Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist running to unseat Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York's 13th Congressional District, called for eliminating the New York City Housing Authority's policy that bars murderers, drug dealers, and sex offenders from public housing, framing her position through what she called a "black queer feminist lens," the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The remarks came during a 2017 panel discussion titled "The Criminalization of Home: Organizing to protect communities from NYC to Palestine," where Chevalier appeared as an organizer with the New York City chapter of Black Youth Project 100. That group describes itself as "a member-based organization of radical 18-to-35-year-old people that work toward the liberation of Black people."
Now those comments are resurfacing as Chevalier mounts a primary challenge in a district that spans Harlem, Inwood, Washington Heights, and parts of the Bronx, a majority-Hispanic district where roughly 400,000 residents live in NYCHA housing, most of them women and children. The question voters face is straightforward: Should the people convicted of the most violent crimes be allowed to move back in next door?
NYCHA's permanent exclusion policy allows the city to keep people convicted of murder, drug dealing, sex offenses, and other serious crimes out of the country's largest public housing operation. The Legal Aid Society, no conservative outfit, has noted on its own informational page that "there are very few offenses that make you permanently ineligible. NYCHA overlooks most nonviolent offenses that aren't related to drugs, weapons, or abuse."
In other words, the policy already draws a narrow line. It targets the worst offenders, not people caught jumping a turnstile.
Chevalier's argument at the 2017 panel suggested otherwise. She claimed the policy was being abused and that people with "minor infractions" like "fare beating" and "marijuana possession" were being swept up. But the Legal Aid Society's own description contradicts that framing. And between 2007 and 2014, fewer than 5,000 people were affected by permanent exclusion across the entire NYCHA system, a fraction of the 400,000-person population.
Even the Vera Institute of Justice, a progressive nonprofit, acknowledged in a 2017 report that the policy serves a real safety function. The report stated that "certain forms of violent crime, particularly those related to narcotics trafficking, pose a security risk to public housing communities" and that "these crimes cannot be adequately addressed through regular police enforcement and may require other mechanisms to safeguard communities, such as through exclusion and eviction."
That is not a conservative think tank talking. That is a left-leaning research organization conceding that keeping violent criminals out of housing projects is not some reactionary impulse, it is a practical necessity for the safety of the people who live there.
The permanent exclusion stance is not an isolated position. It fits a pattern. Chevalier made now-deleted social media posts calling Joe Biden a "rapist" and writing "f*** Kamala Harris", two figures who remain popular with Black residents in Harlem. She attended a pro-Hamas rally in Times Square the day after Hamas's October 7 attack on Israelis. She condemned interracial relationships in old posts on X. She said she used the American flag as a washrag. And she called American military veterans "child murderers" guilty of "war crimes."
This is not a candidate who wandered into one controversial position. This is a candidate with a trail of racially charged posts and far-left commitments that, taken together, paint a picture of someone operating far outside the mainstream of even her own party.
During a recent NY1 debate with Espaillat, Chevalier stated she opposed deporting any illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, even those convicted of violent crimes such as rape and murder, the New York Post reported. She argued that convicted criminal immigrants should not be punished again after serving their sentence for being "born elsewhere." Espaillat, himself a former illegal immigrant, broke with Chevalier on that point, supporting deportation of illegal residents convicted of the most heinous crimes.
When even your Democratic primary opponent, a man who came to this country without legal status, says you have gone too far on immigration, the position is worth examining carefully.
Chevalier is not running alone. She is part of a broader slate of far-left candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialists of America member who held a major rally with Sen. Bernie Sanders in Brooklyn to promote the effort. Mamdani's endorsed candidates have pledged to "abolish ICE," and two of them are officially backed by the DSA. If successful, they would double DSA representation in Congress, Just The News reported.
Mamdani himself declared at the Brooklyn rally that "the Democratic Party must change" and that "the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future. We need a Democratic Party with backbone." Claire Valdez, another Mamdani-backed candidate, told AP News that "right now there's really mass dissatisfaction with the way the party leadership has been operating", while also vowing to abolish ICE and legalize "millions of immigrant Americans."
The movement is not subtle about its goals. It wants to reshape the Democratic Party from the inside, replacing incumbents who at least nod toward law enforcement and border security with candidates who view those institutions as fundamentally illegitimate.
This is the same political current that has produced democratic socialist victories in major cities and pushed policy platforms that most voters would find unrecognizable.
Jay Martin, executive vice president of the New York Apartment Association, did not hold back about Chevalier's position on permanent exclusion. He called ending the policy "insane" and laid out the stakes plainly:
"Existing tenants deserve to live in a safe environment and not have to worry about violent criminals and sexual predators living next to their children and families. Living in public housing isn't a birthright with no requirements. Not being a danger to your neighbors is one of those requirements."
Democratic Bronx Councilman Eric Dinowitz offered a similarly blunt assessment:
"This is far outside the bounds of where mainstream Democrats and most New Yorkers are. Someone who wants to abolish the police and believes, as the far left does, that crime is a social construct is not someone who is aligned with the people of Harlem, Inwood, of Washington Heights and of the Bronx."
Dinowitz's point deserves attention. The communities Chevalier wants to represent are not asking for convicted sex offenders and murderers to be welcomed back into their buildings. The Vera Institute's own research acknowledged that NYCHA tenants "consistently express elevated fear of crime in surveys" and "make demands to NYCHA and public officials for increased efforts to ensure their safety."
The people living in these developments are not theorists. They are mothers, grandmothers, and children who want to walk to the elevator without wondering whether the man down the hall was convicted of a violent felony. The permanent exclusion policy exists because those residents asked for it, and because the data shows it works.
Espaillat and his allies have responded by running attack ads in English and Spanish highlighting Chevalier's remarks about Harris and Biden. The incumbent clearly sees her record as a vulnerability, and in a district where those two figures remain popular with Black voters, he may be right.
The broader fight playing out in New York mirrors similar socialist slates pushing far-left platforms across the state, candidates who treat the most radical positions as baseline requirements and dismiss any pushback as reactionary.
Chevalier framed her 2017 remarks in the language of social justice. She told the panel audience that her campaign to end permanent exclusion was rooted in centering "the most marginalized." But the most marginalized people in NYCHA housing are not convicted murderers trying to get back in. They are the law-abiding tenants, disproportionately women and children, disproportionately Black and Hispanic, who depend on the policy to keep their homes safe.
That is the core contradiction. The candidate claims to speak for the vulnerable while advocating a policy change that would make the vulnerable less safe. The progressive nonprofit that studied the issue agrees. The Legal Aid Society agrees the policy already exempts minor offenses. And the people who actually live in these buildings have made their preferences clear through years of advocacy for stronger safety measures.
The question for Democratic primary voters in the 13th District is not complicated. It is whether they want a representative who listens to the people who live in public housing, or one who lectures them about ideology from a panel stage while demanding that convicted violent criminals be allowed to move back in.
Meanwhile, even New York's progressive mayor has acknowledged that some common-sense positions transcend party lines. Whether that message reaches the far-left wing of the party remains to be seen.
When your policy agenda requires overriding the safety concerns of 400,000 public housing residents, most of them women and children, to make room for convicted violent criminals, the problem is not the policy you are trying to change. It is the lens you are looking through.
