everyone usually has their lane," Dangoor said. "Barbara always had a point of view on every issue."

I’m saddened by the passing of my dear friend, Barbara Chocky. Serving on @CB8M with distinction, she always found time to support her community. Barbara was a person of great spirit & leadership; she will be greatly missed. My condolences to her family in this sad time. pic.twitter.com/cQMK9GQ39L
— Gale A. Brewer (@galeabrewer) October 12, 2021

Following Chocky's death, an online fundraiser was created by Grannis and Amy Baxter, another longtime friend. The GoFundMe seeks to establish a memorial award in Chocky's name for a high school senior devoted to public service, and had raised nearly a fifth of its $10,000 goal by Thursday.

Though passionate about issues like abortion rights and education, Chocky focused much of her energy in recent years on the city's declining stock of affordable housing. In a July meeting, one of Chocky's last on Community Board 8, she expressed alarm about next year's turnover in city government, which she feared would deprive the Upper East Side of its housing advocates.

Desperate measures were needed, she said.

"When we talk about strategy, we can’t just talk about rallies. Do people want to do nonviolent civil disobedience?" Chocky said, to chuckles from her colleagues. "I’m serious. Right now, because I’m having trouble walking, I probably couldn’t. But that’s just what I want to throw out."

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A memorial service for Chocky will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Hunter College Roosevelt House, 47-49 East 65th St.