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Fox News
3 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Mamdani zings Cuomo in rent-stabilized housing spat during anti-Trump tour stop
Zohran Mamdani, New York City's Democratic mayoral nominee, continued his "Five Boroughs Against Trump" tour in Brooklyn on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump's agenda continues to take center stage on the New York City campaign trail. Speaking at the Flatbush Gardens Community Center, Mamdani's second anti-Trump event of the week was focused on housing, a hot-button issue in the New York City mayoral race as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has spent days criticizing Mamdani's rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria. "We must remember that Andrew Cuomo has spent more time talking about my apartment than asking why so many New Yorkers are being forced out of theirs. He has spent more time criticizing me than he has in criticizing the legislation that Donald Trump has passed," Mamdani said on Tuesday. Mamdani began his week-long tour alongside Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., in Manhattan on Monday morning. After visiting Brooklyn on Tuesday, Mamdani will travel to Staten Island on Wednesday, the Bronx on Thursday and Queens on Friday, Fox News confirmed. The 33-year-old self-described socialist's tour is a rejection of the Trump administration's sweeping second-term agenda and his so-called "authoritarian" attack on working New Yorkers, with Tuesday's event focused on housing. "While housing experts are ringing the alarm, Andrew Cuomo is ringing Donald Trump," Mamdani said. During Mamdani's event on Monday in Manhattan, reporters peppered the 33-year-old socialist candidate with questions about Cuomo's latest policy proposal – "Zohran's law." The former governor, who lost the Democratic mayoral primary to Mamdani in June, began trolling the assemblyman over the weekend with an edited video of Mamdani admitting he pays "$2,300 for my one bedroom in Astoria." "Rent-stabilized apartments when they're vacant should only be rented to people who need affordable housing, not people like Zohran Mamdani," Cuomo told reporters in a video posted on social media. Cuomo said "Zohran's law" was designed to prevent high-income individuals from occupying rent-stabilized apartments. Chief among Mamdani's now-infamous progressive policy proposals is his commitment to freezing rents. "As Mayor, Zohran will immediately freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants, and use every available resource to build the housing New Yorkers need and bring down the rent," according to Mamdani's campaign website. Mamdani has accused incumbent Mayor Eric Adams of appointing Rent Guidelines Board members to raise rents on stabilized apartments. While landlords and advocates argue the freeze would be illegal, Mamdani can accomplish this goal by appointing members to the board who wouldn't vote to increase the rent. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio's board voted to freeze the rent three times during his tenure. Cuomo had previously called the democratic socialist's plan to freeze rent a "politically convenient posture," and said such a move would hurt landlords who would be "unable to maintain their buildings." As Cuomo's fiery social media posts about Mamdani's rent-controlled apartment made the rounds, de Blasio – who has yet to endorse a candidate in the race to run the nation's most populous city – fired back at his former governor. "I did a rent freeze and almost 2 million hard-working New Yorkers benefited. @ZohranKMamdani wants to do a rent freeze. You know who doesn't want to do a rent freeze? @andrewcuomo, and he thinks he can trick us into forgetting that," de Blasio trolled on X. During the first stop on his anti-Trump tour on Monday, Mamdani responded to Cuomo's freshly proposed law "that will keep the rich out of New York's affordable housing." "What do we know about this policy proposal beyond the fact that it seeks to evict me from my apartment?" Mamdani questioned on Monday. "Like so much of Andrew Cuomo's politics, it is characterized by a petty vindictiveness. It leaves far more questions than it has answers. How many New Yorkers would this apply to? How many New Yorkers would be evicted from their apartments? How many New Yorkers would have their lives upended by a former governor who is responding to the fact that he was handily beaten by a tenant of a rent-stabilized apartment?" Mamdani asked. "I live rent-free in his head," Mamdani trolled Cuomo, arguing that he had many years to implement such policies as governor but is now only focused on trying to reckon with a "political defeat." Soon after Mamdani's criticism, the Cuomo campaign unveiled his proposal to protect rent-stabilized apartments from being occupied by high-income individuals. "Under Cuomo's proposal, when a rent-stabilized apartment becomes vacant, the incoming individual income would be capped so that the annual rent makes up at least 30 percent of that income. For example, if an apartment rents for $2,500 a month ($30,000 per year), the new tenant's income could not exceed $100,000," according to the plan. The Cuomo campaign also clarified that "Zohran's law" would only apply to vacant apartments. When reached for comment regarding Mamdani's anti-Trump tour, White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, told Fox News Digital, "Comrade Mamdani is the American people's worst nightmare. His communist policies will crater our economy, increase crime, crowd out Americans with free health care for illegal immigrants, and defund the brave men and women of law enforcement who keep us safe." The White House added that "Mamdani's idea of 'immigration reform' is no borders and amnesty for all the violent criminal illegal aliens that Joe Biden released into our country. The American people have repeatedly rejected this Communist agenda and the more Mamdani shares his radical policies, the more the American people will recoil."
