On a recent spring day, Prospect Lefferts Gardens shook with such force that some neighbors believed there was an earthquake, they said. The bricks of a co-op building in the Brooklyn neighborhood broke off and crashed into the courtyard, and new cracks wormed their way into some residents’ homes. 

“It’s as if a train were running through the house,” said Dean Foster, 75, who lives on Rutland Road and Bedford Avenue. 

It was not an earthquake but vibrations from a pile driver digging steel beams into the soil at 1935 Bedford Ave. without proper safety monitors in place to protect the surrounding homes, according to city records and a Department of Buildings spokesperson.

Pile driving involves using a heavy-duty machine to force beams into the earth to create a stable foundation for a future structure, causing intense vibrations to travel from the source of the driving. 

“If we opened the cabinet door in the kitchen, the glassware would have fallen out,” Foster said in his home, located two blocks from the construction site.

Nestled between historic houses and two 90-year-old co-op buildings, the lot has become the site of a bitter battle between its newest owners and neighbors, whose homes have been damaged and lives disrupted during heavy construction, according to photos and videos reviewed by THE CITY.

Bobby McCullough, 42, began contacting 311 with complaints of cracks in their apartment building when construction ramped up in the first week of May, service requests show. 

“That was the first time I was fearful for my immediate safety,” McCullough said. “The building was shaking at a level that I was concerned about something falling, not off the shelf, but like a part of the ceiling.” 

Suzanne Cooke, who has lived in the co-op building for 13 years, said her daughter works late nights and has been disturbed by the construction while she sleeps during the day. 

“It’s startled her and woke her out of her sleep,” Cooke said. “There’s items in our space that fell off shelves.” 

McCullough said they were standing in the courtyard of the co-op as bricks from the adjacent building broke off and crashed to the ground. They were on the phone with a city building employee when it happened, who instructed them to call 911 immediately. 

Firefighters responded to the scene for bricks falling from the co-op building, according to a fire department spokesperson. Firefighters told the contractors to stop pile driving, but they did not listen, McCullough and other residents said.

“Ten minutes after they left, work continued,” McCullough told THE CITY. 

History of Violations

The entity Bedford 1935 Daf LLC, owned by Yonit Tzadok, purchased the lot on Feb. 28, 2025, according to property records, becoming the site’s third owner in nine years. A partner to the owner, Izchak Naftalin, filed permits to build a 10-story building on the lot in July 2025, according to records and media reports. Neither Tzadok nor Naftalin responded to inquiries from THE CITY. 

The current owners have paid $16,000 to the city in fines since January for various infractions, including failure to maintain a safe job site, failing to obtain proper permits and violating a stop work order, according to building department records. 

On May 5 the city issued Lead It Builders LLC, another contractor on site, a violation with a $5,000 fine for pile driving without safety monitoring devices, which is pending. 

Past development attempts on the lot have failed in recent years, and it has a history of unauthorized demolition work from a prior developer, as previously reported by THE CITY. In 2021, the Department of Environmental Protection issued $68,000 in fines for multiple violations of asbestos-removal safety rules.

In the last two years through early January, another owner of the lot, — 1935 Bedford Ave LLC, which sold the lot to the current LLC owner — ran up $27,321 in fines for a variety of code violations, including unsafe job site and inadequate site fencing. As of this week, they’d paid off $19,196 with $8,125 unresolved, records show. 

Residents told THE CITY they have struggled to keep up with whether stop work orders are in effect, as they go back and forth with lodging complaints against the contractors, who eventually get the stop work orders rescinded, or violate the orders and write a check to the city for the fines.

“The stop work orders come and go very quick,” McCullough said. 

Between February and May 2026, the city issued and rescinded two stop work orders for driving piles without monitoring protocols in place. Another stop work order issued on April 30 with no explanation was rescinded the next day. 

On Wednesday the city ordered all work to stop again, after an inspector responding to yet another complaint and found no designated superintendent while construction was ongoing, which creates a “hazard,” according to the order.

Gary Vinbaytel, who is named as an associate of the project’s owner according to city records, denied the city’s and neighbor’s claims that he is pile driving without the proper monitors.

“They fabricate everything,” he said in an email to THE CITY, referring to the lot’s neighbors. “All our construction is in accordance with all DOB regulations, monitoring and regiments. We follow each step very carefully and have sophisticated monitoring in place.”

He added, “These neighbors have prevented any construction from proceeding for a decade with multiple prior owners.”

Shaking and Cracking

Residents began complaining to the building agency of their homes shaking and cracking in February 2026. 

Anya Glowa-Kollisch, 42, board president of the Hawthorne Street co-op adjacent to the lot, said they have tried for nearly a year to get the project owners to sign an agreement for providing proper safety equipment, calling the work “exhausting.” 

