The City Council member-elect from Brooklyn who has been dogged by questions about whether he can hold office after allegations that he may violated the state’s residency requirement, Mathieu Eugene, said yesterday he has been living in the district he was elected to represent since the beginning of February, well before last week’s special election.

“I’ve been sleeping there for the month of February,” Dr. Eugene said. He said he did not recall the exact date he moved to a three-bedroom apartment on Argyle Road in central Brooklyn’s District 40, which he was elected to represent in a special election on February 20. The district includes parts of Flatbush and Crown Heights. He had been living in Canarsie.

Exactly when Dr. Eugene made the move has taken on particular significance in recent days. A swearing-in ceremony for the two newly elected council members scheduled for last Thursday was canceled amid questions about whether Dr. Eugene was eligible to hold office.

One day after the election, Dr. Eugene told The New York Sun that once he was sworn in to office he would have time to move into the district. Yesterday, he tried to clarify his earlier statement, saying that when he made it he thought he was being asked whether he had finished the move.

“I didn’t have all my stuff there yet,” he said yesterday. “I was planning to move in with all my family, but I was so busy with the election that I couldn’t.”

New York law states that a candidate is allowed to hold an office only if he lives in the district he is elected to represent “at the time he shall be chosen.” An adjunct professor of law at Fordham Law School, Jerry Goldfeder, said the law is clear and requires candidates to live in the district they hope to represent on Election Day.

At least two other candidates in the 10-person race to replace Rep. Yvette Clarke on the council also live outside District 40; they said they thought the law allowed a winning candidate to move in after the election.

“It’s no problem moving in there,” candidate Wellington Sharpe, who placed third in the race, said yesterday. “But that was not my understanding that you had to be there on Election Day.”

Candidate Jennifer James, who finished second in the voting, was living outside of District 40 in Brooklyn until December 2006, according to voter registration information listed with the New York City Board of Elections, a spokeswoman for the board, Valerie Vazquez, said. Candidate Jesse Hamilton also lived outside the district he sought to represent until January, according to his voter registration record, Ms. Vazquez said.

The council speaker, Christine Quinn, has turned to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for help, writing to ask who is responsible for making sure a winning candidate meets the legal requirements to hold office. A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, John Milgrim, said yesterday that the office is reviewing the request.

A former Assemblyman, Vincent Ignizio, who was elected to represent southern Staten Island in the special election, said he has been working out of his district office since winning 72% of the vote in the election and hopes to be sworn in as soon as possible.

“There is no question as to the outcome of my election,” he said.