New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed Cea Weaver as Director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, a move that has drawn attention due to her past social media posts and public statements on property ownership and race. A longtime housing activist and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Weaver previously served as Executive Director of Housing Justice for All and worked as an adviser on Mamdani’s 2025 mayoral campaign.
Weaver’s past posts include an August 2019 tweet stating, “Private property including any kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.” In December 2017, she encouraged followers to “elect more communists.”
In a March 2021 video, Weaver described property as historically treated “as an individualized good and not a collective good.” She added that moving toward a shared-equity model would require some families, particularly white families, to adopt “a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have.”
Critics have raised concerns about whether Weaver’s views conflict with her role in city government. U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, noted the Civil Rights Division “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,” adding that the DOJ “will not hesitate to take legal action to protect the civil rights of New York City residents.”
Mamdani defended the appointment, calling Weaver a “proven principled and tireless fighter” capable of holding landlords accountable. Weaver commented she was “humbled and honored to join Mayor Mamdani’s administration” and emphasized her commitment to advancing tenant protections and safe, stable, and affordable housing across the city.