“We have no idea how much damage has already been done to our building,” Glowa-Kollisch said. “It’s not that we don’t want development. This isn’t a NIMBY situation. We understand that things change and that there’s a need for housing.”

“What we want is for it to be done safely,” they added.

An engineering report Vinbaytel had prepared and submitted to the city as a requirement for the project recommended contractors micropile — drilling small-diameter columns into the ground that creates low vibrations but typically takes longer to install — instead of pile driving, stating it could cause vibrations that would affect adjacent buildings.

Cal Hadley’s family has owned his home on Fenimore Street since 1974. The house, built in 1935, is about 20 feet away from the construction. 

He said the pile driving “would work if we were on a deserted island someplace, and no other building was around for miles.” 

“But this is Brooklyn,” Hadley said. “Everything is in such close proximity to each other.” 

“No one’s saying that, ‘Well, we don’t want any buildings,’ but when you do this — and that’s what we’re focused on — why are you causing damage to other homes?”

‘Incredibly Stressful’

The residents THE CITY spoke to described their neighborhood as tight-knit and multicultural with historic homes. Now known as Little Caribbean, the area has been rapidly gentrifying, desired for its good transit options, historically designated homes and proximity to Prospect Park. 

Nicole DeCicco, 42, has used the nearby park as a refuge from her shaking building. 

“I typically partially work from home, and I haven’t been able to sit here and do work,” she said. “We’re getting woken up. They’re doing drilling at like 7 o’clock in the morning.” 

McCullough has lived in the co-op beside the lot for a little over a decade, which they said they cherish for its “building elders,” who have lived there for over 40 years. 

“It’s incredibly stressful to feel like the well-being of the building as a structure hinges on our awareness as just ordinary residents,” McCullough said. 

They are unsure what they will do about the cracks in their walls. 

“I can’t even get there,” they said. “I’m simply, I am trying to stop more from happening.”

Additional reporting by Greg B. Smith.

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Three days before a fatal fire May 4th at 207 Dyckman St. in Inwood, housing inspectors appeared at the six-story walkup and issued a dozen code violations.

One of those was for a non-functioning self-closing apartment entry door that was deemed “immediately hazardous.”

After the blaze was put out, firefighters discovered severe fire damage in eight apartments where entry doors had been left open. Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore made a point of noting that units where the doors were closed “had very little impact, no fire.”

The city’s housing code requires property owners to fix “immediately hazardous” violations — such as the self-closing door at Dyckman Street — within 24 hours.

But, according to city records and sworn statements, the building’s owners have a track record of letting dangerous conditions linger. 

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development has issued more than a thousand violations over the last few years to the landlords of the Dyckman Street building at properties they own across New York, an investigation by THE CITY has found.

The problems are so bad that HPD has been forced to file suit 16 times since 2020 alleging a persistent failure to address serious health and safety issues at 10 properties in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens controlled by co-owners of the Dyckman St. property, Jack Bick, Chaim Schweid and their affiliated real estate companies, records show.

Bick ranks 80th on Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ list of the city’s 100 worst landlords.

“I have heard complaints that they don’t respond,” said a 22-year-old tenant of one of Janjan’s Manhattan buildings. “Like, they take years to, like, fix a problem.” 

As of last week those 10 buildings had racked up a total of 1,343 open housing code violations, including 406 listed as “immediately hazardous.”

On April 27, HPD sued Bick, Schweid and their firms Janjan Realty and SB Dyckman LLC over serious code violations at 209 Dyckman St. — the building next door to the fire site. That included citations for two fire safety issues: a blocked egress and a missing smoke detector.

As of last week both Dyckman Street buildings had a combined total of 336 open violations, 100 of them “immediately hazardous.”

A ‘Top Priority’ for Mamdani

At the time of the fire, 207 Dyckman St. had been placed in HPD’s “alternate enforcement program,” which targets landlords who accumulate an alarming number of serious violations within a year. Property owners in the AEP program are then subject to random inspections to clean up past outstanding violations. At 207 Dyckman, HPD and Janjan had resolved 85 past citations as of Thursday.

HPD told THE CITY it “will use every tool in its toolbox to ensure tenants are safe and landlords meet their obligations.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani “has been clear that enforcing housing quality is a top priority for this administration, and we will continue to take action against unsafe conditions and bad landlords whenever and wherever they exist,” the agency said in a statement.  

The lawsuits HPD has filed against Bick, Schweid and their firms highlight a persistent failure to address serious code violations at specific buildings. Over the last year, HPD had to sue Bick three times over violations at one of his buildings on Bessemund Avenue in Far Rockaway, then another three times over a building he controls a few blocks away on Hartman Lane.

Both locations included violations for non-working self-closing doors.

