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WASHINGTON — Far-left DC mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George, who’s been begging for an endorsement from NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, bought a million-dollar home in April after suggesting single-family zoning was a tool of “segregation,” The Post has learned.
The District Councilmember and her husband, Kyle George, purchased the lavish single-family dwelling in the capital’s Manor Park neighborhood, about five miles north of the White House, for $1.19 million April 17, according to DC Office of Tax and Revenue records.
The residential enclave was described by the Washington Post in a 2021 feature as “an especially attractive area for families with children.”
The price tag for George’s pad was nearly double the average home value in the District of Columbia, according to the real estate online search platform Redfin, and almost $500,000 more than the average price for a home in that zip code.
Just 15 days before her home purchase, George had published an op-ed decrying “how exclusionary zoning preserves segregation and exacerbates displacement” and blaming “politically-connected wealthy residents” for being opposed to new housing construction.
George’s campaign team has been desperately seeking Mamdani’s support in the June 16 Democratic mayoral primary against former DC Council member Kenyan McDuffie.
“Former DC mayors are all backing [McDuffie], so she’s been begging New York’s golden boy to take the Acela down to help activate Washington’s Diet Commie Corridor,” one District Democratic insider told The Post.
“But say what you will about Mamdani, he clearly smelled desperation.”
Reps for Mamdani’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Tudor-style home was built in 1935 and spans 3,122 square feet across three levels. It boasts four bedrooms, five bathrooms, a chef’s kitchen including a waterfall island, vaulted ceilings in the primary suite, a finished basement — and a luxe sauna, per a real estate listing.
Sweeping renovations in 2023 transformed the brick exterior and gave the home its striking black-and-white Tudor-meets-contemporary look.
The home is also situated in a residential zone of the city that “[d]iscourages multi-household development,” something George has railed against as part of her campaign.
The candidate has claimed her family was forced out of a rented apartment due to “deeply flawed” zoning policies in the nation’s capital.
“The rent hikes that my family experienced in 2010 might not have been so drastic if single-family zoning in the District’s most affluent neighborhoods hadn’t long-prevented more homes from being built in them,” she wrote in an opinion piece for the Greater Greater Washington website April 2.
Her “Home For All” plan on her campaign website pledges to “reform zoning laws” in order to build as many as 72,000 new dwellings — many of which will be multi-family, or higher density, units — over the next five years.
McDuffie has put forward a more moderate plan to construct 12,000 new housing units and preserve 20,000 existing affordable housing units over the next four years.
The cost of building just one new affordable-housing unit in the capital has been pegged as high as $1.2 million, the Washington Post reported last year, and much of that burden would be shouldered by DC taxpayers.
As an option for footing the bill, George has suggested the District “leverage our pension funds,” earning blowback from the DC Police Union.
Mamdani’s own plan to build a whopping 200,000 new affordable homes over the next decade — and increase Big Apple housing on city-owned land — has been similarly met with skepticism.
Still, national labor groups — including the AFL-CIO and AFSCME — have been speaking with George’s campaign and reaching out to Mamdani’s team as intermediaries to help broker an endorsement, according to three Democratic sources familiar with the discussions.
Labor leaders like AFL-CIO’s Liz Shuler and AFSCME’s Lee Saunders have been working “very hard” to set up a meeting that will lead to a public endorsement of George by Mamdani at a DC event, one source noted.
“They’ve just been trying to figure out whether or not it makes sense right now to step outside of New York City to do that, but the level of coordination — and the amount of money that they’re putting into this race — is causing the conversations to get into a larger place and where it’s becoming more realistic,” a second source said.
A third quipped: “Janeese thinks she is DC’s Mamdani. But in truth she’s its [Chicago Mayor] Brandon Johnson.
“Anyone who knows anything about how DC government actually functions is clear-eyed about [George] being a disaster for the District, especially in a moment of real economic crisis and unprecedented federal incursion.”
George leads McDuffie by 11 percentage points among likely primary voters, 36% to 25%, with all other competitors in the low single digits, according to a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll.
Reps for the George campaign, as well as the AFL-CIO and AFSCME, did not respond to requests for comment.
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