The Elizabeth Street Garden: Is New York City Really Going to Demolish It?

Do we want a place of scenic beauty or, in its place, affordable housing for homeless people? That’s the seeming choice facing New Yorkers who love Manhattan’s Elizabeth Street Garden.

For people in this extremely built-up stretch, Elizabeth Street Garden is the only public green space in comfortable walking distance. Shaded by two enormous trees, visitors can sit on a lawn among flowers and sculptures of sphinxes, Greek goddesses, cherubs and greyhounds. A majestic gravel path, guarded by stone lions and bordered by stone balustrades, runs from the entrance to a fruit-bearing fig tree at the far end. For videos showing the garden, follow this link: https://www.elizabethstreetgarden.com/videos/

Homelessness is a wrenching problem. For one living securely in a well-run apartment building, as I do, it’s hard to imagine life spent 24 hours a day on the streets. How to secure a safe place? Where and how to get some sleep? In a cardboard box under a bridge? Where to get the next meal, and will it be at least edible? How not to smell, or else how to stop noticing that one does? How to see oneself as an outsider with society pressing all around?

Solutions require huge supplies of upgraded and new housing. For homeless people enduring psychological disturbances, and even those just baffled by the system, support services must also accompany the housing.

In lieu of such necessary but expensive remedies, those in authority are pursuing programs that do harm. On June 28, in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the United States Supreme Court permitted an Oregon community to stop homeless people sleeping or camping in its parks. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom immediately exploited the decision by ordering the removal of homeless people from public spaces throughout his state. It’s undeniable that walking by homeless people can be distressing and sometimes even threatening. When a disturbed person gets in your face, rationality cowers.

But where do people go when they are denied our public spaces and there are no homes for them? What new levels of ingenious strategy remain for them to survive into the next day, and the day beyond that? As advocates for homeless people say, fines and arrests are not the answer.

With the Elizabeth Street Garden, New York City has gone to the other extreme. Whereas Oregon, California and other jurisdictions are protecting their public spaces, our city plans to destroy a beloved garden in order to erect affordable housing in its place. No matter that there are dozens—hundreds—of unused or under-used buildings in the city. True, many require substantial renovation (commercial buildings that must be adapted for apartment living), are tied up in contractual restrictions, or are located where local zoning laws conflict. To make use of those properties would require hard work, money and, above all, political will.

The Elizabeth Street Garden is an easy target for politicians intent less on solving a problem than on making it look as if they are trying. It sits on property owned by the city, and there are no contractual or zoning restrictions to stop the city from taking it over. But what a huge sacrifice for a structure that would accommodate only 123 out of tens of thousands of homeless people.

To be clear, many residents of this facility would be seniors under threat of being priced out of their expensive neighborhood. Only about two dozen would be actual homeless people. Yet this project is part of a general goal to make housing, affordable or subsidized, available to all. Ultimately, it is about homelessness.

Where I live, in Brooklyn Heights, we have the world-famous Promenade overlooking New York Bay and Manhattan. Suppose it were physically feasible, which it surely isn’t, would we let the city build affordable housing on it? How about sectioning off parts of Manhattan’s Central Park or Brooklyn’s Prospect Park for affordable housing? These alternatives are inconceivable.

Why, then, can’t the Elizabeth Street Garden be saved? It has committed caretakers who have passed the torch from generation to generation. So many neighborhood residents depend on this island of peace that one can be confident their caring will endure into the next generation.

Creating a choice between public spaces and homelessness is a false and cynical ploy. Public spaces are a physical and psychological necessity. Homelessness is a societal failing that must be addressed on its own terms and not played off against other community requirements. To sacrifice public spaces for housing is to evoke the grim, brutalist Russian cities built during the Soviet era.

September 10 has been designated as the day the city will swoop in and evict the people who have done so much to maintain this oasis of natural beauty in a vibrant urban community. The city and state have won all the court battles, and all the appeals options appear exhausted.

Is there yet any possibility of a reprieve and ultimately an end to this sad episode? As I write, it looks as though the garden’s advocates lack sufficient political clout.

How ugly that word “clout” is. How uplifting it would be to hear the city’s politicians say, as the clock ticks down, “We apologize. We were wrong.”