‘Unsafe Conditions’

At another Bick-owned Far Rockaway building on Bay 30th Street, HPD last month filed suit accusing the landlord of deliberately “neglecting those unsafe conditions as part of an intentional and aggressive campaign to harass and displace rent stabilized tenants.” They allege at one point a tenant without a lawyer was offered $100 to vacate their apartment.

Schweid controls four properties sued by HPD over the last few years, including a 49-unit rental building on Ocean Parkway in Kensington, Brooklyn.

In the last two years housing inspectors have fielded dozens of complaints about unsafe conditions there, and HPD has at times been forced to bill Schweid for repairs city-hired vendors had to perform when the landlord failed to do so. 

As of this week the Ocean Parkway building had 91 open violations, 30 of them “immediately hazardous.” Since December the building has been cited five times for non-functioning self-closing doors.

A lawyer for Bick did not return THE CITY’s calls seeking comment, and a message left at a number listed for Janjan Realty was not returned. A lawyer for Schweid did not return a call or an email from THE CITY.

On Thursday, fire department officials cited the Dyckman Street fire at a press conference touting a recent public service announcement they released following an April fire at a building on East 187th Street in The Bronx that resulted in two deaths. Officials said firefighters entering that building found many apartment entry doors had been left wide open.

First Deputy Fire Commissioner Dan Flynn advised New Yorkers to always close their doors and leave them closed when fleeing the scene of a fire.

Open doors create a chimney effect that spreads fire, smoke and flames — a factor that was in play during the May 4 Dyckman Street conflagration that killed three tenants, including People magazine journalist Yolaine Diaz and her mother, Ana Mirtha Lantigua.

“This year we’ve had many fatalities that have resulted from residents opening doors or leaving doors open,” Flynn said. “Closed doors will limit the spread of that fire, limit the spread of toxic gases and smoke.”

Flynn cited two examples in The Bronx where open doors contributed to the rapid spread of fatal fires — a December 2017 blaze on Prospect Avenue that caused 13 deaths, and a January 2022 fire in the Twin Parks building that killed 17.

“If not for an open door, I am confident that nobody would have died in either one of those fires,” he said.

Contributing: Lilly Sabella

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A Billionaires’ Row penthouse that sold for $87.7 million. Sting’s pad overlooking Central Park, bought for $65.7 million. A Trump Tower apartment owned by Donald himself.

These properties might seem like exactly the type of real estate that stands to be hit with a newly proposed “pied-à-terre” tax, which takes aim at high-priced homes that aren’t people’s primary residences. Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced last week that the tax would apply to units worth $5 million or more and would raise an estimated $500 million a year to throw at the city’s gaping budget hole.

But if that $5 million worth is defined by the city’s tax valuations, condos that sell for 10 times that amount and more could avoid the tax, according to experts and city Department of Finance data. To capture pied-à-terre tax revenue from them, the government would need to use a different threshold.

The finance department’s “market values” and “assessed values” for condos and co-ops are notoriously low, calculated based on rents in the area rather than actual sales prices. 

A condo at supertall 432 Park Ave. that sold for $26 million in 2021, for example, has an “assessed value” of just $785,477. And the condo’s “market value,” as calculated by the DOF, is just under $1.9 million, a fraction of its actual worth. 

The governor and state lawmakers are hammering out the details of the pied-à-terre tax proposal, so how the city might assess the tax is still unclear.

Hochul has said about 13,000 New York City properties would be subject to the tax. In response to an inquiry for this story, Hochul’s office told THE CITY Tuesday that they’d make sure the tax would apply to superluxury properties like those found on Billionaires’ Row but declined to share further details. 

But whatever the state lands on, it would need to account for the city’s loopy property tax system in order to include many owners’ glitzy second (or third, or fourth) homes.

Take 432 Park Ave.’s 96th floor penthouse, which sold for $87.7 million in 2016. Its “market value,” based on DOF’s math, is $3.8 million, according to city tax records. Its “assessed value” is $1.6 million.

A CITY review of property records at that supertall luxury tower did not find a single residential unit that would qualify for the pied-à-terre tax under its “assessed value,” and only one — bought for $91 million in 2017 — that would count as a $5 million condo under its official “market value.”

Even radically lowering the pied-à-terre threshold would leave some luxury crash pads free and clear. 

A 2019 state bill that never became law proposed using a $300,000 assessed value threshold for a pied-à-terre tax. Under that measure, about 20% of the condos at 432 Park Ave. would still avoid being hit by the tax, according to a review of DOF data by THE CITY.

Prelude to Property Tax Reform?

Hochul and Mamdani announced the new “pied-à-terre” tax on April 15, an apparent détente in their “tax the rich” tug-of-war. Soon after, President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform to attack Mamdani, saying “the TAX, TAX, TAX Policies are So Wrong.” 

