New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s housing chief was heckled as a “white supremacist” over a public housing teardown, a clash that laid bare the strain of socialist promises meeting city governing limits.
Cea Weaver, who leads the New York City Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, faced sustained jeers Tuesday evening at the Downtown Community Television Center during a discussion on affordable housing sponsored by New York Focus.
Rev. Kevin McCall interrupted the event, accused the Mamdani administration of pushing low-income residents of color out of public housing, and labeled Weaver a “white supremacist” as organizers tried several times to remove him, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
The flashpoint was the city’s plan for a complete teardown and rebuilding of the Fulton and Chelsea-Elliott Houses in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The city says the units have deteriorated beyond repair. Residents have sued to stop the demolition and say they do not trust Mamdani’s team to keep them housed.
McCall did not wait for a polite Q&A. He pressed the core charge in plain terms.
He told the room the mayor and Weaver had chosen a path that would force public housing residents out.
"As I was saying, that the mayor and also you, Cea Weaver, has decided to be able to kick out those residents in public housing."
He tied the accusation to race and to NYCHA itself.
"She's becoming a white supremacist because she's not dealing with the black and brown people that's in NYCHA."
Organizers moved in. McCall ordered them off.
"Don't touch me. Get your hands off me. Don't ever touch me. Don't you put your hands on me? You ask me. You don't touch me."
He kept going on affordability, arguing the city cannot preach lower costs while tearing down the housing poor residents already have.
"You cannot demolish housing and talk about how you want to deal with affordability. You have to be able to deal with affordability."
After the disruption, McCall told the Free Beacon he would keep chasing Weaver across the city. He said Weaver and her allies show “no respect, no regards for them losing their homes,” and asked how officials can talk affordability “when you tear down the only affordability thing that we have.”
Weaver insisted no one would lose a home. She framed the complexes as worn out stock that cannot be nursed along forever.
"These buildings were built in the 1940s and the 1950s; they're well past their useful life. They're not going to last another 40 or 50 years without a huge infusion of capital."
Pressed on deeply subsidized housing, she pointed to a familiar stack of taxpayers: city, state, and Washington.
“That will be a combination of city and state resources. We need more money from the federal government for all of this, of course,” Weaver said. An audience member who described herself as a community organizer helped push that commitment into the open. The woman, identified as Miranda, said she is disabled with a chronic condition that began in 2021 and wore a mask with large anti-ICE earrings reading “F*** ICE.”
Housing activist Sam Stein appeared on stage with Weaver. Stein has described himself as a former “high school anarchist” and has called for an “anticapitalist planning movement.”
New York Focus introduced Weaver as a “housing thought leader.” That billing collides with her own record of hard-left rhetoric, including past remarks that cast private property as “a weapon of white supremacy,” urged New Yorkers to “elect more Communists,” and spoke of destroying property values and moves that would “impoverish the white middle class.”
Mamdani is approaching his tenth month in office. The governing file already shows strain between campaign ideology and budget math.
In February, the mayor floated a 9.5 percent property tax hike. Broad public criticism followed. The idea was abandoned.
By May, the mayor’s first budget path required billions in cash assistance from the state. Weaver later said the administration had largely pulled Gov. Kathy Hochul along on core pieces of the mayor’s agenda. “I think we were generally successful in bringing the governor along into some of the mayor’s sort of core agenda,” she said.
Property tax reform, Weaver said, is something officials need to examine and would have to come from Albany. Asked about the legislative session timing, she demurred: “That’s not my area.”
Hochul endorsed Mamdani in September 2025 while keeping distance. “Mr. Mamdani and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, and I don’t expect us to. I will always reserve the right to disagree honestly and to argue passionately,” she said then. In an October 2025 podcast remark, Hochul added, “I will say one energetic rally does not get me to change my positions. I assure you.”
Weaver backed Hochul in October 2022 against Lee Zeldin, writing on X that she was voting for the governor on the Working Families Party line because Zeldin “would gut tenants’ rights.”
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, Hochul’s GOP opponent, told supporters in March that Hochul is “lockstep with Zohran Mamdani,” noted the mutual endorsements, and said he believes she has a “secret plan, just like with congestion pricing, to raise taxes on the middle class once the election’s over.” The Weaver event came just before a Hochul-Blakeman debate.
The Chelsea fight is not Weaver’s first rough public meeting under this administration. Officials previously drew sustained heckling over plans that would have excluded NYCHA residents from rental ripoff hearings.
Separate pressure has hit City Hall on public safety. After an ICE officer shot an illegal immigrant who was also a career criminal, anti-NYPD and pro-Hamas agitators called for action against Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, described as a moderate Jewish commissioner. Mamdani has refused to move against her. The Free Beacon also noted a charm push aimed at securing federal cash.
On stage, the pitch is capital repairs, deep subsidies, and guarantees that no one loses a home. In the room, residents and their allies hear demolition first and trust later. McCall’s charge was extreme. The lawsuit and the jeering show the credibility problem is real.
Socialist housing politics thrives on slogans about affordability and justice. It stumbles when the plan is to bulldoze the housing poor New Yorkers already occupy and then ask taxpayers, city, state, and federal, to bankroll the rebuild.
