When you sign a rental lease, you are agreeing to pay the rental amount in a timely manner. Unless you are Tracy Rosenthal, who just so happens to be Zohran Mamdani’s so-called “Rent Advisor.”

A rent-striking, rising-star radical orchestrating the Mamdani administration’s socialist housing agenda is the daughter of a famed music studio owner who recorded rock legends like David Bowie, the Ramones, Blondie, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, the Foo Fighters and Coldplay, The Post has learned.

While framing herself as a champion of the proletariat, Tracy Rosenthal grew up in a trendy $1.7 million NoMad pad with elite access to the music industry — attending the Grammys at least twice with her dad, four-time winner Steven Rosenthal.

~Snip

Yet despite her first-class upbringing, she’s been on a four-year “rent strike” since moving back to New York City after a stint in Los Angeles — because the Bolshevik bugged out after spotting a cockroach in her hip $2,300 a month Bed-Stuy apartment.

At a North Carolina Democratic Socialists of America meeting where she spoke last August, Rosenthal, 39 — who pridefully posed for a snap on Karl Marx’s grave during a trip to London — sang the blues about what she claimed were horrendous conditions she had to endure in 2021.

“As soon as I moved in, I realized that we had roaches . . . and I lost my mind,” she said of the two-bedroom pad that occupies the top floor of a brownstone. “I was very angry. . . . it’s really gross.”

She said the landlord refused to hire an exterminator, and after finding out the building had more rental units than were legally approved and was facing foreclosure, she organized with the other tenants to eventually stop paying rent, stiffing the owner of at least $108,000 on her unit alone.

She spots one single cockroach and demands a full exterminator instead of just going to the hardware store and picking up some bug spray. 

But you see, this wasn’t about the cockroach. Oh no. It was about gaming the system to have a free place to stay. She could’ve broken the lease and moved elsewhere. But chose not to. Instead, she stiffed the landlord out of thousands of dollars over the course of four years. 

According to Tracy, no one should pay rent. 

Rosenthal has promoted rent strikes in her 2024 book, “Abolish Rent,” and has spoken to Democratic Socialists of America chapters around the country. At a 2024 meeting, she described rent as a form of coercion. “We pay rent at the peril of our need and at the barrel of a gun,” she said.

“It’s a ransom,” she complained. “We know that if we don’t make this payment, our landlords can call on agents of state violence who can use physical force to throw us outdoors.”

How very….socialist of her. One has to wonder what she thinks of mortgages? Are they a form of coercion as well? Does she expect her parents to hand her a home free and clear? Will she pay those coercive utilities and taxes or does she expect them to do that as well?

Tracy and the other tenants rent strike had consequences. The original landlord ended up declaring bankruptcy. Which is not a win in anyone’s book, unless you are a flaming socialist like Tracy. 

This is my favorite genre of socialism: people raised around wealth explaining why somebody else should absorb the cost of the lifestyle they still expect to maintain. https://t.co/A2fjwjbukS

— The Undercurrent (@NotTheirScript) August 9, 2026

Mamdani and Tracy Rosenthal seem to think that rent freezes will be a plus for New Yorkers. He even showed up with cake to celebrate landlords getting stiffed. 

What neither of them want to realize is that freezing rent doesn’t mean that the COSTS of maintaining the units freezes as well. 

Are there bad landlords out there? Absolutely. Did her going on rent strike solve anything regarding that itty bitty cockroach she freaked out over? Other than driving the landlord into bankruptcy, nothing was solved. 

I wonder if she’s going to try and protest outside the US Bank for daring to try to evict her? Or will she show up at someone’s wedding again? 

The more inflammatory techniques she pushes include camping outside a landlord’s home; shaming them in front of their neighbors, friends and family; leaving “really bad Yelp reviews;” and even crashing their children’s weddings — something she brazenly did with a tenant union in Beverly Hills in 2023.

Rosenthal — who posted “death to America” the night Mamdani clinched the Democratic primary last year and is a visiting scholar at the woke CUNY — put some of these tactics into practice as a strategist in a high-profile battle involving renters across 93 New York City buildings owned by Pinnacle Group, the focus of Mamdani’s taxpayer-funded “mini doc” released this week.

Housing costs are already insane in New York due to taxes, regulations, and people like Tracy Rosenthal refusing to pay their legally obligated rent for months if not years. 

The issue of the cockroach that Tracy complained about was resolved earlier this year. Yet she and the other tenants are still refusing to pay their rent. 

Which has led to Tracy at least, receiving an eviction notice. One wonders if she’ll go running to her pal Cea Weaver and demand use of her spare bedroom once the eviction actually happens? 

Feature Photo Credit: Eviction Notice via iStock, cropped and modified