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Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo lived in what he once described as “a dump, just one long hallway.”
Oct. 29, 2025, 11:35 a.m. ET
Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has repeatedly criticized his rival, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, for living in a rent-stabilized apartment, occupied a rent-stabilized unit himself when he was a young professional living in New York City in the 1980s.
As Mr. Cuomo, now 67, began his career as a lawyer, he lived in a studio apartment in Sunnyside, Queens. The apartment building, which has 51 units, was built in 1960. That would have made it subject to rent stabilization under New York State law because it was constructed before 1974 and contained at least six units.
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, did not deny that Mr. Cuomo lived in a rent-stabilized apartment, but he sought to downplay its significance.
“At the time, they were all rent-stabilized units,” Mr. Azzopardi said.
Mr. Cuomo, he said, “didn’t make all that much the first few years” of his legal career when he began living at the studio apartment in 1982, shortly after graduating law school. According to articles in The New York Times, Mr. Cuomo was earning as much as $23,500 annually as an assistant district attorney in 1984, and about $150,000 a year in private practice shortly after he moved out of the building in 1987.
The units that The Times obtained records for had rents ranging from $285 to $435 a month in the years Mr. Cuomo lived there.
To determine Mr. Cuomo’s residence, the dates of his occupancy there and the range of rents in the building, The Times reviewed voter registration records, telephone books and contemporaneous news articles, and interviewed current and former residents.
The Times also asked three current residents in the 39th Street building to request the rental history of their units from the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which administers rent-regulation programs. The state agency’s records showed that the residents’ apartments were rent stabilized in the 1980s, another indication that the building was subject to rent stabilization at the time.
While deregulation of many individual rent-stabilized units across the city was later allowed, those exemptions weren’t enacted until 1993, after Mr. Cuomo moved out.
Details of Mr. Cuomo’s previous residence are emerging during a campaign in which he has repeatedly attacked Mr. Mamdani over his living situation. The former governor has said that Mr. Mamdani, 34, who earns a $142,000 annual salary as a state assemblyman, should move from his $2,300-per-month, one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, because he is too “rich.”
Mr. Cuomo wrote in a social media post that a hypothetical “single mother and her children slept at a homeless shelter” because Mr. Mamdani occupied the apartment. He has also argued that high earners should not be able to have rent-stabilized apartments that cost less than 30 percent of their monthly income.
In response to questions about Mr. Cuomo’s own rent-stabilized unit, Mr. Azzopardi said that the former governor had moved out after he received a substantial raise.
Mr. Azzopardi also pointed to what he described as Mr. Cuomo’s middle-class upbringing. Mr. Cuomo’s father, Mario Cuomo, was serving as lieutenant governor and governor while the younger Cuomo was in the rent-stabilized apartment. The Cuomo family was not wealthy, Mr. Azzopardi said. Andrew Cuomo worked as a AAA tow truck driver to put himself through college, Mr. Azzopardi said.
Mr. Cuomo began renting the Sunnyside apartment in 1982 while working as a campaign manager for his father’s run for governor. He had yet to take the bar exam after graduating from law school, and described the apartment as “a dump, just one long hallway.” After his father became governor in 1983, he worked as one of his aides, taking a salary of $1 a year.
A year later, Mr. Cuomo joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office as an assistant, making $23,500 annually, equivalent to a little over $70,000 when adjusted for inflation.
In 1985, he entered private practice as a partner at a law firm that attracted major real estate developers as clients. When he left the firm three years later to work full time at a housing nonprofit he had founded, he was making at least $150,000 a year, over $400,000 in today’s dollars.
Affordability and the housing crisis have been central themes in the mayor’s race, which has pitted Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist who says he wants to raise taxes on the rich, against Mr. Cuomo, who now has an estimated net worth of $10 million, according to Forbes.
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Mr. Cuomo has argued that Mr. Mamdani and his wife, Rama Duwaji, an animator and illustrator, are “rich people who don’t need” a rent-stabilized apartment. In a news release, he argued that Mr. Mamdani “came from a background of wealth”; the assemblyman’s father is a longtime professor at Columbia, and his mother is an Oscar-winning director.
Mr. Mamdani has stated that he moved into the Astoria apartment when he was making $47,000 a year as a foreclosure-prevention housing counselor, and that he didn’t know the apartment was rent stabilized. Mr. Cuomo said that Mr. Mamdani should have known that the unit was stabilized as “there’s not a single person in New York who doesn’t know that they are in a rent stabilized unit.”
Mr. Cuomo has issued a policy proposal titled “Zohran’s Law” to block high-income earners from moving into rent-stabilized units. The policy has been met with skepticism from many housing experts who say it would cause bureaucratic burdens.
About 41 percent of New York City rental units are rent stabilized now. In 1981, over 60 percent of rentals were under some type of regulation, like stabilization or rent control, which put a limit on the overall rent. Rent stabilization regulates how much rents can increase each year.
About 16 percent of current rent-stabilized households earn at least $150,000, according to an analysis of city data by the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit watchdog.
Renters at times don’t know whether their apartment is subject to rent-stabilization laws, since such units don’t come with income restrictions and are available to anyone. While landlords are legally required to inform new tenants of the rent-regulation status, the task is often overlooked. Tenants can find out the status of an apartment by privately requesting rent records from the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, which can be done online or by mail.
New Yorkers have argued for decades about the effect of rent stabilization and rent control, and who should get access to the more affordable units. While some say the apartments should be reserved for lower-income people, the program was established to create stability for a broad range of tenants after aggressive rent increases by landlords; it wasn’t necessarily about reserving apartments for the poor.
The debate has gotten more attention over the years, especially as the housing market has become tighter. Since enacting rent stabilization in 1969, the city has remained in a “housing emergency,” which means that 5 percent or less of all units are vacant.
When Mr. Cuomo lived in Sunnyside, the vacancy rate of apartments across the city was 2.1 percent. Now, it’s even lower — 1.4 percent.
The Sunnyside building began converting to a co-op in 1986, but Mr. Cuomo rented until he left, according to his spokesman. Mr. Cuomo moved from the apartment in 1987 to a co-op in Midtown East, Manhattan.
Mr. Cuomo has lived in a range of residences since his then, including a six-bedroom mansion in Little Neck, Queens, with his former wife, Kerry Kennedy; a Westchester residence with his longtime girlfriend, Sandra Lee; and the Governor’s Mansion in Albany, among many more homes.
He says he now lives in a Midtown Manhattan apartment about a 30-minute subway ride from his old “dump.” He pays more than $8,000 per month.
Mihir Zaveri contributed reporting.
Ashley Cai is a graphics reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class.
