Zohran Mamdani's $2,300 rent scandal exposes who this ‘socialist' is really looking after first —himself

New York Post

2 days ago

Who are government-mandated rent-stabilized apartments for? Apparently well-compensated bureaucrats.
Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is only paying $2,300 for his stabilized place in Astoria, despite making $142,000 a year as an assemblyman, plus stipends, in addition to however much his artist wife is also raking in.
It's part of a long-term pattern of Mamdani scheming programs meant for less-fortunate people for his own benefit. First he's claiming to be an African American to get into college, now he's grifting on rent-stabilization that lower income people should be benefiting from.
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Mamdani's rent had been pointed out for around a week before Andrew Cuomo caught on and challenged him in a Friday tweet about the matter, which attracted a staggering 33 million views on X.
5 Zohran Mamdani is under fire for only paying $2,300 a month for his rent-stabilized apartment.
Getty Images
'You are actually very rich, [yet] you and your wife pay $2,300 a month, as you have bragged, for a nice apartment in Astoria,' the former governor wrote.
'I am calling on you to move out immediately and give your affordable housing back to an unhoused family who needs it.'
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Cuomo inaccurately first claimed that Mamdani's home is rent-controlled (a statement he's since corrected). The one-bedroom apartment is actually rent-stabilized, as are almost half of rentals in New York City.
But Cuomo is not wrong to question why Mamdani — who claims to be a champion of the lesser-fortunate — has never sought to correct why someone like him can benefit from a system that should be for low-income, housing-insecure New Yorkers first.
Rent-stabilized apartments are subject to only modest annual increases in rent, as determined by the Rent Guidelines Board, and virtually guaranteed rights to lease renewal. And there are generally no income restrictions for moving into one — it's mostly a matter of luck.
5 Andrew Cuomo called for Zohran Mamdani to move out of his rent-stabilized home.
@andrewcuomo/X
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But shouldn't a socialist assemblyman be concerned with making sure low-income New Yorkers who need those protections most are prioritized in getting them?
Apparently not so much. Mamdani has bragged about only paying $2,300 a month for rent in debates and interviews alike.
He has made housing the primary pillar of his campaign, calling on New York City to freeze the rent for apartments under the provision of the government and to build 200,000 affordable housing units in the next 10 years.
The question is: Who gets to benefit from these policies? Will well-off New Yorkers like Mamdani, who are unfairly occupying rent-stabilized homes, benefit from indefinite freezes?
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5 Cuomo is proposing legislation called Zohran's Law which would block wealthy tenants from accessing affordable housing.
SARAH YENESEL/EPA/Shutterstock
Former governor Cuomo told The Post Sunday that he's proposing new legislation, calling it Zohran's Law, which would block wealthy New Yorkers like Mamdani from accessing rent-stabilized housing.
'We're not supposed to be providing rent-stabilized apartments to the children of millionaires,' he said.
Mamdani's father is a major Columbia professor, his mother an internationally renowned movie director.
Cuomo is right, but he shouldn't stop there. Mamdani — who has previously called for the 'abolition of private property' — should be made to explain exactly who will benefit from his expanded affordable housing scheme.
He did, after all, tell the New York Editorial Board that he's 'deeply skeptical of means testing' when asked by an interviewer whether we should 'have any way of ensuring that people who are better off who live in rent-stabilized housing don't get those benefits.'
Seems like Mamdani has a very personal interest in batting down proposals for means testing.
5 Zohran Mamdani's wife, Rama Duwaji, leaving their apartment in Astoria recently.
Brigitte Stelzer
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5 Mamdani was featured on The Post's cover calling on him to give up his rent-stabilized place.
This scandal fits into a larger pattern in the candidate's past. It's not unlike when Mamdani, who grew up in Uganda but is of Indian descent, decided to check the 'African American' box on his application to Columbia University.
Mamdani had no problem potentially benefiting from racial affirmative action — a system set up to uplift the descendants of American slaves — in the admissions process, despite quite evidently not being Black or African American.
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Similarly, he seems to have no issue getting all the perks of rent-stabilization — a system set up to receive cash-strapped New Yorkers — despite being the well-compensated son of successful parents.
Mamdani has a long history of identifying special-interest programs meant for others worse off than him, and then scheming them for his own benefit. Is this really the sort of leader that New Yorkers trust to roll out and dole out vast new entitlement programs?