Screening of A HOME WORTH FIGHTING FOR
March 12 | 6-7:30PM
TV Studio (HN 436)
RSVP (open to Hunter Community & Public)
Come to Hunter’s Screening and Panel Discussion of A HOME WORTH FIGHTING FOR: The Push to Stop the Demolition of Public Housing in Chelsea
As the city’s affordable housing crisis remains center stage, New York City’s vast public housing stock is relatively overlooked and unprotected. Nowhere is this more pressing than in Chelsea, where a proposal to demolish public housing in the neighborhood has spurred tenant organizing determined to defend their community from privatization, gentrification, and displacement.
Public Housing Tenants Organize Against Demolition in the Heart of Manhattan
Join us for a screening of the new documentary, A Home Worth Fighting For, followed by a conversation with the filmmaker, urban planner Tom Lunke and a NYCHA resident leader engaged in the fight against the proposed demolition of the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Audience Q&A will follow the panel discussion.
Synopsis:
Through the eyes of longtime residents fighting to save their homes, A Home Worth Fighting For, exposes a flawed political process that prioritizes private developers over the preservation of public housing and dismisses calls for transparency. While pitched as resident-driven, the proposed demolition clearly aims to clear valuable land in Chelsea to make way for market rate development on public land. Determined to defend their community, residents organize to resist a profit-driven plan aimed at privatizing public housing. (Run time: 40 min.)
Speakers:
Natasha Florentino is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and video producer whose practice involves deep research, community engagement, and a sustained commitment to revealing the power dynamics behind displacement. Natasha’s newest film, A HOME WORTH FIGHTING FOR, follows residents who oppose the proposed demolition of two public housing developments in New York City. In 2024-2025 she was an artist in residence at the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago in their Artist as Instigator program. Previously Natasha co-directed and filmed the documentary REZONING HARLEM, which chronicles the fight by Harlem community members against a 2008 rezoning ordinance. Natasha is a graduate from the IMA-MFA program at Hunter College.
Tom Lunke is a 30+year Chelsea resident and an award-winning urban planner and community developer with over 40 years of experience building comprehensive and innovative strategies, alliances, and solutions. From 1999 through 2018, Mr. Lunke created and led urban planning and community development initiatives for the Harlem Community Development Corporation, a subsidiary of Empire State Development Corporation. He served as a member of Manhattan Community Board 4 from 1997 to 2003, leading community efforts to preserve The High Line and Gansevoort Meatpacking District.
Mr. Lunke holds a master’s degree in urban planning from Columbia University in New York and an undergraduate degree in urban planning from the University of Washington in Seattle.
NYCHA Resident Leader (TBD)
Presented by the Urban Policy & Planning Department & the Department of Film and Media Studies with support from the Sainsbury Initiative.