Darializa Avila Chevalier once called for the government to seize all properties from landlords. <\/p>\n
But her own father is currently renting his Florida condo out for $1,750 a month, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old Mamdani-backed<\/a> Democratic Socialist stunned onlookers this week when she defeated five-term incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat<\/a> for the Democratic nomination to represent New York\u2019s 13th Congressional District, covering upper Manhattan and parts of The Bronx.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Darializa Avila Chevalier, the democratic socialist who just unseated five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat in New York\u2019s 13th Congressional District, once reposted calls to seize all properties from landlords and suspend mortgage payments. AP Photo\/Ryan Murphy<\/p>\n Avila Chevalier ran a populist campaign centered on limiting market-rate housing and fighting \u201ccorporate greed.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, her father owns market-rate property, and rents it out at market rate, to boot.<\/p>\n Public records show Frank R. Avila purchased a condominium in Miami in 1998 for $92,900 \u2014 about $193,000 today.\u00a0<\/p>\n The unit sits inside a sprawling complex tucked into the Fontainebleau neighborhood roughly 10 miles west of downtown Miami, a densely urban area where 84.8% of residents primarily speak Spanish at home and more than 64% were born outside the United States.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n It is a working-class immigrant community \u2014 exactly the kind of place Avila Chevalier says she is fighting to protect from the economic forces of appreciation and displacement.<\/p>\n Those forces, it turns out, have been very good for Frank Avila. And now he is charging his tenants for them. <\/p>\n Darializa Avila Chevalier\u2019s father, Frank Avila, is currently renting out a Miami condo he bought in 1998 for $92,900, now worth roughly four times that, at $1,750 a month while carrying a $190,000 mortgage against its market-driven appreciation due in 2055. Google Maps<\/p>\n According to Realtor.com and Apartments.com, his unit was recently listed for rent at $1,750 a month \u2014 and found a new tenant in June, records show. The two-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom townhouse-style condo with updated bathrooms, tile floors and an assigned parking spot has been actively on the rental market since at least 2011, records also show.<\/p>\n Similar units in the complex now average around $375,000 in value\u00a0 \u2014 a fourfold jump from what he paid nearly three decades ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n In July 2025, Frank and his wife Zoraya Avila took out a $190,000 mortgage on the property through A&D Mortgage LLC, with a maturity date of 2055, according to Miami-Dade County records obtained by The Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n In other words, he borrowed $190,000 against a property whose value was built entirely by the market, and is now collecting rent from a tenant to help pay it back. It is, by any definition, the landlord playbook. <\/p>\n The irony is not subtle, given what his daughter has spent years saying about exactly that kind of wealth accumulation.<\/p>\n Avila Chevalier has built her entire political identity around being a renter fighting predatory landlords, endorsing homeownership only through equity-capped models like community land trusts designed to prevent exactly the kind of uncapped appreciation her father has spent 27 years accumulating and is now monetizing \u2014 one tenant at a time. Robert Miller for NY Post<\/p>\n Her father\u2019s latest transaction stands in contrast to one of the central themes of Avila Chevalier\u2019s housing platform. Throughout her congressional campaign, the Harlem progressive has argued that New York has leaned too heavily on market-driven housing solutions, warning that new market-rate development can accelerate displacement and erode the identity of long-established neighborhoods.<\/p>\n A CNN KFile review<\/a> of Avila Chevalier\u2019s since-deleted Twitter account<\/a> found that she had reposted a message calling for the suspension of rent and mortgage payments and the seizure of \u201call properties from landlords.\u201d<\/a> Her father owns one, rents it out and just borrowed nearly $200,000 against its appreciation.<\/p>\n Avila Chevalier told CNN the posts did not reflect who she is today, saying \u201cI have grown considerably since in the years since these tweets, and I am focused on our community and our community\u2019s future.\u201d<\/p>\n Avila Chevalier did not immediately respond to The Post\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Her more recent, polished positions are only marginally less pointed. On her campaign website, she describes herself as a renter who knows \u201cwhat it\u2019s like to watch the vast majority of each month\u2019s paycheck go towards rent,\u201d positioning herself squarely alongside the 88% of her district\u2019s residents who do not own their homes.<\/p>\n