Trump, who made Palm Beach, Florida, his official primary home in 2019, would in theory be the kind of non-resident targeted by the tax. But according to the DOF, his unit No. 66N at Trump Tower is assessed at only $2.6 million.

The condos’ distorted valuations — and the question of how to implement the new tax around them — are extensions of the much-discussed inequities of the city’s property tax system, long the focus of calls for reform, including by Mamdani.

“I think the pied-à-terre tax is the canary in the coal mine for property tax reform,” said Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who introduced the version of the tax in 2019 when he served in the legislature. “The owners of these trophy properties are paying a lower effective tax rate than single-family homeowners.”

The gap between posh co-op and condos’ real-world and taxable values is a vestige of the 1980s, when apartment ownership was rare. Rental buildings were converting to ownership via co-op apartments, but those buildings still kept some rental apartments, many of which were rent-regulated. That history is why state law directed DOF to consider theoretical, would-be rental income for many buildings that now have few or zero rental apartments.

But decades later, as superluxury supertalls came to dominate the Manhattan skyline, such condos can effectively function as overseas bank accounts for housing vast wealth. Many are held by limited liability corporations, which mask owners’ identities. 

Because of their low valuations, fancy condos pay lower effective tax rates than rental buildings by a large margin; rates for big rental buildings are nearly five times higher, according to an estimate from the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group. In general, lower-valued homes face a substantially higher effective tax rate than more expensive ones, a city tax commission report found. 

The musician Sting bought an apartment at 220 Central Park South for $65.7 million in 2019. Its current assessed value is just $1.89 million, records show. 

That’s because its valuation, and thus its property taxes, is based on nearby aging rental buildings that house rent-stabilized apartments.

A City Hall spokesperson said conversations about the pied-à-terre tax are ongoing.

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Earlier this month, real estate giant RXR and its partner TF Cornerstone filed for a permit to tear down the Grand Hyatt Hotel famously built by Donald Trump and replace it with a 95-story office building that will cost $6.5 billion to construct.

The project won City Council approval back in 2021, but is finally advancing now  amid signs that — despite differences with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his tax-the-rich agenda — Wall Street and the financial sector are eager to pay record rents for new office space. 

“The demand is there,” RXR CEO Scott Rechler told THE CITY. “I had a meeting Thursday with brokers who work with financial service companies and they told me their clients are growing so fast that when their leases are nearing an end they always need more space than they currently occupy.”

During the pandemic, the headlines spotlighted a series of Wall Street firms that relocated elsewhere, especially to Miami. Efforts to defeat Mamdani’s push for higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations have led to stories predicting companies would flee New York.

But the numbers tell a different story. Wall Street employment in the city is at a record. Available office space on Park Avenue, a key location for those firms, is almost nonexistent in the most attractive buildings. And developers are planning three new towers on Park, confident there will be financial firms to fill them.

“There is really only one driver of the decisions financial companies make and that is where the people they want to work for them are and where those people want to live and work,” said Mary Ann Tighe, CEO of the real estate firm CBRE’s Tri-State region and a broker who has worked on scores of the most important office deals in recent decades. “And New York is still a magnet for those young people.”

It is true that Wall Street firms are expanding elsewhere in the United States and the city’s share of securities industry employment is also at a record low. But that is not an exodus.

Securities firms now employ a record 209,000 workers in the city, according to the final 2025 job number released his month by the state Labor Department. Wall Street profits and bonuses also set records last year, which has led to billions in unexpected income tax collections for the state, which gets 20% of all its tax revenue from the industry, and the city. 

Real estate deals show how committed these firms are to the city.

The vacancy rate on Park Avenue is only 7% and the most modern buildings are 96% occupied, according to research from the real estate firm JLL.

“Park Avenue is where people want to be,” said JLL broker Joe Messina. “It’s a wide thoroughfare with great views and great light. And everybody is there including your peers and your clients.”

New office towers are underway at 350, 405 and 570 Park Ave. The building at 350 Park is for the giant hedge fund Citadel, which abandoned its historic home in Chicago in 2022, moving its headquarters to Miami, but relocating a substantial number of people to New York.

Park Avenue and the rest of Midtown East have gotten a major boost from JPMorgan Chase’s decision to build what is essentially a campus that includes a new $3 billion, 60-story headquarters for about 10,000 employees. Chase also owns 250 Park Ave. and nearby 383 Madison Ave. where it is spending $1 billion on a renovation. In all it controls 6 million square feet of office space. (Chase is a corporate sponsor of THE CITY.)

Financial firms that work with Chase, the nation’s largest bank with $4.4 trillion in assets, as well companies that provide legal and other services to Chase, want to be near the campus as well.

