Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday charged that his independent opponent, Andrew Cuomo, sees the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized tenants as “political pawns,” after the former governor floated a proposal this week to significantly limit who can access those units.
Mamdani made the remarks during a Tuesday Brooklyn press conference as part of his “Five Boroughs Against Trump” tour in response to Cuomo’s Sunday proposal to means-test access to rent-stabilized apartments. Currently, anyone can rent a stabilized unit, for which yearly rent increases are limited and controlled by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board (RGB).
“It pains me to say that in our disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mind, these units, these buildings, these tenants are but a political pawn, they mean nothing more than that,” Mamdani said on Aug. 12.
One of Mamdani’s core campaign pledges is to appoint RGB members who will vote to keep stabilized rents flat each year that he is in office, which is known as a rent freeze.
Mamdani cast Cuomo’s proposal as purely an attack on his campaign, rather than a way to make rent-stabilized apartments more accessible to low-income New Yorkers.
“This proposal, this policy, is indicative of so much of Andrew Cuomo’s politics, where it works backwards from a petty vindictiveness, and it does not care who it harms in the process,” Mamdani said.
Attacks heat up between Mamdani and Cuomo
Cuomo put forward the measure following days-long social media screed against Mamdani, calling on him to move out of his rent-stabilized $2,300-a-month apartment in Astoria. He charged that the state lawmaker — who makes $142,000 annually — is taking the unit away from tenants with less means who really need it. He called the state of affairs “disgusting.”
The former governor has also argued that Mamdani’s background, being the son of independent filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani, adds fuel to the argument that he is too privileged to live in the apartment.
In subsequent posts, Cuomo has attempted to cast Mamdani’s apartment as a scandal by labeling it “#Rentgate” and demanding the Assembly member make his lease public in a bid to prove he lied about not knowing it was stabilized when he rented it. Mamdani responded with his own video on Tuesday, calling on Cuomo to release the list of clients he kept as a private consultant in the years after he resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal in 2021.
The measure, which Cuomo derisively dubbed “Zohran’s Law,” would stipulate that when rent-stabilized apartments become vacant, only those for whom the rent makes up 30% of their income would qualify. Those who spend at least 30% of their income on rent are considered rent-burdened.
In response to Mamdani’s braodside, Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi pointed out the policy applies to vacant apartments, not lease renewals or generational transfers and has the same income thresholds as public housing, Section 8, and other subsidized housing programs.
“Since Zohran is both wealthy and doesn’t work, I understand why he doesn’t like it,” Azzopardi said. “We called him out on his rank hypocrisy, it hit him where it hurts, and now he’s trying to desparately change the subject from his wealth, his privilege and the fact that he occupies an apartment from a program meant to help working men and women.”
Although Cuomo named the proposal after Mamdani, it would not actually apply to him, City & State reported. That is because it only covers vacant apartments, not those that are already occupied.
Cuomo does not live in a rent-stabilized unit. He is a multimillionaire who rents an $8,000-a-month apartment in the tony Sutton Place section of Midtown Manhattan. He moved back to the city last September after spending decades living either in Westchester County or Albany.
Cuomo’s latest line of attack against Mamdani comes as he continues to lag in the polls behind the Assembly member, but is still placing second in the five-way general election contest. It also comes after The New York Times reported last week that Cuomo spoke with President Trump about the mayor’s race — a conversation he denies happened.
During Mamdani’s event, rent-stabilized Flatbush tenant Lex Rountree argued Cuomo’s proposal would cause a “massive loss of affordability” for working-class and middle-income stabilized tenants.
“By subjecting vacant units to means testing and systematically removing working-class and middle-class families from the rent-stabilized system, Cuomo is ensuring that it will disappear,” Rountree said. “Rent Stabilization is not a government handout. It is a basic right that covers half of New York apartments.”
