The nonprofit founded by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s radical tenant advocate Cea Weaver is pushing a Marxist scheme that will use more than $2 billion in taxpayer dough to “take housing off landlords’ hands.”
The New York State Tenant Bloc, which Weaver helmed until joining Mamdani’s administration in January, said it wants to deploy the newly approved taxpayer funds to allow tenant-backed groups to take over rent-stabilized units, but was coy about the details.
“If landlords can’t maintain their buildings, tenants will,” the group declared Monday on X. “The Mayor’s Housing Plan directs $2.2 billion to taking housing off their hands. Tenants are organizing to defend our communities and reclaim our homes.”
The social media post was part of a thread from the group gloating about Mamdani’s rent freeze, that ended with a sign-up link for tenants to “get organized…to make the rent freeze meaningful.”
It’s not the first time limousine liberals Mamdani – or Weaver – declared their intention to socialize housing.
As recently as late May, when Mamdani unveiled his “Block by Block” housing plan, he pledged to “transfer ownership” of neglected buildings to community land trusts, nonprofits and tenants.
“The tenant groups essentially are looking at that $2.2 billion as a slush fund to be able to buy and take over these buildings,” Jay Martin, Executive Vice President of the New York Apartment Association, told The Post.
“To presume that the NYS Tenant Block isn’t also speaking from a place where Cea Weaver, her views aren’t being expressed through the tenant block, is naive,” he added.
“She controls housing policy out of the mayor’s office. It’s clear, as far as older housing, she controls it. She’s always been the mayor’s north star.”
A review by The Post previously found Mamdani’s plan to seize housing involved dragging bad landlords to court to have a judge appoint a non-profit to take over — and using the city’s Housing Development Fund Corporation to give loans and tax breaks for tenants to collectively take ownership of their buildings.
A $2 billion sum, which would pass through NYC’s Housing Preservation and Development Department for “ownership transfers,” was quietly embedded in Mamdani’s “Block by Block” plan.
“There are nonprofits right now that are city assisted with funding, that have no property taxes, and because of the rent stabilization law, they can’t make ends meet,” Martin added.
“It’s not a solution for the broken, rent-stabilized housing market right now. It is just a transfer of ownership of assets that are in deep, deep trouble.
Weaver previously admitted freezing rents will “deepen the crises” in the rent-stabilized housing market and cause building conditions to “deteriorate” in an essay just before she took office. But she didn’t see that as a bug but a feature, arguing it’ll force struggling property owners into foreclosure and make it easier to seize private property.
Asides from repeatedly calling to “seize private property,” Weaver — a white middle-class transplant who attended a pricey private liberal arts college — also blasted homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” in a series of pro-communist social media posts that resurfaced when she was picked to lead the resurrected Office to Protect Tenants for Mamdani.
“Preservation programs are a core pillar of any serious housing strategy, because protecting existing homes is just as important as building new ones,” a City Hall spokesperson told The Post.
“This administration is investing in the long-term health of our housing stock, including the purchase of distressed buildings where necessary, so tenants are not left at the mercy of neglect or speculation.”