“They have really reinvigorated the whole area,” Messina said.

Some of the city’s biggest financial firms are buying their office buildings, a more permanent commitment even than signing a long-term lease, notes Tighe, naming Wells Fargo, and the private equity firms KKR and Blackstone.

High office prices: ‘No one blinks’

175 Park, which will be the tallest office building in the Western Hemisphere, is in talks with financial service firms and law firms and other professional service firms. It will be very expensive to rent space there.

“Two years ago when people came to our marketing suite to see what we planned, I would mumble when they asked the cost,” Rechler said. “Now I just tell them and no one blinks.”

Some on Wall Street are doing one thing and saying another as they work to defeat Mamdani’s tax plan.

Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in his widely read shareholder letter released this week noted that the firm had reduced its number of employees in the city from 30,000 a decade ago to 24,000 today while increasing its workforce in low-tax Texas from 26,000 in 2015 to 32,000 today. 

The numbers are somewhat misleading since he is including retail employees working at bank branches. Chase wouldn’t disclose to THE CITY branch employment numbers but it boasts 485 branches in Texas, a state with more than 30 million people compared with a little less than 300 in New York, a city with some 8 million people.

But Dimon is growing the bank’s footprint elsewhere.

“This trend will likely continue,” he said in the letter. “Companies need to remain competitive in this very tough, fast-moving world. And higher taxes mean lower returns on capital and less competitiveness by their nature.”

Chase isn’t alone in expanding elsewhere. Goldman Sachs is constructing a new building in the Dallas area, bringing its headcount there to 5,000, its largest office outside of New York.

‘We expect respect’

As a result, the city’s share of all securities jobs in the U.S. has fallen from a third in 1990 to just over 17% today, according to the annual report on the industry from the state comptroller.

The mayor’s rhetoric and tax plan have top executives on edge.

“The tone and the treatment in New York is a problem,” said Tighe. “We are a funding source for all the things that are happening in the city. You don’t need to send us a thank you note but we expect respect and a seat at the table.”

The Mamdani Administration insists Wall Street and other businesses should pay more.

“Despite the hyperbolic rhetoric coming from some in the business community, the reality is that Wall Street is doing as well as it ever has,” said Cassio Mendoza, a spokesperson for the mayor. “Meanwhile, working New Yorkers are struggling to afford housing, child care, and groceries. The Mamdani administration is focused on growing the economy equitably so that New Yorkers across the five boroughs benefit from our city’s immense economic prosperity.”   

There is one major downside to Wall Street’s love in the city. The Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations achieved an economic goal that had been the Holy Grail of the city for decades: To diversify the economy so that it didn’t plunge into a recession every time Wall Street faltered.

For the moment, New York is once again an industry town.

“Now we are back to relying on Wall Street to drive the New York economy,” said Rahul Jain, state deputy comptroller for New York City.

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The city housing authority offered a new concession to 24 elderly tenants who are holding up a contentious $1.2 billion plan to raze and rebuild several dilapidated Manhattan public housing developments, giving the holdouts the option of transferring to senior housing similar to their current home. 

Two-dozen residents at Chelsea Addition, ranging in age from their late 60s to mid-90s, have balked at a plan that would force them to move out for three years and return when the new building is expected to be complete. They say they’re not going anywhere.

The housing authority’s signature plan — backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani — involves demolishing 18 NYCHA buildings in the Fulton, Elliott and Chelsea Houses and Chelsea Addition, and replacing them with six new towers for the residents of those developments, while erecting nine additional buildings that would include 2,500 market rate apartments and 900 affordable units.

The entire project is now on pause while an appeals court considers litigation to pull the plug. The housing authority’s new offer to find Chelsea Addition residents seniors-only housing — after first insisting they move to non-senior public housing — emerged in court papers filed late Friday. 

Last month state Appellate Division judges temporarily barred the New York City Housing Authority from “taking any action in furtherance of its plan to convert, dispose of, demolish, and redevelop the Chelsea Developments.”

The authority’s lawyers called that language “too broad” and say it forced a halt to all activity related to the project. Management asked the court to let them continue working on the underlying financials of the project, and continue working with tenants on relocation plans while the appeals court considers the litigation.

Late Monday the appeals court judges denied NYCHA’s motion to modify the temporary restraining order.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of former state Sen. Tom Duane and several tenants, alleges that the project violates federal housing law and was pushed through without the usual engagement with the community board, city council and the planning commission that most major developments require. A decision on that question may not come for months.

“These transfers would allow these residents to move into senior-only (public) housing in another NYCHA development during the construction of the replacement buildings and they would then have the option to remain in their new unit permanently, thereby avoiding the need to relocate twice,” the housing authority argued.

