Throughout the race, there has been a significant degree of confusion surrounding the question of where Eric Adams resides.
Given the confusion surrounding his residency, and how he accounts for his real estate on his tax returns, a moderator asked Mr. Adams how the electorate could trust him.
Mr. Adams said, as he has in the past, that he takes responsibility for omissions on his tax returns, and then blamed his accountant, who he said was homeless.
“He went through real trauma,” Mr. Adams said of his accountant. “And I’m not a hypocrite, I wanted to still give him the support that he needed.”
Mr. Adams also insisted, again, that his primary residence is in Brooklyn.
Mr. Adams owns a multi-unit townhouse in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn in which he says he keeps an apartment. In one of the more bizarre moments of the mayoral primary, he gave a media tour of that apartment, with reporters observing non-vegan food items apparently belonging to Mr. Adams’s son. (Mr. Adams has been a vegan for years.)
But Mr. Adams also co-owns a co-op in Fort Lee, N.J., with his partner, and he has said that he moved into Brooklyn Borough Hall for a time after the pandemic arrived. During the primary, Politico New York reported that Mr. Adams used conflicting addresses in public records and that he was still spending nights at Borough Hall.
He has had to refile his tax returns in part because of irregularities concerning his residency, the news outlet The City reported. The outlet also reported that the city is seeking to inspect his Brooklyn residence following an allegation of an illegal apartment conversion on the property. His campaign has said he intended to rectify those issues, though the complaint remains active.
Mr. Sliwa recently led a journey from Manhattan to Fort Lee “to find out where Eric Adams really lives.”
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
