And Make Housing “More Affordable?”
I mentioned in the Jan. 7 issue that I’ve been wondering how much of what Zohran Mamdani said he’d do as mayor during his campaign was real and how much was just vote-seeking rhetoric.
So far, it looks like the man was not bluffing.
The first hint was his choice for the new Fire Commissioner, Lillian Bonsignore, the second woman and first openly gay woman to be appointed to that post. Critics point out that she is also the first person with no experience as a firefighter to lead the 11,000-person agency. (She does, however, have 31 years of experience in the Emergency Medical Services field, and has strong recommendations from some who worked with her during the three years she served as EMS chief.)
I think she deserves a pass on the issue of “Does she have the skills and knowledge to do her job?”
I can’t say the same thing about Cea Weaver, however.
Weaver is the woman Mamdani appointed to be “tenant director,” where she will oversee, among other things, establishing regulations that affect property ownership, tenant rights, rent-control rules, and so on.
On a 2021 podcast recently unearthed by Washington Free Beacon’s Jon Levine, Weaver says her goal is to make New York City housing “worth less” by mandating rent control regulations. While she is speaking, you can see Mamdani on the side nodding enthusiastically. Then he says, “I get most of my knowledge on housing from Cea, so if you get it from me, it’s just not coming from the source.”
She’s called for the collectivization of property (which she said will particularly affect white families). She’s called property ownership a tool of “white supremacy.” She supports the impoverishment of the white middle class, and she has called for the election of Communists.
She’s also said that it’s important for “white people to feel defeated.”
Putting aside the question of whether making white people feel defeated is something she should be doing, her plan for making NYC housing more affordable is not just wrong, it’s stupidly wrong. Because its two main strategies – rent control and public housing – have done nothing but make housing more costly every single time they have been used. Not only in NYC, but everywhere in the world.
In reviewing coverage of this on one news outlet, I found the following three reader comments that I wanted to share with you:
* “These policies will make NYC a landscape of food deserts. Then Bernie Sanders can start bread lines because bread lines are the best sign that there is bread. This approach will also help the homeless who will move into the open-air drug marts that will inevitably pop up.”
* “If they force housing to be worth less, wouldn’t they then receive less in property taxes? How would they replace those tax dollars? By raising the price of other government services?”
* “This is so surreal. We’re literally watching a bunch of financially privileged Woke postgraduates explore Socialist ideas as if it’s a project for their postgraduate thesis, but who are now in charge of the largest and most diverse city in America.”
Cea Weaver in 2019
About Cea Weaver
Cea Weaver (born Celia Weaver) serves as the director of the New York City Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. She previously coordinated the statewide organization Housing Justice for All and was a central figure in the campaign that led to the passage of the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019. As a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, she has advocated for rent strikes and regulations that prioritize housing for community use rather than profit.
