On January 4, 2026, more than 100 community members from Chinatown and the Lower East Side gathered in front of the proposed Chinatown mega-jail site to welcome Mayor Mamdani’s affordable housing agenda. We applauded his willingness to listen to the needs of our neighborhoods. Community members are enthusiastic about the opportunity for Mayor Mamdani to build his much needed low-income housing on two city-owned empty lots in the neighborhood. One is the site for the proposed Chinatown jail which has met overwhelming opposition. The other is the empty lot next to Confucius Plaza. 

Speakers from across our neighborhood shared their optimism about working with the new mayor to bring 100% truly affordable housing to these sites to help stop the displacement of our communities.

– Sheniah Carroll from the Coalition to Protect the LES + Chinatown said:  “Chinatown and the Lower East Side have long been a target for big real estate. Their luxury towers have driven up rents and property taxes, causing workers, residents, and business owners to all suffer, and making our community more unsafe…Mayor Mamdani has the opportunity to set things right. He has already shown that he will listen to the people over big real estate and is committed to building lots of affordable housing. There is no better place to start than here!”

– Lanzhen Lin, a tenant in Chinatown said: “I’m a tenant at 199 Henry Street, for a long time facing harassment and eviction by my landlord. My neighbors and I have been united, looking out for one another, resisting our landlord’s harassment and displacement. We’ve been joining the picket line to oppose the Museum of Chinese in America for selling out the community, and to oppose the city’s plan to build a new jail in Chinatown. We welcome Mayor Mamdani to listen to the community and put an end to the previous administration’s policies of building jails and displacement. Chinatown is our home. We need low-income housing, not a new jail.”

– Clara AmatLeon, a Lower East Side tenant, shared: ”I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 27 years and next to my building was built a mega tower, across from the Manhattan bridge. This building damaged the structure of my building at 82 Rutgers Slip during its construction. There are cracks in all the floors, doors and mailboxes do not open and some windows were broken. This damage is irreversible. This is why our community is opposing the construction of this mega-tower jail; it will damage the buildings that are close by. The jail will only benefit the billionaires and developers and not our community. I want to tell our Mayor Zohran: do not follow Bill de Blasio and Adams, listen to our community. Instead we want lower income buildings, affordable housing.”

– Jon Alpert of DCTV (a community media center around the corner from the Centre St. site) said: “Past mayors have abused our community. Bill de Blasio killed a project that would have put 150 units of affordable housing right here on Centre St so he could build the jailscraper, the biggest pork barrel project in the history of NYC. Adams promised us he’d stop this nonsense and corruption. He lied. I’m proud to have voted for Zohran. I’m glad he’s our Mayor…But the jailscraper is not progressive, because it is money for punishment and incarceration instead of support for investments we need in order to keep people out of the clutches of the prison industrial oligarchy. Our new Mayor is smart – he loves communities like ours…And we look forward to working with him to turn this enormous opportunity- look at this space- to turn our community and our city into the brightest beacon of opportunity, not the most expensive dungeon of punishment. Please listen to us and work with us. 

– Kathryn Freed, Former District 1 Councilmember & retired NY Supreme Court Judge reiterated: “A message to Mayor Mamdani: every promise that’s been made to Chinatown has been broken. They promised when they put the (previous) jail up, they did the senior center and they did the municipal parking garage. Well now the municipal parking garage is parking for the police department and thanks to this construction, the senior center is almost uninhabitable…so to Mayor Mamdani, don’t dump things on Chinatown! In his inaugural address, he promised that he would use City-owned lots to build affordable housing. Well, behind us is a very large, City-owned lot and we want affordable housing for it.”

– David Mulkins, President of the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors shared: “The Chinatown community unanimously opposes this multi-billion dollar mega-jail, which is scandalous boondoggle…the idea of forcing in a bulky, supertall oppressive jail on this site is ridiculous. We hope the mayor will bring 100% affordable housing to this site and other City-owned sites.”