Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly appointed tenant advocate called to “seize private property” and blasted home ownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” in a series of pro-communist social media posts.
Cea Weaver, Mamdani’s new director of the city Office to Protect Tenants, made the statements and urged her followers to elect more communists in several lecturing posts on her now-deleted X account that were unearthed by internet sleuths.
“Seize private property!” she said on June 13, 2018.
She later doubled down on that in a mini-manifesto on August 2019.
“Private property including any kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy,” she said then.
Weaver also pushed to “Elect more communists” in December 2017 — when a Harlem street corner was being renamed in honor of former Manhattan Rep. Vito Marcantonio, who was a communist.
She also unloaded on law enforcement in a May 2020 rant that came during the furor over the death of George Floyd.
“The Police Are Just People The State Sanctions To Murder W[ith] Immunity,” she posted.
Weaver, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and former campaign coordinator for Housing Justice For All, also served as an adviser to the Mamdani campaign in 2025.
The Post featured her as part of a group of young lefty progressives in Mamdani’s brain trust.
She was a key player in lobbying the Democratic-run state Legislature to tighten the city’s rent stabilization laws in 2019, making them more pro-tenant.
One major property owner said Mamdani and Weaver are misguided.
“Without landlords how to do you build and maintain housing? You think the government is going to do it? Look at NYCHA [New York City Housing Authority complexes],” said Humberto Lopes, founder and CEO of the Gotham Housing Alliance.
“You put a system in place to destroy landlords. Why are you s–tting on us?,” he said.
Mamdani wants to freeze the rent on 1 million rent-regulated apartments — a move that would need sign off from the Rent Guidelines Board.
Mamdani’s office and Weaver had no immediate comment.
Meanwhile, Mamdani on Sunday appointed a veteran state housing official, Dina Levy, as the new commissioner of Housing of Preservation and Development, or HPD.
Levy currently serves as senior vice president of single family and community development at New York’s Division of Homes and Community Renewal, the state’s housing agency.
“Levy is an experienced and fearless housing leader, and I know that she will fight to protect tenants and tackle our housing crisis head-on,” Mamdani said, appearing with Levy at a press conference in The Bronx.
Mamdani also signed an executive order creating “Rental Ripoff” hearings across the five boroughs within the first 100 days of his time as mayor. The order directs HPD, the Department of Buildings, the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to hold the hearings in coordination with the new Office of Mass Engagement.
“Too many New Yorkers have been forced to pay more for less — living in unsafe, unconscionable, and unaffordable housing,” the mayor said. “Under my administration, that ends. Today’s executive order is the first step towards giving New Yorkers a voice in addressing the housing crisis that is pricing them out of our city.”
Levy said she started out as a tenant advocate and is ready for the challenge of improving and expanding the city’s affordable housing stock.
“I do know the work ahead will be hard,” Levy said.
Part of HPD’s mission is enforcing the housing maintenance code on behalf of tenants, which includes inspecting homes for safety, bringing cases in housing court against landlords and requiring emergency repairs.
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