Category World News

When New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani moves into Gracie Mansion, the elegant 18th-century house long associated with New York’s political elite on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in January, he will leave behind the rather more modest, rent-controlled Queens apartment he has lived in for several years.

For a democratic socialist who has been elected by New Yorkers on a housing justice ticket, the contrast may seem striking to observers.

Mamdani won last month’s New York mayoral election, in part because the city is facing a severe housing crisis, with record-high rents and one of the lowest property vacancy rates in the country. Mamdani built his campaign around freezing rents and expanding affordable housing.

So what exactly is Gracie Mansion, and why does it matter in a city where housing has become a key political issue?

What is Gracie Mansion?

Gracie Mansion has been the official residence of the mayor of New York City since 1942. A yellow-painted, Federal-style wooden house built in 1799, it is located inside Carl Schurz Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

According to the Historic House Trust, which oversees the city’s historic homes, it was originally designed as a two-storey country villa overlooking the East River.

The main house reportedly has five bedrooms and five bathrooms, with period fireplaces and high ceilings.

The residence today includes the original two-storey structure plus an events wing, which was added in the 1960s. According to the New York City Parks and Recreation Department, the combined complex now measures roughly 12,000 to 13,000 square feet (1,200 square metres), accommodating formal sitting rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and spaces for official functions.

The building is maintained as a city-owned asset and is made available to each incoming mayor as their official home.

Why is it called Gracie Mansion?

The house takes its name from Archibald Gracie, a Scottish-American shipping merchant who constructed it in 1799 within an estate to be his family’s country seat. At the time, it was some distance outside the city limits.

Although Gracie later lost the property due to financial hardship, his name remained attached to the estate in subsequent decades, and the city retained it when it took ownership at the end of the 19th century.

New York City acquired the property in 1896, incorporating the surrounding estate into what would become Carl Schurz Park. According to the Historic House Trust and the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, the building served a series of public uses during the following few decades, including as temporary quarters for the Museum of the City of New York.

In 1942, New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses urged Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to designate the house as the city’s official mayoral residence. At the time, the city lacked any formal mayoral home.

Moses saw this as an opportunity to create a dignified civic residence that would mirror the executive mansions used in other major American cities.

In 1966, the city added the Susan E Wagner Wing, a modernist extension designed to accommodate receptions and large meetings.

Since 1981, the house has been maintained by a public-private partnership, which funds its conservation and oversees public tours.

In 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg updated the interior and exterior of the building and increased accessibility to the public.

It has since been known as the “People’s House”.

Have mayors always lived at Gracie Mansion?

Gracie Mansion did not become the official mayoral residence until 1942, when La Guardia moved in following the city’s decision to assign the house to the mayor’s office.

Since 1942, most mayors have lived there, including Ed Koch, David Dinkins, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams.

The most notable exception was Michael Bloomberg, who chose to remain in his private townhouse on the Upper East Side for the duration of his three terms as mayor. Bloomberg used Gracie Mansion only for events, according to US media reports.

Some mayors have divided their time between Gracie Mansion and their private residences, including Ed Koch, who kept his Greenwich Village apartment, and Rudy Giuliani’s family, who remained partly based in their East Side home.

When is Zohran Mamdani moving in?

Mamdani, 34, will take office in January. He has said he and his wife, the illustrator Rama Duwaji, will leave the rent-stabilised Astoria, Queens apartment he has lived in since 2018 and move into Gracie Mansion. The couple do not have children.

In a statement, Mamdani said his decision to move into the mansion – described by US media as being worth $100m – had been driven by safety considerations for his family and the need to focus fully on implementing the “affordability agenda” that shaped his campaign.

He also described the move as using the residence in the way it was intended – a civic resource provided so the mayor can perform official duties more effectively.

The move has raised questions about how this aligns with his tenants’ rights and affordability agenda, however, as he had previously tied the fact that he lived in a rent-controlled apartment to his campaign agenda of more affordable housing for New Yorkers.

“To Astoria: thank you for showing us the best of New York City,” Mamdani said in a statement on Wednesday. “While I may no longer live in Astoria, Astoria will always live inside me and the work I do.”

Why else is Gracie Mansion significant?

The mansion has been the site of many protests – many of them revolving around housing rights, particularly for asylum seekers and migrants. In August 2023, for example, an anti-immigration rally clashed with migrants’ rights counterprotesters on the doorstep.

People marching in the rally shouted slogans such as, “No migrants on Long Island! We pay a lot of property taxes!”

When the current New York mayor, Eric Adams, sought to remove New York City’s “right to shelter” law, which guarantees shelter with basic standards for homeless people, that year, a major protest and “sleep-in” took place outside Gracie Mansion in November.

In March 2024, Adams reached a legal agreement with homeless rights advocates allowing homeless migrants and asylum seekers to stay for only a maximum of 30 days in a shelter.

How severe is New York City’s housing crisis?

Housing policy was the centrepiece of Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.

He has pushed for a multi-year rent freeze on the city’s roughly one million rent-stabilised apartments, along with stronger tenant protections, more social housing and limits on speculative buying by landlords.

The city’s Housing and Vacancy Survey, cited in the city’s Rent Guidelines Board’s 2025 report, put the rental vacancy rate at just 1.41 percent, far below the 5 percent level that triggers rent-regulation powers in New York State.

“This translates into the availability of just 33,000 vacant units out of almost 2.4 million rental units Citywide,” the report reads.

Separately, market data shows how high New York rents have become.

Realtor.com’s 2025 quarterly report put the citywide median asking rent at about $3,600 a month. Meanwhile, Douglas Elliman’s August 2025 rental market report shows that two-bedroom units routinely list for $5,000 to more than $5,500 in Manhattan and $3,200 to $4,000 in many Brooklyn and Queens neighbourhoods.