In an affidavit, NYCHA Vice President for Real Estate Jonathan Gouveia claimed 11 seniors at Chelsea Addition had “expressed interest” in transferring to other seniors-only developments.

Yu Zhen Story, a 79-year-old Chelsea Addition tenant who is refusing to relocate, says that on March 27 — two days after THE CITY reported on the situation at Chelsea Addition and one day after the Appellate Division issued its order temporarily halting the project — NYCHA sent her a letter offering a transfer to a seniors-only development on the Lower East Side.

“I never expressed interest in transferring, nor did I ever request that my name be put on a waiting list,” she said in an affidavit filed Sunday.

The housing authority’s Gouveia also said that “under NYCHA’s conservative reading of the Court’s very broadly worded Temporary Restraining Order, NYCHA has ceased all engagement with residents regarding the transfer and relocation process.”

Noting the letter Story received, John Low-Beer, an attorney representing Duane and the tenants, called Gouveia’s statement “false,”  and said , “Without permission from the court, NYCHA has already been doing the very thing it now asks the court to permit — contacting the elderly residents of Chelsea Addition…to offer them apartments elsewhere.”

NYCHA spokesperson Michael Horgan said “several tenants who are required to relocate from Chelsea Addition are on the waiting list for transfers to senior-only developments.” He said the transfers depend on vacancies, adding: “To the extent residents of Chelsea Addition are not selected from the transfer waiting list for other senior developments, they must nevertheless relocate.”

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While New Yorkers feel the crush of a housing crisis, newly built affordable apartments in New York City can remain empty for more than a year.

That’s according to a new report released Friday by Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit that helps build affordable housing, which analyzed its portfolio of over 800 affordable housing projects nationwide, including 50 in the five boroughs. 

Enterprise found that across more than 4,500 affordable apartments in New York City, a median of 439 days passed between when a building’s apartments were finished to when new tenants moved in. The shortest leasing timeline was about 8.5 months, while the longest was over two years.

It took Ayah, a 29-year-old mom who spent three years living in a city shelter with her 5-year-old son after leaving an abusive marriage, about two years to secure her current apartment in Jamaica, Queens.

“Even though I’m so grateful to be in my own space, it just felt like I had to jump through so many hoops and it just felt so exhausting and absolutely humiliating,” said Ayah, who requested her last name be withheld for safety concerns. “The entire experience was extremely grueling.”

The median time for New York City tenants to move into affordable housing — that is, government-subsidized and income-restricted apartments — is almost three times as long as the national median time of 156 days, the Enterprise report showed.

The report comes as several housing experts and affordable housing operators have called on the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to streamline the process of placing New Yorkers into these affordable apartments — for the sake of people who desperately need homes, and for the bottom line of property owners and investors who help finance the housing.

Though there are many impediments to filling buildings with tenants, developers cited long processing times to get residents approved and overcoming multiple layers of bureaucracy as the most common roadblocks.

“Broadly speaking, let affordable housing owners just fill these buildings with people in need,” said Patrick Boyle, senior policy director at Enterprise. “It’s important to be sure the process runs fairly so people have sort of an equal chance at being placed, but when you layer in too much process, you’re hurting the people that you’re trying to help.”

The city government is looking to cut red tape that complicates the process. The day he took office, Mayor Zohran Mamdani convened the Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development (SPEED) Task Force to figure out how to quicken the pace of building and leasing up housing. The task force is due to issue a report with recommendations by April 11, but City Hall indicated it’d be out in the coming weeks instead.

“All options are on the table as we review these recommendations and work to get New Yorkers into available affordable housing units as quickly as possible,” said mayoral spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach.

‘It’s Disheartening’

The city housing agency’s own data encompasses a wider universe of projects than Enterprise’s analysis and shows a shorter — but still alarming — timeline to get buildings fully leased up: a median of 210 days to complete approvals for affordable housing applicants.

Enterprise’s analysis found there have been more delays in leasing the buildings in its portfolio over time: 13% of Enterprise’s projects experienced delays between 2013 and 2016, while all of them did between 2021 and 2024.

Delays can cost millions of dollars for affordable housing owners, many of which are nonprofits operating at a loss or close to it. And those delays could disincentivize investors to finance more affordable housing in the future, Boyle said.

It takes time and many steps to get affordable buildings ready to be listed on Housing Connect, the platform where New Yorkers can apply for apartments and homes through a lottery. And then there are other layers of approvals and long processes to find and greenlight eligible residents. That means some operators of homeless shelters that also run affordable housing projects aren’t able to place residents of their shelters directly into the apartments.

Some would-be residents need additional approvals, especially if they hold a rent voucher, like the city-funded CityFHEPS.

