August 10, 2026

She’s sold as a fire-breathing anti-rent crusader, but the woman helping shape the Mamdani administration’s socialist housing push comes with a seriously plush backstory. Tracy Rosenthal — the rising radical who’s been on a four-year “rent strike” and is now accused of “squatting” in Brooklyn — is the daughter of Grammy-winning music studio owner Steven Rosenthal, whose Magic Shop recorded legends like David Bowie, the Ramones, Blondie, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, the Foo Fighters and Coldplay. She didn’t exactly come up rough, either: Rosenthal grew up in a trendy $1.7 million NoMad apartment and even hit the Grammys at least twice with her dad. But the optics are brutal. The activist who’s preaching tenant revolt reportedly ditched her Los Angeles move, returned to New York, and launched her rent strike after spotting a cockroach in her $2,300-a-month Bed-Stuy apartment. Now the same woman who’s been framed as a champion of the proletariat is being blasted as…

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