Add The New York Post on Google Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been steering city housing contracts to an administration-linked developer currently evicting at least eight residents — despite Hizzoner’s pledge to keep tenants in their homes.
Manhattan-based Spatial Equity, which has City Hall’s backing for a massive Harlem housing takeover, is moving to evict eight people from the 123-unit Shepherd Glenmore affordable housing complex in Cypress Hills, according to court filings.
The $61 million building was completed in July 2025 and is the only property with tenants for the firm, headed by Teghvir Sethi, according to the company.
The company is looking to expand its portfolio by taking on a pair of affordable housing projects and is capitalizing on Mamdani’s pledge to intervene in the sale of foreclosed properties.
Mamdani is backing Sethi’s bid to take over a 38-building, 887-unit distressed property in East Harlem, The Real Deal reported.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation also tapped Spatial Equity to co-develop “The Aurea,” a 131-unit affordable housing complex on the Lower East Side in space that was formerly an NYPD parking lot, according to a city hall press release.
Mamdani has called his favored developers “High Road Landlords,” but Spatial Equity’s move to evict several residents goes against his administration’s repeated pledges to keep derelict tenants in their homes.
The tenants are all being sued for non-payment, according to court records.
“We can keep people in their homes, and we can build the homes that they need to live in,” Mamdani said when he announced his “Block by Block” housing plan in May.
His housing adviser, Director of the New York City Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants Cea Weaver, has called for the abolishment of all evictions.
NYC Councilman Phil Wong (D-Queens) slammed Mamdani for his hypocrisy.
“Mamdani has spent years attacking landlords and promising tenants more protections… you can’t have one set of rules for the landlords you like and another for everyone else,” NYC Councilman Phil Wong (D-Queens) told The Post, referring to The Shepherd Glenmore.
Spatial Equity touts itself as a minority-owned affordable housing developer, and its principal, Sethi, appeared alongside Weaver at a Federal Reserve Bank panel in June.
The Spatial Equity big described himself as a “do-gooder” who didn’t want to participate in the “market-rate world” and blasted other landlords for kicking out tenants on the panel.
“Most of these portfolios, when they were taken over by speculative landlords… typically were highly leveraged and focused on displacing tennants.” Sethi said.
Sethi, who received a Master’s in Real Estate from NYU in 2017, has extensive background in left-wing housing advocacy — including with a Mamdani linked group.
He said, at the panel, that he was part of the NYC Community Land Trust Learning Exchange, which was spearheaded by The New Economy Project, which is headed by Deyanira Del Río, who was on Mamdani’s transition team.
Mamdani vowed to put his finger on the scales when properties enter foreclosure and steer them toward community land trusts and nonprofits as part of his housing plan.
He cut a slick 13-minute taxpayer-funded video supporting the tenants group called “The Union of Pinnacle Tenants: A Short History of NYC Housing,” narrated by actor Morgan Spector earlier this month alongside Weaver.
City Hall and Sethi did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
