Immigrant property owners say Cea Weaver’s past words erase their American story
The Comment That Lit a Fuse
A 2019 tweet and a 2021 video have become flashpoints in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first months in office, raising fundamental questions about the language of housing equity and who gets to define it. At the center of the controversy is Cea Weaver, the longtime housing advocate and Democratic Socialists of America member whom Mamdani appointed as Director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants on January 1, 2026. In the 2019 tweet, Weaver wrote that private property, including and especially homeownership, is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as wealth-building public policy. In the 2021 DSA video, she elaborated on the idea that housing should be treated as a collective good rather than an individual one, and that the transition to that model would require families, especially white families but some families of color as well, to relate to property differently. Those statements resurfaced when Weaver’s appointment was announced, and the reaction from small property owners has been sharp.
Immigrant Landlords Respond
Jan Lee, a third-generation Chinatown property owner and board member of the Small Property Owners of New York, gave Fox News Digital a detailed rebuttal that went to the heart of why the rhetoric landed so badly among a specific community. Lee pointed out that his family has been housing providers in New York City since the early 1900s, and that they did so under the shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act, federal law that denied Chinese immigrants the right to naturalize until 1943. For his family, property ownership was not a symbol of racial privilege, he said, but a form of resistance against it. Ann Korchak, the board president of SPONY, made a similar argument, noting that her organization is composed of immigrants and children of immigrants from diverse backgrounds who view property ownership as the fulfillment of sacrifice and struggle. Both called Weaver’s framing dismissive, insulting, and historically inaccurate.
Weaver’s Response and Mamdani’s Position
Weaver acknowledged that some of her past statements are not how she would phrase things today, describing them as regretful. She stopped short of a formal apology. Mamdani has said he obviously disagrees with the white supremacy framing, but has defended Weaver as a proven fighter for affordable housing whose record speaks for itself. He positioned her appointment as being about holding landlords who violate the law accountable, not about ideology.
A Debate That Cuts to the Core of Housing Politics
The controversy over Weaver’s comments illuminates a genuine tension within progressive housing advocacy. The critique of homeownership as a racially exclusionary institution is rooted in documented history: redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and discriminatory lending practices did systematically deny property ownership to Black and other minority families for generations. That history is well documented by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. But the leap from that historical critique to a claim that homeownership itself is a weapon of white supremacy flattens a complex reality that includes the very immigrant families who bought property precisely because they were excluded from other forms of wealth and security. The political fallout has drawn scrutiny from federal civil rights officials as well. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is on high alert regarding the Mamdani administration’s housing agenda.
What It Means for Housing Policy
Beyond the rhetoric, the practical question is what policies Weaver’s office will actually pursue. The Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants is charged with enforcing tenant protections, holding bad actor landlords accountable, and strengthening the city’s rent stabilization system. Small property owners fear that the office’s ideological orientation will lead to enforcement policies that do not distinguish between exploitative corporate landlords and family-owned properties that have been part of communities for generations. How the administration navigates that distinction will be one of the defining tests of its housing agenda.