New York Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Zohran Mamdani's $2,300 rent scandal exposes who this ‘socialist' is really looking after first —himself
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. Advertisement 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.' Advertisement 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 Advertisement 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? Advertisement 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 Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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?
Politico
29-07-2025
- Business
- Politico
Mamdani's rent freeze promise could run into stark financial reality
Meanwhile, the share of buildings that are considered distressed — defined as costs exceeding gross income — is up sharply from the years leading up to 2019. The property values of rent-regulated buildings are also down significantly since then. Complicating that picture, however, is the fact that landlord incomes have on average spiked in recent years — driven by massive increases in Manhattan, according to Rent Guidelines Board data. Even as Adams' rent board has approved higher increases than his predecessor, rent-stabilized landlords have continually complained that these hikes are insufficient in the post-2019 landscape. Ann Korchak, a Manhattan landlord and board president of an association representing small owners, said the most recent rent hike 'failed' small property owners and 'didn't follow the math.' Post-2019, 'the RGB is the only way to get meaningful rent increases, which we're not even getting,' she said. The landlord representatives on the board had argued for increases as high as 8 percent over one year. For a typical rent-stabilized apartment — at the median rent of $1,500 per month — that would mean a rent spike up to $1,620, or an extra $1,440 per year for the median household. The median income for rent-stabilized tenants was $60,000 in 2023, according to the city's most recent housing and vacancy survey. Vacant apartments affordable at that income level are exceedingly scarce. 'Rent-stabilization is one of the only lifelines and we have to do everything we possibly can to keep it affordable,' Weaver said. Of all the candidates in the Democratic primary, Mamdani ran most forcefully on a rent freeze, while his opponents either waffled or rejected the idea. 'I'm going to freeze the rent for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants because that's the mayor's power — the last mayor did that three times,' the democratic socialist said in a radio interview before the primary. 'We have these tools; it's just a question of do we want to do this.'
Business Insider
14-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Mark Cuban says some of NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's key policies don't 'have a chance'
Mark Cuban thinks New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and President Donald Trump have something in common, radically different politics aside. On an episode of the podcast "Pod Save America" that aired on July 13, Cuban said that both Mamdani and Trump successfully focused on issues that immediately impact voters' lives during their campaigns, regardless of whether their promises are realistic. "We're cutting rents, right? We're changing grocery stores. None of that shit has a chance. Doesn't matter," Cuban said, referencing some of Mamdani's key proposals. Mamdani has promised to freeze rent on all stabilized apartments in the city and replace members of the Rent Guidelines Board with people who will freeze rents every year of his term. He has pledged to create city-owned grocery stores that do not have to pay rent or property taxes, and can "pass on savings to shoppers," per his website. "This guy is walking in telling me he's going to walk on water. He's going to make me more money, he's going to save me money, he's going to make my life better," Cuban said of how he thinks some New Yorkers understood Mamdani's proposals. He said the tactic is "Trump 101. Is it true? Does it matter?" Business Insider asked Cuban about why he doubts some of Mamdani's plans, which the candidate plans to pay for in part by raising the corporate tax rate to 11.5% and adding a 2% income tax on New Yorkers making more than $1 million. "Until we see actual process and plans to actually implement a promise, I look at his, and all campaign promises, as nothing more than promises," he told BI. He said Americans now vote for policies that they think could help them, "even if there is no evidence they could possible happen." It is, he said, "analogous" to Trump's promise to make Mexico pay for a border wall. "We are going to do X, and someone else will pay for it," he said. "That seems to be the path of least resistance to getting votes for any office." Cuban told BI that he doesn't plan to publicly support any of the mayoral candidates, since he's not a New York City resident. Representatives for Mamdani did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI. Mamdani has thrown some of New York City's business world into chaos. High-profile corporate leaders have publicly come out against him, and several spent big bucks trying to make sure someone else got the Democratic nomination. The 33-year-old mayoral hopeful recently said billionaires shouldn't exist — Cuban is worth $5.7 billion, according to Forbes — but that he looks forward to working with "everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer." Cuban is far from the only non-New Yorker talking about the race — venture capitalist Shaun Maguire recently rocked the tech world with controversial comments about Mamdani.
Business Insider
05-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Zohran Mamdani wants to freeze rents for New Yorkers. Here's why it's controversial.
