Zohran Mamdani confirms that he will be moving to Gracie Mansion
The historic Gracie Mansion will have new residents in the new year. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani says he will move to the mayor’s official residence on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Mamdani and his wife Rama will move in once he is sworn in in January. He said the decision is a matter of safety.
“My wife Rama and I made the decision to move to Gracie Mansion in January,” Mamdani said in a statement.
The couple leaves behind their rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria, Queens. His current residence caused controversy as Mamdani comes from a wealthy family. The mayor-elect has said he was unaware that apartment rents had stabilized when he first moved in when he was elected to the state Assembly five years ago, according to WNBC.
According to the newspaper, Mamdani lives in a $2,300 one-bedroom apartment NYPost.
“Cooking side by side in our kitchen, sharing a sleepy elevator ride at night with our neighbors, hearing music and laughter vibrating through the apartment walls,” Mamdani said in a statement about what he will miss about his apartment.
“This decision came down to the safety of our family and the importance of dedicating all my attention to implementing the affordability agenda that New Yorkers voted for,” he continued.
During his campaign, the Democratic socialist had proposed sweeping housing reform for New York City. It is a plan that, among other things, freezes the rental prices of some apartments; the construction of 200,000 new subsidized, rent-stabilized units; and a $100 billion investment in housing over ten years.
Gracie mansion
Mamdani will be sworn in as the 111th mayor at midnight on January 1, 2026. Then he can officially receive the keys to Gracie Mansion.
He trades in his neighborhood of Astoria, where the average list price is $750,000, for the Upper East Side, where the average price is $1.7 million.
The house on East End Avenue was built in 1799 by Archibald Gracieas a country house overlooking the East River. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
It lasted until 1942, then Fiorello H. LaGuardia and his family moved to Gracie Mansion – which was largely prompted by security measures as the US entered World War II.
Over the decades the house has been restored and renovated and has had many functions. Former mayor Ed Koch founded the Gracie Mansion Conservancy in the 1980s. The goal was to restore the dilapidated house to what it might have looked like during its federal inception.
When Bill de Blasio was mayor, his wife, Chirlane McCray, an activist and writer, renovated the mansion to drawing attention to the “diversity that existed in the early 19th century” by showing portraits of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Haitian slave turned philanthropist Pierre Toussaint.
Every mayor since then, except Michael Bloomberg– lived in Gracie Mansion, also known as the ‘People’s House’.
Bloomberg opined that mayors should not live in Gracie Mansion.
“It should be used the way we are using it now,” Bloomberg said in 2012 CBS News. “There are events happening every day at Gracie Mansion throughout the house. If a mayor’s family lives there, then most of that house – well over half – is simply unavailable. If a mayor lives there, then what they’re doing is costing this city a lot more money and robbing the rest of the city of one of the great facilities that every city has.”
In Mamdani’s statement, he thanked Astoria, the neighborhood he has called home for years.
“Thank you for showing us the best of New York City. We’ve called this neighborhood home as our city has weathered a devastating pandemic, brutal attacks on immigrants and years of an affordability crisis. Time and time again, this community has stood up for each other. We will miss it all: the endless Adeni chai, the spirited conversations in Spanish, Arabic and every language in between, the aromas of seafood and shawarma wafting down the block.”
The statement further read: “I may no longer live in Astoria, but Astoria will always live in me and the work I do.”
Realtor.com® reached out to newly elected Mayor Mamdani’s office for comment and did not hear back.
