Zohran Mamdani housing official Cea Weaver criticized by NYC landlords

New York City landlords are sharply criticizing remarks from a top housing official in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration who previously linked homeownership to white supremacy, calling the comments “racist” and dismissive of immigrant property owners.

Cea Weaver, a longtime housing activist and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), was tapped by Mamdani to be his director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.

Speaking about housing policy and equity in a March 2021 DSA video, Weaver said, “For centuries we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good, and we are going to…in transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity, will require that we think about it differently.”

“Families, especially White families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well, are going to have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have,” she added.

Weaver also faced backlash for a 2019 tweet where she wrote, “private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of White supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”

Weaver’s statement drew the attention of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who told that the “Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is on high alert as to the radical agenda promised by Mayor Mamdani, much of which is at odds with our federal Constitutional and civil rights norms.”

New York City small property owners who spoke with Digital say Weaver’s views are “insulting,” and paint landlords with a broad and unfair brush.

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Cea Weaver, left, speaks during a news conference with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, far right, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026, in New York. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office via AP)

Jan Lee, a third-generation Chinatown property owner and board member of the Small Property Owners of New York (SPONY), said Weaver’s comments ignore both history and the lived experiences of immigrant landlords.

“I think that the true socialist views toward housing and taking housing away from people like myself is the racist element in this,” Lee said. “I think when you start to lump all of us together and say that we’re all the bad thing that’s keeping people out of housing, that’s racist. We’re right out of the gate in this administration, starting off with extreme hostility for property owners.”

Lee emphasized his family’s deep roots in the city, noting that his family has been housing providers in New York City since the early 1900s.

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He pushed back forcefully on the notion that property ownership equates to White supremacy, pointing to the history of immigrant communities striving and struggling to acquire a piece of the American dream.

“I think comments from a White woman individual who’s now in this seat of government saying that home ownership is some form of White superiority hasn’t lived the life of my family and many of the families who are small property owners of New York who are not White,” Lee said. “Black owners were barred from owning property. There were laws made against Chinese about Japanese Americans in the United States for owning property, so to say that owning property is a form of White supremacy is completely, completely out of line.”

“And it denies the history that many people of color have had to leave. It’s very insulting when you have the privilege that she has to sit there and say these things in 2026 without understanding that when my family bought our properties, the Chinese Exclusion Act existed. We weren’t even allowed to come into this country,” he continued.

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The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first major U.S. federal law to ban a specific ethnic group, Chinese laborers, from immigrating to the U.S. It suspended immigration for 10 years and denied citizenship to Chinese residents. It was not repealed until 1943.

Ann Korchak, board president of SPONY, echoed Lee’s concerns and called the rhetoric divisive.

“I think that language like that is insulting,” Korchak said. “[Weaver] should come to a SPONY meeting and she would be blown away by the diversity of our organization.”

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“New York has a rich tradition of immigrants kind of reaching the American dream through property ownership,” she said. “So many of our members and others who don’t even know that we exist came to America because they didn’t have rights in wherever they came from. Owning property is something that was unattainable to them from where they came,” Korchak said.

“To say that it’s racist to own property is an insult to every single immigrant who ever came here,” she added.

Landlords are concerned that socialist policies will push small homeowners out of the city, leaving tenants at the mercy of large corporations.  (Nikolas Lanum/ Digital)

In a January statement announcing Weaver’s appointment, Mamdani said, “You cannot hold landlords who violate the law to account unless you have a proven, principled and tireless fighter at the helm. That is why I am proud today to announce my friend Cea Weaver as the Director of the newly reinvigorated Mayor’s office to protect tenants.”

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Weaver said last year that she found her past comments about homeownership and White supremacy “regretful” but, according to the New York Post, stopped short of an apology.

“I think that some of those things are certainly not how I would say things today, and are regretful,” she told NY1. “I do think my sort of decades of experience fighting for more affordable housing sort of stands on its own.”

Lee argued that anti-landlord rhetoric from the Mamdani administration negatively impacts both housing providers and tenants, leaving renters at the mercy of large corporations.

“I think that working face-to-face with real property owners, understanding who they are, their value to the community, and what will keep them in the community is more important than starting off with someone who is vitriolic, who’s very hateful toward property owners and actually sees property ownership through a very narrow myopic lens [and] can only hurt tenants and property owners themselves,” she said.

He also alluded to broader consequences if small landlords are pushed out.

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“If you really care about the tenancy and the quality of life of tenants in New York City, particularly those people who are people of color, you should not want small property owners, particularly people who have been embedded in the community for a long time, to leave,” Lee said.

Ann Korchak noted that her organization is filled with immigrant landlords from various ideological and ethnic backgrounds.  (Nikolas Lanum/ Digital)

As the Mamdani administration begins shaping its housing agenda, comments from landlords highlight an early and pointed divide between City Hall’s tenant-focused leadership and the city’s small property owners.

According to Korchak, small property owners feel unfairly targeted by rhetoric they believe oversimplifies a complex housing crisis and disregards the immigrant experience.

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She also noted that immigrant families in her organization see property ownership as the culmination of years of sacrifice.

“Either immigrants or children of immigrants, grandchildren of immigrants know the sacrifice that either they made themselves or their parents or grandparents made to buy a piece of property,” she said. “To be just shot down and criticized for their desire to do that is grossly unfair.”

Weaver and the mayor’s office did not return Digital’s request for comment.

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