NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Democratic candidates running for New York City mayor united on Friday to call out frontrunner former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s housing record, specifically his impact on affordable housing units.
“In his final year as governor, New York City lost 66,000 rent-stabilized apartments, and that isn’t right,” NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said at the rally near City Hall.
The speaker was joined by city tenant advocates and fellow mayoral candidates like Comptroller Brad Lander, who claimed that during his time as a politician, Cuomo has eliminated more affordable housing than he ever created.
“He opened loopholes like vacancy decontrol into our rent laws, and as a result, tens of thousands of units of affordable housing, rent-stabilized housing, were lost in New York City,” Lander said.
Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi responded to Friday’s claims by pointing to the former governor’s “decades-long record of fighting for tenant rights and protecting renters.”
Azzopardi pointed to Cuomo’s 2021 program financing 100,000 affordable housing units and 6,000 supportive housing units across 20 developments in the state and his success “[turning] around” the Chicago Housing Authority while serving as Housing and Urban Development Secretary under President Bill Clinton.
“New Yorkers know he’s the candidate with the experience and the record to help fix what’s broken in this city and they are not going to be swayed by this gaslighting from far left political operatives and a clown car of career politicians with no vision or achievements of their own,” Azzopardi said,
The rally comes one day after Mayor Eric Adams—who is running for reelection as an independent—called out the Cuomo campaign for allegedly using artificial intelligence to create a housing plan, which the mayor said is similar to his own.
“When he went to AI to say ‘Can you give us one of the greatest housing plans we can do?’ They pulled out my moonshot goal and incorporated it,” Adams said at a press conference Thursday. “His people failed to say ‘Well, who had the plan first?’”
Cuomo’s 29-page housing plan was criticized upon its release on Sunday for having some nonsensical passages and a footnote indicating that ChatGPT was used as a source, a detail first noticed in reporting by HellGate. His campaign responded by stating that AI was used only for research, not in writing the actual proposal.
“I did the hard work to pass city laws that will create 120,000 new housing units. Andrew Cuomo asked ChatGPT what his housing policy should be,” Adrienne Adams wrote on social media. “Guess someone does need on-the-job training.”
The speaker, Lander and second-place Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani were the three candidates endorsed by a coalition of Brooklyn Democrats earlier this week, with the representatives dubbing them the “Mayoral Dream Team.” The officials, led by Rep. Nydia Velázquez, used their endorsements to encourage New Yorkers to take advantage of ranked-choice voting and prevent Cuomo from making it to Gracie Mansion.
Mamdani, the Queens assemblymember who polled 18-points behind Cuomo in Sienna College’s latest poll, agreed with his fellow Democrats’ criticisms of the former governor.
“He does not have an answer for how he could make this city more affordable when he has worked arm-and-arm with those who have made millions from its inequality,” Mamdani said Friday.
Also in attendance was State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who said unequivocally that “Cuomo is bad for housing now, and he was bad for housing in the past.”