Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has built his political profile on a promise to transform the city’s housing landscape — arguing for rent freezes, tax reform and redistribution from “richer and whiter neighborhoods” to low-income, outer-borough communities.
But the Democratic socialist could face scrutiny over the home history of his own family — specifically, his mother, award-winning filmmaker and Columbia University professor Mira Nair.
Nair, best known for directing “Monsoon Wedding” and “The Namesake,” quietly owned a luxury loft in Manhattan’s West Chelsea neighborhood for over a decade, The Post has learned.
She purchased the unit at 420 W. 25th St. for $1.375 million in 2008, records show.
The corner loft — with soaring 12-foot ceilings, a Schiffini-designed kitchen and a “luxurious en-suite bath with a spacious double glass shower,” according to the listing — sold in 2019 for $1.45 million.
Today, the unit is valued at approximately $1.9 million, according to Redfin.
During the period when Nair owned the apartment, her son was launching his political career — one that would come to include a campaign platform proposing the redistribution of property tax burdens to Manhattan’s wealthiest enclaves.
“Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods,” Mamdani’s housing proposal reads.
Mamdani, 33, who represents Astoria in the State Assembly, currently lives in a rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment in Queens, where similar units are estimated to rent for about $2,500 per month.
He also owns a 4-acre parcel of land he acquired in 2012 in his native Uganda — where he lived until age 7 — worth an estimated $150,000-$250,000, according to a 2024 New York Legislative Ethics Commission financial disclosure form.
A vocal supporter of progressive housing policies, Mamdani has pushed to freeze rents on stabilized units and overhaul the city’s notoriously skewed tax system, known for giving lower rates to ritzy brownstones than homes and rentals in lower-income neighborhoods.
Mamdani, who is now serving in the state Assembly, won a Democratic Party primary last month and heads into the November general election as the favorite in the deeply blue city.
His campaign did not return a request for comment.
Mamdani will face incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who originally took office as a Democrat in 2021 but is now seeking a second term as an independent following federal corruption charges in September 2024 and calls for his resignation. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa will also be on the ballot.