While speaking at the kickoff of her father’s mayoral campaign last weekend, Cara Kennedy-Cuomo spoke about a familiar experience for many New Yorkers.
“As someone who’s just spent a few months looking for a new apartment, I can tell you that affordable housing isn’t enough,” she said.
Kennedy Cuomo, 30, said she found a place and now she is a “proud Brooklyn resident.”
However, she failed to mention important details about the apartment hunt. She recently moved from her $8,242 two-bedroom apartment east of midtown, occupied by her father Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo, a longtime resident of Albany and Westchester County, made his luxury apartment on East 54th Street the address of his home in September, according to voter records. His mayoral rival is trying to portray him as a carpet bug suburb that makes empty promises to solve the problems he has created as governor. The criticism mirrors the last mayoral campaign where questions were swirling around where Eric Adams lived at the time.
The Oriana building features a pet spa, a library, roof deck and other luxurious amenities.
Brigid Bergin
Cuomo was previously registered to vote to buy at the home of his stepbrother Kenneth Cole. He is the Westchester County speech he first listed on his voter form after resigning from embarrassment in 2021 after discovering he sexually harassed 11 women.
Governor spokesman Rich Azopaldi said Cuomo had been in a luxury apartment on East 54th Street for at least a year and is now his full-time residence.
“As Governor Cuomo said in a December 2023 interview, he had an apartment in New York City and had his time split between the city and Westchester,” Atzpaldi said. “In a fresh business school, one of his daughters lived in the second bedroom of the apartment, but has since moved to her own location.”
The 39-storey tower features luxurious amenities such as a vintage video game arcade, a library and a roof deck. The pet spa on-site may be particularly appealing to Cuomo, who owns a Siberian shepherd named Captain. Mayoral candidates can also store their muscles cars in the garage under the curb-covered building on Tuesday.
Many of Cuomo’s neighbors were surprised to hear that he had moved.
“I know that his daughter lives here and lives on a friend’s floor,” 64-year-old Sheryl Schwartz, a retired nursery teacher, told Gossamist on Tuesday while walking her toy poodle.
“I only saw him a few times,” she added.
Gossa Mist has spoken to 16 residents outside the building or over the phone for the past month. Only a handful of people said they found Cuomo in a building known as Oriana, offering bold views of the East Side, Roosevelt Island and Queensboro Bridge. The building is conveniently located near Gracie Mansion. In other words, if Cuomo wins, this move is relatively easy.
Susie Diamond, a mother of four, said she had never seen Cuomo in the building, but added, “I’ve just never kept an eye on it.”
Cara Kennedy-Cuomo (center) said he recently became a Brooklyn resident at the launch of his father’s campaign.
Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images
Cuomo’s rival in the Democratic primary says the former governor is swooping into the city after destroying it for more than a decade.
“Even if we put aside Andrew Cuomo’s track record of mismanagement and misconduct aside, he has not lived in New York City for more than 20 years,” a campaign spokesman for the city’s former director, Scott Stringer, wrote in October. “The New Yorker is better than the selfish suburbs who are just trying to rehabilitate his image and revive his political career.”
In a post on X Sunday, current Secretary Bloodlander took a similar swipe. And unlike Andrew, I actually live here. ”
The question of whether or not the main candidate for mayor lives in the city is not new. In 2021, then-Broken Borough President Eric Adams was nervous to prove that he actually lived in a Bedsty line, not a condo in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Adams opened his Brooklyn home and its fridge to dozens of reporters on a tour that raised more questions. Adams still won the mayoral race.
Oriana resident Heidi Cohen said he was a registered Democrat and had not decided who to vote for in the June primary. Cohen, 52, said she is open to Cuomo, especially given Adams’ recent criminal indictment and proposals from federal prosecutors, and suggestions that President Donald Trump have signed a contract to reduce accusations against him.
“I really have no problem with all the stories about Cuomo’s past history, in the sense that, in my personal opinion, there is a current mayor doing much worse,” Cohen said.
Cohen, who sat on the bench with Louie from Mini Schnauzer and spoke to Gossa Mist, said he saw Cuomo twice in the elevator in the fall, but not after he started the mayoral campaign.
He “don’t chat with anyone,” she added.
