July 22, 2025
Mr. Jan Lee
Neighbors United Below Canal (NUBC)
nubc2019 at gmail .com (via email)
Dear Mr. Lee:
Lower East Side Preservation Initiative — LESPI — supports in concept the construction of new affordable housing instead of a new hi-rise jail at 125 White Street, as outlined in Neighbors United Below Canal’s and Welcome to Chinatown’s letter dated July 3.
The affordable housing plan would provide much-needed living space for Chinatown residents. As shown in The Architect’s Newsletter dated June 5, 2025, the proposal calls for a 235 foot high structure, 100 feet shorter than the new jail, and therefore substantially less impactful to Chinatown’s historic core in terms of its shadows, wind tunnel effects, and other environmental degradations. As you know, in the past years this community has suffered from gentrification, Covid, racist violence, the recent high tariffs on Chinese imports, and other significant challenges to its well-being and prosperity. The City needs to prioritize Chinatown’s recovery, not implement further challenges.
We support the concept of re-using the nearby federal jail as a city jail, if feasible; this would typically be the most environmentally friendly as well as least impactful means of addressing this program.
However we have some serious concerns about the affordable housing proposal:
- To our understanding there are very few public funds available for the construction of affordable housing that is truly affordable for the community. This raises the question what kind of privately developed affordable housing would likely be realized, and whether it would actually be affordable to most New Yorkers.
- If, due to funding limitations, the new residential building becomes a more typical partially-affordable development, where the minority of affordable apartments are not affordable to residents of low or moderate means, then the building would only encourage more gentrification. There needs to be a strict and realizable program requiring a high percentage of affordable units and rents that are truly affordable, otherwise the building would likely have a substantially negative effect on the community.
Based on the assumption that a new plan would successfully address the affordability issues outlined above, LESPI supports the construction of new affordable housing instead of a hi-rise jail at 125 White Street. We believe that the preservation and revitalization of historic Chinatown should be a priority for the City Administration and for all New Yorkers.
Feel free to contact me at Richard at LESPI-nyc .org with any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Richard Moses
President
