Eric Adams shows off Brooklyn apartment after report suggests he lives in NJ
It’s Cribs: the 2021 New York City mayoral race edition.
City Hall candidate and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams invited the press over to his home in Bedford-Stuyvesant for breakfast and a tour after a Politico report suggested he actually lives in New Jersey.
“Welcome to my humble home. I moved here to Bedford-Stuyvesant over almost 20 years ago,” Adams said Wednesday in front of the four-story brick home on Lafayette Avenue.
He also joked that other campaigns would have easily found out if he wasn’t a city resident and that he should have offered any spies from his rivals coffee and donuts.
“How foolish would someone have to be to run for the mayor of the City of New York and live in another municipality? It’s 101 that someone’s going to follow you from another campaign,” he said.
Politico reported that rival campaigns watched Adams arrive at his Borough Hall office close to midnight and didn’t leave until the next morning multiple times last week. Adams said that’s because he was busy working on his borough president duties after running his mayoral campaign.
Adams also co-owns a cooperative apartment in Fort Lee, NJ, with his significant other, but he said the Brooklyn row house is his primary residence. He added that he saw his partner on Saturday for the first time in two months.
“During COVID I didn’t see her just about at all,” Adams said.
Adams’ 25-year-old son, Jordan, joined him for the press conference.
The mayoral hopeful teared up recounting how someone shot out his car windows two days after bringing Jordan home as a newborn. Adams, a retired NYPD captain, has said he believes he was targeted by a fellow officer for trying to diversify the department from within.
Adams also wiped away tears recalling how he missed many of his son’s football games and birthdays because he was too busy working. He said he never told his colleagues he had a son to keep him safe.
The Brooklyn pol gave about a dozen reporters from top city news outlets tours of the two floors he calls home. The other floors of the townhouse are rental units, he said. The income paid for his son’s education at American University, Adams said.
Adams said he didn’t report the rental income on his tax returns because he got bad advice from an accountant and has switched to a new CPA.
“This is not a Park Avenue address so if you’re expecting to see this fancy, laid-out penthouse apartment, no. I’m a blue-collar guy. I have just a humble place,” he said.
The unit’s front door enters into a basement-level or garden floor apartment that has an open layout with a living area, kitchen and small bathroom to the side.
Adams’ bedroom is subterranean, down a flight of narrow, creaky stairs. Personal items including a dusty set of golf clubs and several pairs of sneakers sit along walls in the small, musty bedroom.
Upstairs there are souvenirs from a 21-day international trip Adams took with his son including a sitting Buddha sculpture from Thailand. A mantle is covered with photographs including one of Adams’ mother. Books, including a “Dummies Guide to Golf” and an illustrated Bible dictionary, crowd the shelves.
Two neighbors attested that Adam is a regular on the block.
“I see him quite a lot,” said David Goodman, who lives two doors down from Adams. “Eric is a wonderful neighbor. He’s pleasant. He’s stable.”
Lionel Conway, another homeowner on the block, told reporters he sees Adams “every now and then.”
“I went inside his house. He’s come to my house,” Conway added.
