Cea Weaver, a far-left activist whom Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani picked to run his administration’s Office to Protect Tenants, once said people who own private property were enabling “white supremacy” — despite her own mother being a homeowner.
The key adviser to the newly minted socialist mayor wrote in a 2019 post to X (then known as Twitter) that “Private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.” However, at the time Weaver, who is white, sent the post, her professor mother had already been the owner of a 3,400-square-foot home in Nashville, Tenn. for seven years, according to the New York Post (NY Post).
Weaver’s mother, Vanderbilt professor Celia Applegate, and her partner purchased the home for $814,000 in 2012 — and in under 14 years, its value had doubled to its current $1.6 million valuation, the NY Post reported Tuesday, citing property records.
The activist’s post bashing homeownership resurfaced Monday as part of a viral X thread by writer Michelle Tandler that contained over a dozen screenshots of posts from Weaver’s since-deleted account on the social media platform, made between the years 2016 and 2022.
In another one of her posts featured in Tandler’s thread, Weaver expressed her desire to “shrink the value of real estate.” When Weaver sent the post in 2021, her mother had owned her home for nine years, and it almost certainly greatly increased in value.
Furthermore, a 2017 post by Weaver appeared to favor what she called “a no more white men in office platform.”
“Impoverish the *white* middle class,” she wrote in a 2018 post. “Homeowenership is racist / failed public policy.”
Mamdani’s predecessor, former Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams, replied to Weaver’s post comparing owning a home to “white supremacy” Tuesday.
“Homeownership is how immigrants, Black, Brown, and working-class New Yorkers built stability and generational wealth despite every obstacle,” Adams, who is black, wrote on X in response to the white woman’s post. “You have to be completely out of your f****ing mind to call that ‘white supremacy.’”
“That level of thinking only comes from extreme privilege and total detachment from reality,” the former mayor added.
Homeownership is how immigrants, Black, Brown, and working-class New Yorkers built stability and generational wealth despite every obstacle.
You have to be completely out of your f****ing mind to call that “white supremacy.”
Should Cea Weaver remain in her position despite her controversial statements on homeownership?That level of thinking only comes from extreme… pic.twitter.com/4q42ZAeMgm
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) January 6, 2026
In addition to her social media posts, some of Weaver’s past comments railing against owning private property were also caught on video.
“I think the reality is, is that for centuries we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good and … in transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently,” Weaver said in the 2021 YouTube video for the NYC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which both she and Mamdani are members.
“And it will mean that families, especially white families but some POC [people of color] families who are homeowners as well, are gonna have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have,” Weaver added in the video.
After they made the rounds on the internet, the Mamdani official referred to her past comments as “regretful.”
“Regretful comments from years ago do not change what has always been clear — my commitment to making housing affordable and equitable for New York’s renters,” Weaver said in a Tuesday statement to The New York Times, sent via Mamdani’s press office.
Mamdani spokeswoman Dora Pekec said Weaver was “vetted” and also that the mayor’s team was “aware of all these tweets,” the NYT reported Tuesday.
“We made the decision to have Cea Weaver serve as our executive director for the mayor’s office to protect tenants, to build on the work that she has done to protect tenants across the city, and we were already seeing the results of that work,” Mamdani told reporters Tuesday, after her old far-left remarks went viral.
During his successful mayoral campaign, Mamdani made freezing rent for some of the city’s tenants a core part of his socialist platform.
“I am humbled and honored to join Mayor Mamdani’s administration — and to stand with him on his very first day in office as he makes clear where his priorities lie: with the millions of tenants in New York City who have been mistreated for too long by negligent landlords,” Weaver said in a Jan. 1 press release, after Mamdani appointed her as one of his first moves in office. “Our work will only grow, and this newly revitalized office marks a new era of standing up for tenants and fighting for safe, stable, and affordable homes.”
(Featured Image Media Credit: Bingjiefu He / Wikimedia Commons)
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