Within the aftermath of the passage of the 2019 hire legal guidelines, some outstanding actual property leaders nonetheless didn’t know the identify of an individual key to orchestrating what one landlord known as a “horror present.”
“Why don’t they know who I’m? Ego and confidence,” Cea Weaver told The Real Deal a couple of months after the Housing Stability and Tenant Safety Act grew to become legislation.
In fact, Weaver is not a stranger to the trade.
The renter activist was one among Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first appointments after he was sworn in as mayor, naming her because the director of the newly revived Workplace to Defend Tenants. In current days, information articles have highlighted her previous posts on social media, resulting in a flurry of assaults from the suitable and testimonials of her advocacy work from the left.
However ever since 2019, extra actual property insiders have develop into conscious of Weaver and the bloc she represents. Weaver and her group, Housing Justice for All, have been a driving drive behind coverage initiatives most feared by the true property trade, together with the HSTPA, calls for for canceling hire throughout the pandemic, good trigger eviction, enlargement of hire regulation all through the state and requires freezing the hire.
Within the lead-up to the HSTPA, Weaver’s coalition appealed on to lawmakers, who reached a two-way deal with out then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Regardless of pleas from actual property executives to veto the invoice, Cuomo signed it into legislation.
Not all of those efforts have been profitable. Hire wasn’t canceled, and although the state legislature handed good trigger eviction in 2024, Weaver and different advocates complained that the authorized model was watered down. The Hire Tips Board declined to freeze rents final 12 months, however the brand new mayor has vowed to take action for the subsequent 4 years.
Within the highlight
Weaver served as a housing adviser to Mamdani throughout his mayoral marketing campaign and as a part of the newly launched New York State Tenant Bloc, mobilized tenants final 12 months to solely assist mayoral candidates who supported a hire freeze.
She’s additionally periodically drawn the trade’s ire with social media posts about hire regulation and different far-left priorities, although to not the extent seen this week.
Social media and information websites erupted this week over a few of Weaver’s outdated tweets. One in every of her posts, from 2017, referred to homeownership as “a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth constructing’ public coverage.”
When requested in regards to the submit, Mayor Zohran Mamdani defended his choice of Weaver for the Workplace to Defend Tenants, saying she was employed “primarily based on the monitor document that she had of standing up for tenants throughout town within the state.” He’s additionally mentioned he’s dedicated to offering stability for owners and would-be owners alongside tenants.
Throughout interviews with NY1’s Errol Louis, Weaver mentioned the phrasing of the outdated social media posts was “inelegant” and “regretful.”
“I actually don’t assume that every one homeownership is white supremacy,” she told Louis on his podcast this week, including that she was referring to longstanding inequities in homeownership.
Final 12 months, as a part of a TRD’s journal function, The Debate, Weaver defended hire stabilization as a method to offer predictability to renters in the identical method that fixed-rate mortgages assist property house owners.
“Renters ought to have entry to the identical stability, particularly as homeownership — all the time a fantasy, however a potent one — turns into unattainable for hundreds of thousands,” wrote on the time.
Longtime contentious determine
This week was not the primary time that Weaver has confronted backlash on the prospect of holding a authorities place. In 2021, she was nominated to the Metropolis Planning Fee, however withdrew her identify amid opposition.
In her new position with the Workplace to Defend Tenants, Weaver will be certain that “pro-tenant coverage is moved into each facet of the administration’s housing agenda,” she instructed Louis.
The workplace, alongside different metropolis businesses, will host “Rental Ripoff” hearings targeted on “unlawful, unfair, abusive, misleading, or unconscionable landlord practices.”
Mamdani has repeatedly dedicated to addressing house owners’ prices by property tax reform and different initiatives, equivalent to various insurance coverage fashions, although he hasn’t launched many particulars on learn how to pursue these actions. Hire stabilization reform would want to occur on the state stage, and lawmakers have proven little curiosity in taking over the problem.
Weaver’s outdated tweets have develop into a proxy battle over fears of what lies in retailer within the Mamdani administration and to what extent socialist insurance policies take maintain. (The Metropolis Council’s new Republican minority chief, David Carr, quoted Weaver’s tweets throughout a gathering on Wednesday and talked about the specter of “smothering collectivism” to property rights and particular person liberties.)
Whereas his preliminary actions as mayor focused “dangerous landlords,” Mamdani additionally signed executive orders geared toward discovering methods to hurry up housing building. Forward of the election, some reasonably priced housing builders mentioned they had been hopeful in regards to the mayor’s plans to construct 200,000 housing models over the subsequent decade.
Weaver has additionally voiced assist for ramping up housing building within the metropolis. She publicly supported housing ballot measures earlier than Mamdani confirmed that he was voting for them. She additionally warned towards housing regulation payments that housing teams argued would thwart the brand new mayor’s housing plan.
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