Home flap dogs Adams
Says he gave B’klyn apt. to a pal, but docs say he owns 50%
Mayor Adams’ latest financial disclosure reveals he still co-owns a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment he claimed during the 2021 campaign to have given to a friend — adding more intrigue to questions swirling around his real estate holdings.
The mandatory annual disclosure, released Wednesday by the Conflicts of Interest Board, shows Adams continues to hold a 50% ownership stake in the first-floor co-op unit in Prospect Heights, which is valued at between $250,000 and $500,000.
The apartment started attracting scrutiny in June 2021, when news outlet The City reported that Adams had failed for years in official forms to disclose his co-ownership of it with Sylvia Cowan, a woman he has described as a “good friend.” At first, Adams denied the report and insisted he had transferred his coop shares to Cowan more than a decade ago.
But in his first mayoral financial disclosure, released in June 2022, Adams admitted he was still a co-owner of the unit. At the time, Adams spokesman Fabien Levy said the mayor’s shares hadn’t “fully transferred” to Cowan yet, and blamed the delay in part on Clarence Harley, the mayor’s ex-accountant who he claimed had filed incorrect paperwork about the transfer while facing homelessness.
On Wednesday, Levy said the transfer to Cowan still hasn’t gone through due to “tax-related” reasons.
“After previously learning that the transfer did not go through, the mayor initiated the process last year to transfer the property, but for tax-related purposes, it is currently being delayed, and the mayor has filled out his COIB paperwork to reflect that fact,” Levy said, using an acronym for the Conflicts of Interest Board.
Levy did not elaborate on the nature of the “tax-related purposes.”
The Prospect Heights apartment isn’t the only real estate owned by Adams that has attracted scrutiny.
During the 2021 campaign, questions swirled over whether Adams lived at a Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, apartment where he was registered, prompting him to bring reporters on an extraordinary tour of the home. Some of Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign rivals speculated he actually lived full time in a Fort Lee, N.J., co-op he co-owns with his girlfriend, Tracey Collins — a claim the mayor has firmly denied.
Despite already owning the Bed-Stuy building, Adams was also registered as living between 2013 and 2017 at a Crown Heights, Brooklyn, apartment belonging to Lisa White, an NYPD official who got a nearly fivefold salary increase a few months after the mayor took office.
Beyond the Prospect Heights apartment, the mayor’s latest financial disclosure confirms he still owns the two-bedroom Fort Lee co-op with Collins. That apartment is valued at between $250,000 and $500,000 in the form.
Financial disclosure forms, which all city elected officials must update annually, provide only monetary ranges of assets, debts and incomes.
Adams’ form shows he raked in upward of $50,000 in rental income from tenants at his Bed-Stuy building last year. He also netted at least $5,000 in royalties from his cookbook, “Healthy at Last”; earned at least $250,000 from his mayoral salary, and collected at least $60,000 from his NYPD pension, according to the filing.
The mayor’s new filing also confirms that the Combat Antisemitism Movement paid for his “airfare, lodging and meals” during his November 2022 trip to Athens for the group’s annual summit. The form valued the mayor’s comped expenses at between $5,000 and $55,000.
Levy declined to say exactly how much the international group dished out for the mayor’s expenses. There are no rules barring mayors from getting travel expenses paid by special interest groups, but they must report them in their annual disclosures.