1. Home
  2.  » 
  3. Behind The "News"
  4.  » 
  5. Inside the White House and Washington's Beltway
  6.  » Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Moves into Luxury Apartment Complex

Emily Goodin – Daily Mail Feb 20, 2019

Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez. Click to enlarge

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has moved into a luxury Washington D.C. apartment building with an infinity pool and a nearby Whole Foods, it was revealed Tuesday.

What it doesn’t offer is affordable housing – a platform the self-described socialist campaigned on in her bid to become the youngest female member of Congress.

Ocasio-Cortez makes $174,000 annually with her congressional salary and has used the funds to move into the posh Navy Yard neighborhood in Washington D.C. that, ironically, is also a favorite of President Donald Trump’s staffers, the Washington Examiner revealed.

Last year Forbes magazine named the Navy Yard neighborhood one of the 12 coolest in the world.

Ocasio-Cortez new Navy Yard neighbourhood has upmarket food stores, posh restaurants and expensive gyms. Click to enlarge

It’s the fast growing area in the nation’s capitol and features the Nationals Ball Park; District Winery, the only winery in the city; beer gardens; posh restaurants and expensive workout studios like SolidCore and Pure Barre.

The Yards Park – situated on the banks of the Potomac River – contains a fountain, outdoor concerts, outdoor workout classes, restaurants, and speciality shops.

And the city is building a soccer stadium in the area.

The neighborhood also contains a Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, the company Ocasio-Cortez has railed against for its corporate practices.

She celebrated when Amazon announced it would not be building a second headquarters in Queens, New York, near her congressional district.

‘Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers and their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation and the power of the richest man in the world,’ Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter last week.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t use the company’s services.

She was spotted shopping in the Whole Foods in her new D.C. neighborhood on Thursday night, Politico’s Playbook reported.

But housing affordability was a major campaign issue for rising Democratic star and helped her defeat Democrat Rep. Joe Crowley in the June primary, a victory that shocked the Democratic establishment.

‘New York 14 is one of those last working-class congressional districts in New York City. These communities are very rapidly seeing the cost of living go up: In the last three years or so, the median price of a two-bedroom apartment in New York 14 has gone up 80 percent,’ she told Vogue magazine in June. ‘Our incomes certainly aren’t going up 80 percent to compensate for that, and what that is doing is a wave of aggressive economic displacement of the communities that have always been here.’

Washington D.C.’s Navy Yard neighborhood is also part of a gentrification battle.

In 2008, the D.C. government was sued for discrimination with an attorney alleging the development in Navy Yard area and other parts of southeast D.C. encouraged affluent millennials to move in and displace minorities.

The congress woman has criticized real east lobbyists for raising housing costs.

‘We need to kick luxury real estate lobbyists to the curb and defend working people’s way of life,’ Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in March. ‘Skyrocketing cost of living is a national crisis that CAN be addressed. It’s not just an NYC issue – it’s happening in every US metro area.’

Her new D.C. apartment building – the exact location DailyMail.com is not revealing – contains two private massage rooms; men’s and women’s saunas; a 25-meter indoor lap pool; a rooftop infinity pool with views of the Capitol; a Peloton cycling studio; and a fireside lounge featuring a Steinway & Sons player piano, the Examiner noted.

Apartments in the building go for $1,840 a month for a 440 square foot studio, and can go up to $5,200 for a three-bedroom.

The median rent in Washington, D.C., is $2,700, according to real-estate website Zillow.

After she won her election in November, Ocasio-Cortez worried how she would afford rent prices in Washington.

‘I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress,’ Ocasio-Cortez told The New York Times at the time. ‘So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real.’

She also bemoaned her status as a working class person trying to make it in the nation’s Capitol.

‘There are many little ways in which our electoral system isn’t even designed (nor prepared) for working-class people to lead,’ she tweeted on November 8.

But with her $174,000 annual income, she is now upper middle class.

The income for upper-middle households is between $126,000 and $188,000, according Pew Research.

Ocasio-Cortez has been criticized for some of her early decisions in her first few months in Congress.

It was revealed her boyfriend has an official House of Representatives email address, which her office said was done so he could access her calendar.

She also slammed members of Congress for taking pay during the government shutdown but would not say if she gave up her salary in January when she took the oath of office.

Source