GOP New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino is warning that the Mamdani administration is laying the groundwork for an aggressive campaign to strip private property from landlords and, eventually, ordinary homeowners under the guise of tenant protection.
According to The Post Millennial, Paladinos concerns center on Mamdanis close ally and self-described tenant advocate Cea Weaver, who has openly entertained the idea of confiscating private property from homeowners. Paladino took to X to outline what she believes is a deliberate, multi-stage strategy that weaponizes city bureaucracy and progressive housing laws against property owners.
"Step 1: Organize tenants to file dozens and dozens of complaints with the building department to establish cause for investigation. Step 2: Squeeze these same landlords with massive compounding fines they will not be able to get out from under. Use rent strikes and rent control laws to limit income, making compliance with tenant complaints financially impossible. Step 3: Use the outstanding debt with the city resulting from the fines and noncompliance as leverage with mortgage and bankruptcy courts to have the buildings turned over to the city and/or designated nonprofits at fire sale prices," she wrote. Paladino argued that this is not a hypothetical scenario but a roadmap for how radical activists intend to use state power to undermine basic property rights.
She warned that this is how "private property will be stripped from owners, and how politically-favored activist nonprofits will become the new land barons of NYC." In her view, the process will not stop with large landlords, but will steadily creep toward "private homeowners who rent an upstairs or basement apartment."
"And once they take over these properties, they will be left to rot, just like NYCHA is. Thats the future the marxists want for us. Its just plain evil," she added, drawing a direct line between socialist ideology and the decay of public housing. Mamdani has repeatedly discussed plans for his administration to seize properties from landlords the city deems insufficiently maintained, a standard critics say is ripe for political abuse.
Paladinos warning comes as Mamdanis team prepares rental ripoff hearings across the city, events she suggests will serve as step 1 in mobilizing tenant complaints against owners. These hearings, scheduled within Mamdani's first 100 days in office, have already heightened anxiety among landlords wary of Weavers influence as the administrations tenant advocate.
Weaver has a documented history of radical rhetoric on property rights, having declared in a 2018 post that she wanted to seize private property! and later, in August 2019, that Private property, including any kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy.
She has also promoted the idea of transforming property into a collective good shared in communities, a vision that alarms conservatives who see it as a direct assault on the constitutional protections and economic freedoms that underpin homeownership and the broader free-market system.
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