Darializa Avila Chevalier won the Democratic primary for New York's 13th congressional district on a platform that includes government seizure of all properties from landlords. Her father, Frank Avila, rents out a two-bedroom condo in Miami for $1,750 a month.
The 32-year-old defeated incumbent Adriano Espaillat in a race that drew national attention for its hard-left policy slate. Chevalier called for statewide rent controls, suspension of all rent and mortgage payments, and the outright seizure of landlord-held properties, positions she promoted on social media posts that have since been deleted.
The Daily Mail reported on the contradiction after the New York Post uncovered property records showing that Frank Avila bought a townhouse in Miami's Fontainebleau neighborhood for $92,900 in 1998. The property, a two-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom unit roughly ten miles from downtown Miami, has been listed on the rental market since 2011. Neighboring condos now fetch an average of approximately $375,000, roughly four times what Avila paid.
In July 2025, Frank Avila took out a $190,000 mortgage on the property. He continues to collect $1,750 per month in rent from tenants.
Chevalier did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether her seizure policy would apply to her own father's rental property.
The landlord revelation is only one thread in a broader pattern. Chevalier's deleted social media posts and public interviews paint a picture of a candidate whose positions sit well to the left of even the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
She has written that she wants "no more police at all, ever." She has called for abolishing prisons. She has called for abolishing the U.S. border, writing: "Yes literally abolish the border, all deportation is wrong."
Her primary victory was part of a broader socialist sweep in New York, backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The wins prompted sharp reactions across the political spectrum about the direction of the Democratic Party.
In one deleted post, Chevalier wrote that "the pyromania associated with anarchism is very intriguing to me." In another, she described the United States as a "disgrace" and joked about wiping dirty hands on the American flag.
During the 2024 election cycle, she repeatedly called Joe Biden a "rapist" and "war criminal."
Chevalier sat for an interview with the New York Times editorial board, where a moderator pressed her on criminal justice. After she advocated for abolishing prisons, the moderator interjected three times, finally asking directly:
"But, did we answer what happens to the murderer? Do you not incarcerate the murderer?"
Chevalier did not give a direct answer. On housing, she told the board that "the folks who don't make quite as much, who are living in surrounding buildings... they are the ones that are getting screwed over." She pointed to "pathways to homeownership" and "investing in community land trusts and HDFCs" as alternatives, mechanisms that cap equity gains for landlords but, notably, do not apply to her father's rental property in Florida.
The gap between her rhetoric and her family's financial reality is the kind of contradiction that voters in a working-class district deserve to understand. Chevalier wants the government to seize property from landlords. She has not explained why her father's rental income should be treated any differently.
Senator John Fetterman, hardly a right-wing figure, accused Democrats of "drifting firmly into communism" after socialist candidates swept the New York primaries. Chevalier's platform makes it hard to argue he was exaggerating.
Her media encounters have also drawn scrutiny. Shortly before her primary win, Chevalier appeared on El Vacilón de la Mañana, a radio program hosted by Excarlet Molina. Molina said she was offended by Chevalier's prior characterization of the Dominican flag as "violent." The exchange grew heated, and Chevalier walked out of the interview on air, telling the host:
"I am not going to sit here and be yelled at by various people."
She won the primary anyway.
Chevalier's now-deleted social media history includes a 2019 post in which she wrote that black and Arab men with white women "fetishize ugly colonizer women." She called white women "ugly colonizers" in the same post. The remarks resurfaced during the campaign but did not prevent her primary victory.
A photo caption referenced by the Daily Mail shows Chevalier being handcuffed by an NYPD officer at an anti-Israel protest in April 2026. No arrest details, charges, or outcomes were reported.
The broader pattern matters. This is a candidate who wants the government to confiscate private property, eliminate law enforcement, open the border completely, and empty the prisons, and who responds to basic follow-up questions by either refusing to answer or leaving the room. She is backed by the mayor of New York City and is now the Democratic nominee in a district where winning the primary is tantamount to winning the seat.
That a candidate running on the most radical policy positions in recent New York memory could not be bothered to reckon with her own father's landlord status tells you something about the seriousness of the platform. It is not a governing agenda. It is a set of slogans designed to win a low-turnout primary, and it worked.
Several questions remain unanswered. Chevalier has not clarified whether her seizure policy would apply to all landlords or only a subset. She has not addressed her father's rental income publicly. The margin of her primary victory over Espaillat has not been widely reported in the material available. And the general-election landscape in NY-13, whether a Republican challenger has any realistic path, remains unclear.
What is clear is the contradiction at the center of her candidacy. She told voters that landlords are the problem. She told the New York Times editorial board that people in surrounding buildings "are the ones that are getting screwed over" by property owners. Meanwhile, her father has collected rent on a Miami townhouse for more than a decade, watched its value quadruple, and recently leveraged it for a six-figure mortgage.
The exposure of these contradictions is not a personal attack on Chevalier's family. It is a basic test of whether a candidate means what she says. If the government should seize all landlord properties, the policy starts at home, or it's just a slogan.
Chevalier wants to abolish landlords, abolish police, abolish prisons, and abolish the border. She might start by abolishing the gap between what she demands of everyone else and what she tolerates under her own roof.
