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Elizabeth Street Garden will be evicted if Mamdani makes good on campaign promise
By
Liam Quigley
Published Nov 10, 2025
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Naim Ali-Pacheco/Gothamist
By
Liam Quigley
Published Nov 10, 2025
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The days may be numbered for the Elizabeth Street Garden due to Tuesday’s mayoral election win by Zohran Mamdani, who's vowed to evict the garden’s private operators from the city-owned lot to make way for an affordable housing development that aims to help formerly homeless seniors.
After spending years fighting to evict the garden’s operators to make way for the new housing, Mayor Eric Adams changed his mind the day before June’s Democratic primary. First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro and local Councilmember Christopher Marte announced they’d let the beloved-but-controversial garden remain in place while they pursued other new housing developments elsewhere in the neighborhood.
Mamdani said in multiple interviews he’d boot the garden in order to build the housing development. It sets the stage for more conflicts Mamdani may face as mayor as he tries to address the city’s housing shortage, while also maintaining support among progressives who are distrustful of real estate developers.
Andrew Scherer, a professor at New York Law School and an expert on landlord-tenant law, said the garden’s operators are in a “very vulnerable position" after a judge signed an eviction order in March. Scherer said Mamdani would have legal backing to kick them out.
“It sounds like he will forge ahead,” Scherer said. “A city like New York should be able to figure out ways to have both valuable open space and the necessary housing for elderly and low-income people.”
“It's a bit of a failure of will and policy to get to this point,” he added.
The garden was mostly closed to the public until around 2013. That year, the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development identified the lot as a potential site to add more housing in lower Manhattan. In the following years, the garden’s operators made the space open to the public, and it’s since become a popular place to relax downtown.
The campaign to save the garden heated up in 2017, when officials under former Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans for the “Haven Green,” a private affordable housing development with units reserved for formerly homeless seniors. The current proposal for the development would add 123 new units of housing, and would include a smaller public garden on the lot.
The garden stopped paying rent in 2018, and a judge last year found its organizers owe the city $95,000 in back rent. The garden’s organizers did not respond to requests for comment or questions on if they had begun paying rent after the June deal, but in an Oct. 28 statement, the garden’s operators said they would “continue to do everything we can to protect Elizabeth Street Garden from anyone who seeks to destroy it.”
Marte’s City Council district has added roughly 2,175 new units of affordable housing over the last decade, roughly a quarter of what’s been built in sections of the Bronx over the same period.
Marte supported Mamdani’s candidacy, but the two are split on housing policies, like a set of ballot proposals approved by voters this week that allow the mayor to fast-track new residential development with less oversight from the City Council.
Daniel Marans, a spokesperson for Adams, said the mayor would leave Elizabeth Street Garden in place while he remains in office through the end of the year. A spokesperson for Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to questions about the space’s future.
Kathleen Webster, who has for years advocated for housing on the garden site, said the new development strikes a compromise by adding new housing and retaining a portion of the green space
“ I just think that it's, we are in an era where we better learn to share,” she said. “And you know, you don't always get exactly what you want.”
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Politics
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new york city
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Liam Quigley
Liam Quigley is a reporter covering parks & sanitation for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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