Cuomo’s Attack on Mamdani’s Apartment Struck a New York Nerve

A long-running campaign fight over New York City’s soaring housing costs reignited this week around an unlikely spark: the $2,300-a-month rent-stabilized apartment occupied by Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor.

It began Friday afternoon, when his leading rival, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, unexpectedly attacked Mr. Mamdani, who makes $142,000 as a state assemblyman, for occupying an affordable unit in Astoria, Queens, that he said should go to a needier New Yorker.

By Tuesday, the broadside had escalated into a multiday war of words that put Mr. Mamdani, the front-runner in the race, on the defensive and highlighted the candidates’ competing visions for how to bring down runaway costs in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

The particulars were bitterly personal. Mr. Cuomo accused Mr. Mamdani of “callous theft” and proposed a new law named after him to means-test who can live in the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized units. Mr. Mamdani called it “petty vindictiveness” and blamed the former governor and the real estate developers who fund Mr. Cuomo’s campaigns for the city’s housing shortage.

Yet the barbs also pointed to more fundamental differences that could shape November’s general election over who should benefit from government regulation of housing costs and assistance to those in need.

A 33-year-old democratic socialist, Mr. Mamdani handily defeated Mr. Cuomo and other Democratic rivals in June’s primary with proposals to raise taxes on the rich to expand the city’s social services. He wants free universal child care, buses that are free for all riders, a rent freeze on stabilized units and new housing construction financed by the city.

“I believe that government’s job is to guarantee dignity for each and every New Yorker, not determine which ones are worthy of it,” Mr. Mamdani said on Tuesday during a news conference at an affordable housing development in Brooklyn.

Mr. Cuomo, a moderate Democrat who lives in an $8,000-a-month market-rate apartment, supports incentivizing new private housing construction but has said government resources should be steered to the neediest. Responding to Mr. Mamdani’s plans, he recently proposed expanding an underutilized subsidy program on public transit for low-income residents and targeting food benefits to the poor.

“Why should we subsidize the rich?” said Mr. Cuomo, who until last year spent decades living out of the city. “Why should they pay my bus fare?”

Mr. Cuomo’s decision to attack Mr. Mamdani’s personal residence comes as he scrambles to regain his footing in the race as a political independent. He must persuade donors and voters uneasy with Mr. Mamdani to back his campaign, rather than that of Mayor Eric Adams, another independent, or Curtis Sliwa, the Republican in the race.

With Mr. Mamdani comfortably ahead in the polls, Mr. Cuomo has turned to an increasingly caustic approach.

There were some signs it was gaining traction. By personally challenging Mr. Mamdani on housing affordability, an issue that has been central to the Mamdani campaign, Mr. Cuomo tapped a sensitive nerve for New Yorkers who routinely agonize over who pays what in rent, and what housing arrangements are fair.

About half the city’s apartments are considered stabilized, a form of regulation meant to protect New Yorkers from sharp spikes in rent. Mr. Cuomo’s so-called Zohran’s Law proposal, which he rushed out just hours after first mentioning it, would effectively allow units in the program to be leased only to New Yorkers who pay at least 30 percent of their income a year in rent, the threshold at which households are generally deemed to be rent-burdened. For example, if an apartment rents for $2,500 a month, or $30,000 for the year, the tenant’s income can’t be more than $100,000, according to the proposal.

The plan drew sharp criticism from some housing experts, tenant advocates and even some former allies of Mr. Cuomo, a onetime federal housing secretary. They said that it showed he did not understand the depth of the city’s housing crisis and that it could do more harm than good, if enacted.

Representative Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat who backed Mr. Cuomo in the primary, predicted the plan “would lead to the mass displacement of working-class and middle-class New Yorkers.”

“Market-rate housing is so prohibitively expensive that even the most solidly middle-class families can scarcely afford it,” he wrote on X. “Add to that the crushing cost of utilities, insurance, child care … and the combination is overwhelming.”

Jay Martin, the executive director of Community Housing Improvement Program, which represents 4,000 New York City landlords, said he was happy to call out the “hypocrisy” of wealthy people living in rent-stabilized units. But he was similarly sour on Mr. Cuomo’s plan.

“Means-testing is an emotional response, not a practical solution, to fixing the rent stabilization system,” he wrote on X.

Notably, the proposal would only apply to new applicants for rent-stabilized units, meaning it would do nothing to address cases like Mr. Mamdani’s.

A spokesman for Mr. Adams, who shares many of Mr. Cuomo’s views on housing policy, called the latest proposal “political theater.” Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, defended the plan as a program “to aid working New Yorkers” and argued it could be run like existing city-operated affordable housing lotteries.

Mr. Mamdani later took his own shot at Mr. Cuomo, releasing a video, which quickly racked up millions of views, challenging him to release a list of the private clients who paid him as a consultant during the years after he resigned as governor in scandal. Mr. Azzopardi called the video “a temper tantrum.”

Mr. Mamdani is far from the first mayoral hopeful to face difficult questions about how much he is paying in rent and whether it is fair.

Edward I. Koch lived in a rent-controlled one-bedroom in Greenwich Village as a congressman and refused to give up the lease when he moved to Gracie Mansion for the 12 years he was mayor. He unabashedly defended his housing choice.

His successor, David N. Dinkins, faced criticism as a candidate for owning a three-bedroom apartment under the Mitchell-Lama program designed for middle- and low-income New Yorkers during an earlier housing pinch. Mr. Dinkins paid an extra surcharge because he exceeded his unit’s income limit and defended his choice to live there, before eventually selling it after he became mayor.

Mr. Mamdani has said he was making just $47,000 a year working as a foreclosure counselor when he moved into his current apartment in Astoria years ago. (The median household income for rent-stabilized tenants is around $60,000.) He said he did not know it was rent-stabilized at the time.

Mr. Cuomo said that Mr. Mamdani’s Assembly salary, plus the wealth of his parents, should disqualify the lawmaker from continuing to occupy the unit. Mr. Mamdani has previously told The New York Times that his parents had not supported him financially for years.

Mr. Mamdani and his allies have tried to portray Mr. Cuomo as an enemy of affordable housing. During his time as governor, they point out, tens of thousands of units of previously rent-stabilized housing were allowed to be taken out of the program.

Mr. Cuomo also signed a change into law as governor that protected the right of higher-income New Yorkers to stay in rent-stabilized apartments.

“In our disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mind, these units, these buildings, these tenants are a political pawn,” Mr. Mamdani said on Tuesday. “He believes that New Yorkers, in order to experience that stability, they must be rent-burdened.”

As for his own rent-stabilized apartment, Mr. Mamdani said he had never intended to stay. In fact, he told reporters, he planned to be moving early next year to a bigger place on the Upper East Side: Gracie Mansion.

Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting.