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Phyllis Gonzalez Essay

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Phyllis Gonzalez was visible presence in Chelsea for decades. She served as president of a local PTA, as a member of both the Hudson Guild's Advisory Council and Community Board 4, and as a secretary for the Citywide Council for Presidents of the New York City Housing Authority. But it was perhaps as president of the Elliott-Chelsea Houses for four terms that she had her greatest influence. Gonzalez, who was 65 when she died in September 2012, fought to improve conditions at the housing project however and wherever she could, friends and family said. She accomplished all this despite suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and congestive heart problems. “She had wanted to be a nurse, but when that didn't work out she directed her energies toward …show more content…

City and community officials could count on her to give “an unvarnished assessment” of the neighborhood, he said. “Phyllis was a real special person because she represented the best of the community. Her imprint on Chelsea is so deep and permanent. Whether it’s the Chelsea Recreation Center, Elliot-Chelsea public housing, Hudson Guild, she’s done it all. She was a jack of all trades and an expert on so many issues that concerned the community,” Hoylman said. Marion Gonzalez, 34, described her mother’s passion for the neighborhood as a simple desire that she’d carried all of her life. And as well as being a mother to her two children, Marion and a son, Eric, Gonzalez became a mother figure to the tenants she helped, whom she considered her second family, friends and acquaintances said. Gonzalez helped ensure the safety of residents, they said, including her moving residents out of Allerton and Martinique welfare hotels and into the Elliott-Chelsea Houses – where she lived – pressuring the Housing Authority to purchase and install closed-circuit security cameras during a crime spike, and participating in the creation of the Chelsea Recreation

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