Tracy Rosenthal’s Rent Strike and Elite Roots

Tracy Rosenthal’s rent strike and her role in New York City’s tenant movement are drawing fresh attention as she faces eviction proceedings in Brooklyn. Rosenthal has become a prominent voice in the push for socialist housing policies around the Mamdani orbit, even as records and accounts tied to her own apartment dispute show she stopped paying rent after raising problems with the building.

Rosenthal, 39, grew up far from the image of a struggling renter. She was raised in a $1.7 million NoMad apartment and attended the Grammys at least twice with her father, Steven Rosenthal, a four-time Grammy winner and music studio owner. He founded the Magic Shop in SoHo in 1988 and recorded work by major acts including David Bowie, the Ramones, Blondie, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, the Foo Fighters and Coldplay. The studio was behind Coldplay’s 2008 album “Viva la Vida,” the Foo Fighters’ 2014 “Sonic Highways,” and Bowie’s 2016 album “Blackstar.”

Despite that background, Rosenthal said she entered a rent strike after moving back to New York from Los Angeles and taking a two-bedroom apartment in Bed-Stuy that cost $2,300 a month. At a North Carolina Democratic Socialists of America meeting last August, she described finding roaches in the apartment and said the conditions pushed her to organize with other tenants. She said the landlord would not bring in an exterminator and said the building had more rental units than were legally approved and was heading toward foreclosure. According to the account she gave, the tenants eventually stopped paying rent together, leaving the owner short by at least $108,000 on her unit alone.

The landlord, Adetunji Akinboboye, later lost the building to foreclosure in 2023. US Bank, which became the new owner, is now seeking to evict Rosenthal and four other tenants, saying they “squatted upon the premises,” according to housing court filings submitted in November. The cases are still pending. Earlier this year, the Hancock Street property was also placed in the city’s Alternative Enforcement Program, which is used when a building has unresolved housing complaints. A city notice taped to the front door this week said it was removed from the program on July 14 after the issues were fixed.

That enforcement program sits at the center of Rosenthal’s broader political world. The Mamdani administration has said it wants to use similar tools to “seize housing,” and the effort received a $2 billion budget boost, according to a prior Post analysis. The process can lead to city legal action if a landlord does not make repairs, and in some cases a housing court judge can appoint a nonprofit to manage the building.