Ayah, the mother who obtained a voucher to move from a shelter, knows the extended timeline all too well. She found landlords were reluctant to rent to her, and when she did tour places, many weren’t suitable for her son who has special needs. When she finally nailed down an apartment, she had to wait more than a month for final inspections and paperwork processing related to her voucher. 

“This process, if I didn’t have my child in front of me, and constantly looking at like, ‘This is my reason, I have to get out of here and create a stable environment for him,’ I would’ve been crushed under how impossible it was and how the system was designed to just break people like me,” she said. “It took [being a] survivor to a whole different level.”

CityFHEPS requires tenants to submit documentation for city approval and there must be an inspection of the apartment before they can move in.

Christina Harsch, director of leasing and compliance at Wavecrest Management, said at least a third of tenants coming in through the lottery have a voucher and nearly all people coming in through homeless referrals have one. 

“Processing those applications — I can’t get anyone in faster than four months,” she said. “As a marketing agent, that’s deeply frustrating. And as a citizen, it’s disheartening.”

Harsch said an affordable building for seniors in The Bronx with over 200 apartments took two years to lease up. In that time, she said 88 people who originally applied either said they were no longer interested, moved into nursing homes or died.

Aiming for Easier Placements

Alicia Glen, former deputy mayor for housing under Mayor Bill de Blasio and managing principal of development firm MSquared, wrote in The Daily News in March that she regularly sees 14-month timelines to fill affordable housing buildings — much longer than in other cities.

“One of the key differences is that these cities do not rely on a centralized lottery system,” she wrote. “Everywhere else, developers largely manage their own affordable leasing.”

One example Glen cited was a building in Inwood with nearly 700 apartments, about 40% of them affordable. Although 70,000 applicants applied for those 281 affordable apartments through the housing lottery, just 168 had tenants in them seven months later.

HPD Commissioner Dina Levy told the City Council during a March hearing that the agency was considering an overhaul to its processes for getting New Yorkers into affordable housing.

“We plan to revamp both our housing lottery and our homeless placement systems,”  she said. “Incremental fixes here will not go far enough. We’re taking a hard look at every part of the process and if necessary, we will migrate to a more efficient and nimble system.”

Ilana Maier, a spokesperson for HPD, pointed out that nearly 15,000 families received affordable housing in fiscal year 2025: “It’s life-changing — a shorter commute, a bedroom of their own, a place where they can finally exhale.”

In the meantime, pending the possible overhaul, HPD has taken some steps to make it easier to place people into apartments — measures that have started to make a difference, housing providers and leasing agents told THE CITY. 

For example HPD last year slashed the paperwork required for tenants to apply for affordable apartments, and allowed for affordable re-rentals to go on the open market for eligible apartment-seekers, rather than leasing through a complicated “mini-lottery” process.

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised to freeze the rent on nearly a million regulated apartments as a signature part of his campaign. “Freeze the rent” became a call-and-response chant during rallies and a pitch his army of canvassers made to voters when knocking on doors.

But his rent-freeze promise rests on the votes of the nine members of the independent Rent Guidelines Board, which is in charge of approving how much regulated rents can increase year to year. Mamdani this year appointed five new members and reappointed one more, giving him a majority of picks on the board.

Their votes, by law, must be informed by the cost of living and conditions of the real estate industry. And New Yorkers got a first look at those factors on Thursday.

Landlords of rent-regulated apartments saw their net operating income rise 6.2% between 2023 and 2024, according to the Rent Guidelines Board’s 2026 income and expense study. It marks the third year of an increase.

In the same period, the study also found that landlords’ rental income grew 4.8% as their total income grew 4.9% and expenses rose 4.2%. Taxes were the largest expense, at more than a quarter of costs.

“Revenues generally exceed operating costs, generating funds for mortgage payments, improvements and pre-tax profit,” said Brian Hoberman, the Rent Guidelines Board research director.

The key net operating income metric is part of what the members take into account when deciding whether — and how much — to hike rents. 

Whether the board moves towards a rent hike — and to what extent — won’t be clear for some time. In May, the board will take a preliminary vote on increases, and the final vote comes in June.

Last year, the board hiked rents 3% for one-year leases and 4.5% for two-year leases — a decision that disappointed both tenants and landlords alike. 

Landlord groups and some housing analysts contend rent increases are necessary to keep up with rising costs of maintaining buildings, while tenant and affordable housing advocates point to the need for a rent freeze given how financially squeezed rent-stabilized tenants already are.

Mark Willis, a senior policy fellow at NYU’s Furman Center, said the board faced an “impossible task” to take into account affordability and financial sustainability, while maintaining the current housing stock and its habitability. 

“Satisfying both goals is impossible in a world with inflation,” he said. “Not all tenants find their incomes going up at the rate of inflation, yet building operating costs keep going up, sometimes at a rate even faster than inflation.”

