Mamdani makes $140,000 a year as NY State Lawmaker….
He pays $2,300 in a rent stabilized aprtment in Queens, NYC….
As Andrew M. Cuomo tries to regain his footing in the race for mayor of New York City, he has embraced an increasingly combative approach, sniping on social media at his biggest opponent, Zohran Mamdani, sometimes several times a day.
This weekend, that approach drew widespread attention after Mr. Cuomo, the former governor, took aim at a particularly sensitive issue: Mr. Mamdani’s rent-stabilized apartment.
In a post on X that drew more than 26 million views, Mr. Cuomo wrote that “a single mother and her children slept at a homeless shelter” because Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman, was “occupying her rent-controlled apartment.” Mr. Cuomo accused Mr. Mamdani of being “rich,” pointing out that assembly members make more than $140,000, and called on him to “move out.”
In replies to his own post, Mr. Cuomo was more inflammatory, calling Mr. Mamdani “disgusting,” and accused the assemblyman of “callous theft.”
Mr. Cuomo was referring to Mr. Mamdani’s one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, which the assemblyman has said he rents for $2,300 a month.
It is rent-stabilized, not rent-controlled. Only about 24,000 apartments in the city fall under rent control, which generally applies only to those units where tenants have been living continuously since 1971, well before Mr. Mamdani was born. About 960,000 apartments are rent-stabilized.
Rent-stabilized units tend to be cheaper than apartments that rent at market rates, with regulated rents that have increases limited by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board. Rent-stabilized tenants basically have a right to renew their lease, meaning they can often stay for as long as they like.
The notion that anyone — including wealthy New Yorkers — can secure those coveted apartments has long been a source of controversy in a city in the throes of a housing crisis….
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In February, Mr. Mamdani told the New York Editorial Board, a group of journalists who interviewed mayoral candidates, that he found his apartment on StreetEasy at a time when he was earning an annual salary of only $47,000. He added that he planned to move out of the apartment.
“In that time since, I’ve become an assembly member and I’m now able to pay for that apartment and able to also move out of that apartment, and I plan on doing so,” he said. “I don’t plan on living in that apartment for perpetuity.”…
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The median household income in a rent-stabilized unit was $60,000, according to the data, compared with more than $90,000 in market-rate apartments. The median rent-stabilized monthly rent was about $1,500, compared with $2,000 for market-rate apartments.
Still, there are no requirements for rent-stabilized units to be given first to people with lower incomes. In fact, many rent-stabilized units built in recent years, many under special tax incentive programs for developers, can be quite expensive: The citywide median rent of apartments registered with the state in 2024 was $3,105, according to city data….
Note….
Cuomo has begun to attack Mamdani getting media attention favorable to him….