The co-chair of New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America has railed against the wealthy and championed the working class — while living in a roughly $1.4 million Brooklyn home purchased and renovated by his parents.
Property records show that a family LLC purchased the Bed-Stuy home in 2019. Gordillo’s father, a Peruvian immigrant and successful businessman, told the New York Post that he renovated the property and allows his two sons, including the DSA co-chair, to live there.
The arrangement has drawn scrutiny because Gordillo has become a prominent voice in New York City’s democratic socialist movement while criticizing wealth, high investment returns and the affordability pressures facing working-class residents. Critics say his living arrangement — in a valuable Brooklyn property purchased and renovated by his family — undercuts that message and highlights the contrast between his political rhetoric and the financial advantages provided by his family.
"Nothing says working class like a $1.4M townhouse your daddy bought you," New York City Councilwoman Joann Ariola wrote on X.
Gordillo, a Yale graduate with an art degree, lists his occupation as a "union electrician" on social media.
Gordillo attracted controversy in July when he told Fox News that the DSA doesn’t "think that anyone should have a constitutional right to double-digit returns on their investment." His father’s business success helped provide the family with the means to purchase and renovate the Brooklyn property in an increasingly expensive New York City
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"I am shocked, just shocked that the co-chair of the NY Socialist party lives like a king in [the] $1 million+ home his parents bought for him in cool Bed-Stuy," former New York State Senate candidate Maria Danzillo wrote. "Who would have ever guessed that a [New York City DSA] gentrifier doesn’t have to worry about paying rent or any of the other mundane problems actual working class people have to contend with?"
In February, Gordillo complained that "millionaires don't actually leave New York the way other income groups do," arguing that it was unfair that lower income people and minorities were being priced out of the city.
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"Not only did DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo's parents buy him this rowhouse, they converted it from a two family and renovated it into a luxury single-family home for him," New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino said on X. "Exactly the kind of 'greed' the DSA rails against on a daily basis, and reducing valuable housing inventory by one more unit, which is supposedly something the DSA cares very deeply about."
Gordillo and his father did not respond to requests for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
"In Dostoevsky’s novel ‘The Possessed,’ it was the sons of rich boomers who were the most in love with socialism. Not the poor. The more things change, the more things stay the same," Manhattan Institute senior fellow Rob Henderson wrote on X.
Gordillo acknowledged his wealthy upbringing in an August interview with the New York Times, squaring the apparent gap between his affluence and ideology by arguing that the democratic socialist project seeks to "build a world" where his parent’s success story is "not exceptional."
