When Zohran Mamdani rides off to Gracie Mansion next month, the next tenant in his former rent-stabilized Astoria apartment will pay more in rent than he did. A lot more.
While the well-to-do Mamdani was paying $2,300 a month for the place, the next tenant will have to shell out $3,100 a month, a 35% increase. The increase alone will cost the tenant $9,600 more per year than Mamdani paid.
Mamdani — who’ll be moving into Gracie Mansion with his “aloof” artist wife Rama Duwaji sometime after being sworn in Jan. 1 — caught a break during the seven years he’s rented the one-bedroom Astoria pad, paying about $2,300 because his landlord charged him a much lower rate than what was allowed by law.
The son of millionaire award-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair and tenured Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani was getting what’s known as a “preferential rent” — a temporary discounted rate landlords sometimes offer on rent-stabilized apartments to attract tenants in softer markets.
But with the Big Apple rental market in shambles and rents at an all-time-high since he moved in, the next renter won’t enjoy that same benefit.
Council Minority Leader Joanne Ariola (R-Queens) nailed it. "Isn't that just the Democratic Socialists of America's New York in a nutshell?" she told the New York Post. “A nepo baby leaves his under-market apartment for a mansion, the price gets jacked up for the next guy, and some ill-conceived legislation forces the landlords to make an off-market listing to avoid the fees ‘progressive’ policies shoved down their throats.”
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Spot on. Remember, Mamdani is the son of a millionaire filmmaker and a Columbia professor, and he has no problem cashing in on his family connections while preaching socialism.
Mamdani — who was elected on promises of affordability and a pledge to freeze rent increases –confirmed to The Post last week he’s ditching his proletariat digs.
“I’m giving it up!” insisted Mamdani to a Post reporter outside the 35th Street apartment building on Dec. 20, before laughing off questions about whether he’s sad to leave and heading inside.
Adding insult to injury, Mamdani’s unit is being leased off-market — a practice that has exploded since the city’s new Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses (FARE) Act went into effect in June.
The controversial broker-fee ban — which Mamdani himself lobbied for as a state Assemblyman — sent prices through the roof as the fee became baked into rents.
Outrage isn’t limited to Republicans, either.
"This is exactly what New Yorkers are sick of: politicians who benefit from housing arrangements while pushing policies that make rents higher and listings disappear for everyone else," Queens Councilman Robert Holden, a Democrat, told the Post.
Hypocrisy stings. Mamdani campaigned on affordability and rent freezes. Yet his own spot flips to a steeper tab the second he bolts. As the Post notes, New York’s rent-stabilized system “has become so competitive it’s been criticized for only favoring a select few – often well-connected or high earners – while distorting the broader market by pushing landlords to hike market-rate rents to subsidize stabilized units.”
That’s not the system socialism promises, but it is the system it delivers. The only people that benefit from socialism are the elite, the ruling class who preach the loudest about fairness, equality, and affordability.
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