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In early July, the Diego family opened a letter containing the unthinkable: a 90-day residential vacancy notice.
The family of five—along with the other tenants of their three-unit building on East 116th Street and Second Avenue in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan—would have to leave their home of seven years by Oct. 15. The MTA was taking the property by eminent domain—along with at least 19 others.
The Diegos’ blue building, beloved by the neighborhood for its fish murals, is slated for demolition to make way for a $7.7 billion subway expansion that was first conceived over 100 years ago, abandoned in 1975 in the midst of New York City’s financial crisis and recently brought back to life by a funding package passed in Albany.
For the city, it’s progress; but for the Diegos and other tenants like them, it’s an eviction notice forcing them into a rental market radically different from the last time they moved in 2018. While eminent domain is often thought of as an equitable transaction, the story of the Diegos and tenants like them highlights how this definition falls short.
While the city may be gaining three new subway stations, “the people who actually live in the neighborhood lose an enormous amount, and what they lose is just destroyed,” says Robert McNamara, deputy litigation director at the Institute for Justice.
The human toll
When government entities seize land by eminent domain, there’s a requirement that they offer just compensation. For land owners, that often means financial compensation at fair market value as well as relocation assistance.
But the Diegos and other families in their building are tenants, and while the MTA has offered them some relocation assistance including access to a real estate agent, moving cost support, and a list of alternative apartments, they remain vulnerable to the whims of the market.
The current rent for the family of five is $2,900 per month—almost $1,600 less than the median asking rent for Manhattan apartments, according to the latest Realtor.com® New York City Rental Report.
That’s to say nothing of how much the market has changed since 2018, when the family last moved. New York City was an epicenter of the push and pull of pandemic-driven changes in rental demand that continue to shape how people find and rent homes.
After dramatically falling in mid-2020 as many renters fled lockdowns, rents surged after restrictions were lifted. Now, as of the first quarter of 2025, median asking rents across the city have skyrocketed almost 30% since 2020.
“We’re definitely in limbo. It’s too much to process,” Jocelyn Diego told Gothamist. “I don’t think it’s fair, because people live here. I feel like people that live here should also have the right to speak up. This was all caught off guard.”
Displacement destroys more than apartments
The Diegos aren’t alone in feeling caught off guard. Gothamist reports that many of their neighbors, some of whom have lived in the neighborhood for decades, were also shocked by the news. Despite the relocation assistance they’ve been offered, many feel misled by their landlord and the MTA. And they have good reason for that.
“Tenants are generally eligible only for a certain amount of relocation assistance, but there is nothing that pays for the destruction of their neighborhood and of their roots,” says McNamara.
He points to the work of Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, a psychiatrist whose seminal book, Root Shock, uncovered the devastating effects of the traumatic stress that follows the destruction of a neighborhood, particularly on communities of color.
“Displacing whole neighborhoods like this has direct health outcomes,” explains McNamara. “You take someone’s apartment and you think they’ll move to another apartment, but tied into their apartment is the ability to walk to the store on the corner. The woman who lives on the floor downstairs, who will watch your kid from time to time … all of that gets destroyed when you displace people.”
Why finding a new place might be nearly impossible
And while those intangible aspects of home are difficult to measure, there’s a much more finite thing that will be hard for people to replace: their monthly rent.
The median rent in New York City is up 5.6% year over year. In Manhattan, the annual income needed to afford the median asking rent of $4,495 is over $179,000, following the 30% rule that says a person should not spend more than a third of their monthly income on housing expenses.
Even in the Bronx—the borough with the lowest median asking rent, at $3,010—a person would need to make $120,000 per year.
For the Diego family, who support themselves on the incomes of a cashier and cook, it’s unlikely they will be able to meet that bar.
The $7 billion promise
The MTA has finally set the wheels in motion with a $2 billion tunneling contract and a promise that 1 in 5 jobs will go to East Harlem residents.
“East Harlem deserves the Second Avenue subway, and we’ll continue to be a good neighbor as we build it,” an MTA spokesperson said via statement to Gothamist.
But “being a good neighbor” looks different from the other side of the eviction letter. For families being told to leave, the subway’s arrival means more than progress. It means losing homes and watching their community be remade without them.