In each of the five boroughs of New York City, average rents make up a high proportion of average incomes.

In Manhattan, where the average income is about $5,100 per month, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $4,200. In Brooklyn, the average income is about $3,400, compared with the average rent on a one-bedroom apartment of $2,800.

In contrast, cities which prioritise affordable housing, like Vienna, Austria, take a very different approach. The city owns and manages hundreds of thousands of apartments and keeps rents far below market levels.

A severe winter storm is creating more hardship for Gaza’s forcibly displaced population, flooding tents as families try to cope without proper shelter, heat, or basic supplies due to Israel’s continued restrictions.

A Brazilian lawmaker was removed from Congress by police on Tuesday as he staged a protest against a bill which could drastically reduce ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s 27-year prison sentence.

The military gains made by forces of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in southern Yemen mark a significant turning point in the country’s political and military conflicts.

The latest fighting is between the STC and internationally recognised Yemeni government, known as the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), and led by Rashad al-Alimi. The irony here is that the STC, led by Aidarus al-Zubaidi, is also a member of the Yemeni PLC. But the relationship between the two groups is shaky and at times, turbulent.

Yemen’s government condemned the STC’s latest military advance and land grab across the south and labelled the group separatists – calling their action a “unilateral and a blatant violation of the transitional phase’s framework”.

On the ground, STC forces have completed their control over the remaining southern governorates, furthering the group’s efforts to revive its decades-old aspiration of establishing an independent state in the south of Yemen.

The battle of Hadramout

The latest and rapid developments are redrawing the map of control in Yemen, and it could have further implications on the future of a strong, coherent and unified country.

The fall of Hadramout last week was sudden, and it was seen as a shocking development – although it came after a long period of tension in the oil-rich province. The Yemeni government remained more of a bystander – maintaining some military brigades stationed in its camps in the governorates of Hadramout and al-Mahra. While local and tribal proxies affiliated with regional countries, they were competing for control and influence.

Taking advantage of its superior military equipment and massive forces, the STC advanced nearly unchallenged to overtake Hadramout and al-Mahra.

The government forces lacked modern weapons, sufficient manpower and perhaps the willingness to fight.

The fall of Hadramout was pivotal and posed greater importance in the eyes of many Yemeni politicians, given the special status of this governorate locally and regionally. It dealt a final blow to what remained of the components of Yemeni unity and the government’s legitimacy, and it thwarted all the bets that considered Hadramout to be immune from falling to STC forces.

Both the incoming STC forces and government and local tribal fighters had their own alliances and allegiances to competing regional powers – with connections and loyalties with tribal leaders, politicians and local actors in Hadramout.

Why does Hadramout matter?

Hadramout is a crucial and essential governorate in Yemen, occupying more than a third of the country’s area, approximately 200,000 square kilometres (77,000 square miles), with a population of nearly two million.

It is home to the largest share of Yemen’s oil wealth, containing the most important oil fields and export terminals. Furthermore, it is a stronghold of Yemeni and Arab Gulf businessmen and a cradle of cultural and historical wealth. In short, Hadramout is the Yemeni governorate that possesses the elements of a fully fledged state, and its inhabitants had hoped to establish a Hadrami state that would restore their past glories, far removed from the political and military conflict that engulfed the rest of Yemen’s governorates.

Hadramout governorate has always had a unique political and administrative character throughout all eras and political systems, especially during the socialist regime that ruled the South from the early 1970s until 1990, when the two Yemeni parts, North and South, unified.

This unique character continued under the unified state, as Hadramout remained governed by its own people and refused to accept officials from outside its geographical boundaries. Consequently, the people of Hadramout consider the STC’s control over it an unprecedented occupation, given that most of the STC’s leaders come from the Lahj and Dhale governorates, which are marginal areas – and that would be unacceptable for them. Therefore, the stability and continuity of the STC’s authority in the governorate are doubtful because the group lacks local and popular support.

‘Divorce without return’

These repercussions will undoubtedly cast a shadow over the eight-member PLC in Yemen, headed by Rashad al-Alimi, who, along with his cabinet members and his guards, was expelled from the presidential palace in the al-Maashiq district of Aden.

Many considered this a “divorce without return” and a disastrous end to all previous understandings and agreements aimed at maintaining a political order based on shared principles that would not harm any party.

In light of these developments, the legitimate government now only controls modest areas of land in the governorates of Taiz and Marib.

But Marib is already besieged by Houthi forces from the north, and by the STC forces from the south. The Houthis are a group backed by Iran and control the capital and the north and northwestern parts of Yemen. Taiz is besieged by the Houthis from the north and from the east by the forces of Brigadier General Tariq Saleh, the son of the ousted Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

It is not unlikely that these areas will fall into the hands of either of these two powerful parties at any moment. If that happens, the legitimate Yemeni government will become just a piece of paper, even though it practically lacks any influence on the ground since the rise of the STC forces and the growing power of the Houthis.

The unattainable southern aspiration for secession

As political sociology researcher Fayrouz al-Wali says, the STC does not have the authority to declare southern independence, despite its military control on the ground, because this decision rests not with it but with external regional powers that have deep interests in southern Yemen.

She noted that the path to statehood in the south does not lead through the gates of the Ma’ashiq Palace in Aden, but rather through the United Nations Security Council, where regional powers could play a pivotal role.

There is also a realisation that it would be difficult for the STC to declare independence in the foreseeable future, at least, because of the lack of essential resources to fund the budget of a nascent state without even the most basic elements of sustainability. Such a state would inherit an empty treasury from a country exhausted by more than a decade of war.