The pledge — plastered across T-shirts, tote bags, and campaign mailers across the city — has drawn some of the most energetic support and opposition to Mamdani's campaign. It's not unusual for a New York City mayor to support temporarily pausing rent increases on the city's nearly one million rent-stabilized units, which make up about half of all rental apartments and house more than 2 million people. But Mamdani has gone a step further, promising to replace the members of the Rent Guidelines Board with individuals committed to freezing rents every year of his term. Tenant advocates say that a rent freeze would provide crucial relief to low-income New Yorkers — especially families of color, seniors, and Gen Z renters — in one of the most expensive cities in the country. But landlords say rent freezes would starve many buildings of crucial income needed to maintain and repair stabilized apartments, while some housing economists say depressing rents could discourage much-needed housing construction. Here's what's really going on with Mamdani's rent freeze, and what it would mean for the city. How New York renters are actually doing Mamdani's rent freeze pledge comes as the city's renters are struggling. About a quarter of all city households that don't live in public housing or use a housing voucher are severely rent-burdened, meaning they spend at least half of their income on housing. The typical tenant household earns about $70,000 a year, but citywide median rent hit almost $3,700 a month — or over $44,000 a year — in late 2024. Rent-stabilized apartments make up the biggest share of the city's affordable housing. The median rent in a stabilized apartment was is about $1,500 in 2023 according to the city's latest data — about $141 less than the total median of $1,614 for all rental units. Black, Latino and low-income residents are overrepresented as tenants in rent-stabilized apartments and thus could especially benefit from a freeze. The rising cost of living is making it hard for New Yorkers to stay in the city. "The median income for a rent-stabilized household is $60,000 a year. Any rent hike could push them out of the city," Mamdani said in a campaign video. For now, rents will keep rising. Less than a week after Mamdani's primary win, the nine-member Rent Guidelines Board voted on Monday to raise rents for one-year leases in stabilized units by 3%, and by 4.5% on two-year leases. The board raised rents by a total of 9% during the first three years of Mayor Eric Adams' term. That's up from Adams' predecessor, Mayor Bill De Blasio, who oversaw three rent freezes during his eight years in office and a 6% increase in stabilized rents overall. One of the Rent Guidelines Board members who voted in favor of the rent increase, Alex Armlovich, called it "a nuanced compromise" between competing testimonies from landlords and tenants. The pros and cons of a rent freeze Critics of rent freezes point to a few major issues. They argue that rent increases are needed to allow landlords to keep up with their costs, including building repairs and maintenance. Proponents of freezing rents argue landlords can tap other resources to fill the gap in revenue. Sam Stein, a housing policy analyst with the Community Service Society — a nonprofit focused on aiding low-income New Yorkers, said that city-run targeted programs designed to aid landlords who can't cover the costs are better-suited to address the problem rather than raising rents for all stabilized units. Mamdani and other rent freeze advocates argue that many landlords of stabilized units are doing fine. Indeed, a report by the Rent Guidelines Board found that these landlords' average income, after subtracting expenses and adjusting for inflation, was up 8% between 2022 and 2023. But that number doesn't give a full financial picture, as landlords could have mortgages and other debts, and it's an average across a very diverse array of buildings. Buildings with rent-stabilized apartments range from brand-new, high-end complexes with sky-high market rents and a small number of stabilized units, to 100% rent-stabilized buildings that have had controlled rents for 70 years. That diversity makes it especially tricky to fit a citywide rent increase to all those units. "We have both the newest, healthiest, most expensive rental buildings in the city and the most distressed, low-rent buildings in the city all under one system, and we're supposed to pick one number," Armlovich said. Addressing the housing shortage Fundamentally, New York's affordability problem is caused by a shortage of homes. Recently, apartment vacancy rates hit a more than 50-year low of 1.4%. Some housing economists worry that freezing rents on stabilized units could discourage housing construction, further depressing the supply of homes and hurting affordability. They point to real estate developers who accept tax incentives on new and converted buildings that include a certain amount of rent-stabilized units. Some argue builders would be less likely to take advantage of these programs if the stabilized units brought in less revenue under a rent freeze. Armlovich said that several rent freezes under a future administration would likely only have a modest impact on housing construction broadly. But he worries that an environment of frozen rents could scare off some developers and financiers. "It's just like old conservative, middle-aged bankers being like, 'Oh my god, you want to underwrite a construction loan under socialism?'" Armlovich said. Mamdani has also floated other pro-building housing policies. The candidate has proposed building 200,000 subsidized affordable homes and doubling the city Housing Authority's funding for preserving existing affordable housing, while he's expressed some interest in loosening land-use regulations to spur new construction. What renters and landlords think about a rent freeze While Mamdani's win was something of an upset, lifelong New Yorker John Leyva said it was a reflection of renters' desire to see a mayoral candidate promising to tackle affordability issues head-on. Leyva has been organizing tenants in Brooklyn who he said have been squeezed with rents for the past decade. "I was paying $400 a month for a two-bedroom when I first got here," said the 54 year-old, who's lived in his rent-stabilized apartment for the past 30 years. At the time, he was able to afford college, a car, and rent on a minimum-wage job. "Tenants now have two and three jobs just to try to pay what they can now." Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association, said that renters' and landlords' interests don't need to be opposed in solving New York City's affordability crisis, but that a rent freeze isn't the solution. "When it comes to affordability, the only proven way to reduce the rent is increase the supply," Burgos said. With the volume of new housing that New York desperately needs, Burgos said Mamdani will have to work with developers and the private sector to meet that demand if he wins this fall. Property taxes in New York City are the "single largest expense in operating their housing," Burgos said. Without raising rents, landlords are facing a "dire" situation. But Leyva said it's not as simple as supply and demand. It takes time to build new, permanently subsidized housing, and the private sector isn't sufficiently incentivized to do so, he argued, adding that renters need immediate relief.
