Queens Tenants Fight for Dignified Housing and against the War Economy
More than 50 Mesa Verde tenants rallied to condemn unsafe and unsanitary housing conditions, questioning why tax dollars are instead going to fund war and attack marginalized communities. Photo: Craig Birchfield.
On 8 November, 2025, dozens of tenants gathered in front of La Mesa Verde housing complex in Jackson Heights, Queens. In La Mesa Verde alone, 859 violations have been filed against the owner, A&E Real Estate – one of New York City’s largest landlords. Across Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, there are 131 active lawsuits against the company. At La Mesa Verde, nearly 100 households have joined a lawsuit against A&E.
Tenants, many of whom have lived there for decades, spoke of a wide range of housing and safety violations. Some have suffered from broken hips and arms as a result of deteriorating and structurally unsafe stairs and floorboards while others have landed in the emergency room after ceilings collapsed on top of them. Parents complain of their children developing chronic health issues due to mold and lead paint exposure. Because of persistent elevator issues, elderly and disabled tenants are either trapped in their apartments or forced to risk injury by hauling laundry and groceries up six flights of deteriorating stairs.
The elevators, neither of which have worked since March, have been in and out of disrepair for years. Tenant leader José Luiz Rico, who has lived at La Mesa Verde for over 20 years, spoke about his neighbor who died as a result of the strain this has caused: “Years ago, a neighbour died of heart problems because the elevator was again not working. He had heart issues and he died in the doorway of the laundry room from a heart attack after hauling his laundry from the 6th floor. I am sure this is because of the strain the lack of elevators put on his heart.”
This story is not unique: La Mesa Verde’s owner, A&E Real Estate Holdings, has 64,000 housing violations across roughly 180 buildings and 17,000 apartments in New York City. Tenant leader Celina della Croce spoke of similar struggles across the country, and of her great aunt who died as a result of a broken hip incurred by similar conditions in her public housing building in Nevada almost exactly a year ago. ‘If she had been rich, or if she had a tenant union like this one, maybe she would still be alive’, della Croce said.
John Francis, the supervising attorney of Communities Resist, which is representing Mesa Verde and other A&E tenants, explained how landlords like A&E are “systematically… destroying these historic New York City neighborhoods [and] driving out families who have been there for decades or generations,” all while raking in exorbitant profits. He identified common strategies employed by landlords like A&E, such as allowing buildings to deteriorate into a state of disrepair that paves the way for demolition and the sale of the building to developers at huge profit margins. Rather than maintaining affordable housing, these developers often build luxury housing in their place. Other strategies include charging above the legally permitted threshold in rent-stabilized buildings like Mesa Verde, banking on the assumption that tenants don’t know their legal rights. They even take advantage of the affordable housing discourse in New York, which focuses on creating new units while allowing existing ones to deteriorate:
There are more available units than there are people sleeping on the street right now. But those people are not able to gain access to those apartments because the landlord is either warehousing them or illegally deregulating them and charging them exorbitant rents that people are not going to be able to afford. …
What they are doing is… pushing [these tenants] outside of the city… and then refitting these apartments in such a way that the millionaire class can move in and rent it out. And/or, again in the long term, eventually selling off these lots for large amounts of money to developers who will then again make more units for the millionaire class to come in and take and rent.
In fact, in a country with an annual military budget of $1.537 trillion, nearly 1 million people are homeless, and many more are housing insecure and living in squalid conditions. In New York City, where there are 28 vacant homes to every 1 unhoused person, the $560.2 million spent on funding weapons for Israel to perpetrate a genocide against Palestinians could have paid for one month’s free rent for 351,236 households, one month’s free groceries for 1.18 million families, or 6,116 salaries for elementary school teachers. On a national level, the $17.9 billion the US spent on military aid to Israel since October 7, 2023 could have paid for a month’s rent for 11.2 million households.
While the US spends 12.6 more per capita on the military than any other country in the world, it could instead eradicate homelessness ($20 billion) and hunger ($26 billion), guarantee tuition-free education ($70 billion), transition to a Medicare for All System ($300 billion), and still have 72.93% of the currently military budget left to spend on the wellbeing of people in this country and reparations to places like Palestine.
Leaders of the Mesa Verde tenants’ union understand the connections between their daily hardship and the broader reality not only in the city and country, but across the world. ‘Our government spends over $1 trillion of our tax dollars on war, bombing Palestinians,” della Croce said, “yet it can’t provide decent housing.” That is why, she continued, the group is organizing, not only “to expose A&E management for the horrendous conditions in this building and to tell them that we won’t put up with this any more,” but also to build a stronger union by making broader connections between the struggles facing working people in New York and across the world.
“This struggle we have is the same struggle of all our neighbors in Queens and in NY,” explained tenant leader Elena Martínez, who has lived in La Mesa Verde for 35 years. “We fight for dignified housing today, and tomorrow for better education and healthcare. We fight for a better future where the needs of all workers are prioritized. Because we create the wealth of this city. We build the buildings, we teach in the schools, we cook in the restaurants; everything moves because of us immigrants.”
In the face of a heightened assault against the working class that relies on an agenda of hate, scapegoating, and division – whether through escalation of ICE raids (assaulting immigrants and US citizens and residents of color alike), rolling back SNAP benefits, or scapegoating immigrants, communities of color, LGBTQ people, and the poor for problems caused by the rich – mobilizations of the working class rooted in unity and a tying together of the struggles facing the working class class are the only path forward.
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