In the aftermath of the passage of the 2019 rent laws, some prominent real estate leaders still didn’t know the name of a person key to orchestrating what one landlord referred to as a “horror show.”
“Why don’t they know who I am? Ego and confidence,” Cea Weaver told The Real Deal a few months after the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act became law.
Of course, Weaver is no longer a stranger to the industry.
The renter activist was one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first appointments after he was sworn in as mayor, naming her as the director of the newly revived Office to Protect Tenants. In recent days, news articles have highlighted her past posts on social media, leading to a flurry of attacks from the right and testimonials of her advocacy work from the left.
But ever since 2019, more real estate insiders have become aware of Weaver and the bloc she represents. Weaver and her organization, Housing Justice for All, have been a driving force behind policy initiatives most feared by the real estate industry, including the HSTPA, demands for canceling rent during the pandemic, good cause eviction, expansion of rent regulation throughout the state and calls for freezing the rent.
In the lead-up to the HSTPA, Weaver’s coalition appealed directly to lawmakers, who reached a two-way deal without then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Despite pleas from real estate executives to veto the bill, Cuomo signed it into law.
Not all of these efforts have been successful. Rent wasn’t canceled, and though the state legislature passed good cause eviction in 2024, Weaver and other advocates complained that the approved version was watered down. The Rent Guidelines Board declined to freeze rents last year, but the new mayor has vowed to do so for the next four years.
In the spotlight
Weaver served as a housing adviser to Mamdani during his mayoral campaign and as part of the newly launched New York State Tenant Bloc, mobilized tenants last year to only support mayoral candidates who supported a rent freeze.
She’s also periodically drawn the industry’s ire with social media posts about rent regulation and other far-left priorities, though not to the extent seen this week.
Social media and news sites erupted this week over some of Weaver’s old tweets. One of her posts, from 2017, referred to homeownership as “a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”
When asked about the post, Mayor Zohran Mamdani defended his selection of Weaver for the Office to Protect Tenants, saying she was hired “based on the track record that she had of standing up for tenants across the city in the state.” He’s also said he’s committed to providing stability for homeowners and would-be homeowners alongside tenants.
During interviews with NY1’s Errol Louis, Weaver said the phrasing of the old social media posts was “inelegant” and “regretful.”
“I certainly do not think that all homeownership is white supremacy,” she told Louis on his podcast this week, adding that she was referring to longstanding inequities in homeownership.
Last year, as part of a TRD’s magazine feature, The Debate, Weaver defended rent stabilization as a way to provide predictability to renters in the same way that fixed-rate mortgages help property owners.
“Renters should have access to the same stability, especially as homeownership — always a myth, but a potent one — becomes unattainable for millions,” wrote at the time.
Longtime contentious figure
This week was not the first time that Weaver has faced backlash at the prospect of holding a government position. In 2021, she was nominated to the City Planning Commission, but withdrew her name amid opposition.
In her new role with the Office to Protect Tenants, Weaver will ensure that “pro-tenant policy is moved into every aspect of the administration’s housing agenda,” she told Louis.
The office, alongside other city agencies, will host “Rental Ripoff” hearings focused on “illegal, unfair, abusive, deceptive, or unconscionable landlord practices.”
Mamdani has repeatedly committed to addressing owners’ costs through property tax reform and other initiatives, such as alternative insurance models, though he hasn’t released many details on how to pursue those actions. Rent stabilization reform would need to happen at the state level, and lawmakers have shown little interest in taking up the issue.
Weaver’s old tweets have become a proxy fight over fears of what lies in store in the Mamdani administration and to what extent socialist policies take hold. (The City Council’s new Republican minority leader, David Carr, quoted Weaver’s tweets during a meeting on Wednesday and talked about the threat of “smothering collectivism” to property rights and individual liberties.)
While his initial actions as mayor targeted “bad landlords,” Mamdani also signed executive orders aimed at finding ways to speed up housing construction. Ahead of the election, some affordable housing developers said they were hopeful about the mayor’s plans to build 200,000 housing units over the next decade.
Weaver has also voiced support for ramping up housing construction in the city. She publicly supported housing ballot measures before Mamdani confirmed that he was voting for them. She also warned against housing regulation bills that housing groups argued would thwart the new mayor’s housing plan.
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