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…