Trouble in The Bronx 

The RGB’s analysis, which accounted for over 16,600 buildings, showed that income and rental growth varied widely across boroughs and for different building types.

For instance, buildings containing a higher share of stabilized apartments saw smaller increases in their net operating income. And some buildings, especially newer buildings with higher rents, keep a portion of their apartments rent-stabilized in exchange for tax breaks. Those buildings often have market-rate apartments, too, which can skew average income.

Landlord groups called the net operating income figures presented “misleading.”

“This report does not show a healthy rent-stabilized market. It shows huge rent increases for free market units and new developments that get massive tax breaks,” said Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association. “If you take one millionaire and average it with minimum wage earners, you will not get a realistic average of wages, and you can’t do that with these buildings either.”

Notably, while every borough and the vast majority of the city’s neighborhoods saw rising net operating incomes, The Bronx did not. In that borough, the net operating income was down 0.1%, with neighborhoods like Hunts Point and Longwood down as much as 13.1%.

The share of properties with negative net operating incomes fell slightly between 2023 and 2024, from 9.3% to 9.2% citywide — though Manhattan and The Bronx had the highest share of those so-called financially distressed buildings.

Willis, of the Furman Center, raised questions at the meeting about the RGB’s analysis, saying that net operating income numbers shown to the board were “probably much higher than they actually are.”

Rent Burden

Still, tenant groups seized on the rising net operating income figure as evidence a rent-freeze is warranted.

“Landlord incomes continue to rise while tenant wages stay stagnant and the cost of everything from food to transportation keeps going up,” said Sumathy Kumar, director of the New York State Tenant Bloc. “A rent freeze is the common sense first step to making sure that the New Yorkers who keep this city running aren’t priced out of our homes.”

Over 40% of the tenants in rent-stabilized units are already rent-burdened, which means they pay more than a third of their income in rent, Willis said.

Samuel Stein, a housing policy analyst with the Community Service Society, said rent-regulated apartments are “the predominant source of housing for low-income New Yorkers,” as well as for Latino and Black New Yorkers. 

A 2023 city survey showed that while the median income of market-rate tenants is nearly $91,000, rent-stabilized tenants have a median income of about $60,000.

Rents collected increased 4.1% across the city between 2023 and 2024, with almost every neighborhood seeing increases. The highest increases were in Midtown, the North Shore of Staten Island, Chelsea, the Financial District, Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Only Brownsville and Ocean Hill in Brooklyn saw declines in collected rents, according to the RGB analysis. 

In 2024, the study showed, the average rent of a stabilized apartment was $1,681. At $2,989 monthly, average rents were highest in the “core” of Manhattan — the area south of E. 96th St. and W. 110th St. Staten Island and The Bronx saw the lowest average rents, at just over $1,110.

Emily Eisner, acting executive director and chief economist of the Fiscal Policy Institute, said rent regulation is meant to address a “deep market failure,” — the lack of affordable housing in the market, which gives landlords “too much pricing power.”

“In the long term, we have to solve the scarcity problem,” she said.

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After 15 years, volunteers at a Bushwick farm found themselves locked out of the green space that has fed thousands over the years, and lately became a temporary home for asylum seekers. The property owner told them he doesn’t want “any headaches” — and now, the gardeners are hoping the city will move to make it an official, protected community space.

“We were really unaware that the situation had changed until Wednesday, when he showed up quite upset,” Spike Appel, a longtime volunteer of Bushwick City Farm, said of the property owner, Faramarz Roshodesh. “He grabbed our lock and threw it in his car.” 

The closure follows numerous problems on the property in the last few years. Following former Mayor Eric Adams’ order in late 2023 that limited how long migrant families could stay in a city shelter, asylum seekers were routinely sleeping on the farm grounds. 

“The city put out a lot of people into the street and we were kind of left with a handful of guys that kept hopping the fence to sleep,” Appel said. “I personally kicked them out probably a hundred times, waking them up in the morning.” 

Farm volunteers had testified repeatedly to the City Council, urging agencies to help the migrants find permanent housing. 

“BCF is now overrun with rats and trash, and it has been difficult to maintain the space clean and safe for everyone to use,” the volunteers wrote in a November 19, 2024 statement to the City Council Committee on Immigration and Welfare. 

“The space does not have enclosed structures … so during the winter months it’s inhospitable, but asylum seekers who find no better option end up sleeping in there,” the testimony continued.  

Beginning in 2011, volunteers have transformed the two combined vacant lots into a garden at the corner of Lewis Avenue and Stockton Street, where two dozen chickens, 60 raised beds for vegetables, an aquaponics system, and a communal space providing free food for the community. 

“It takes a long time to build what we built there, you can’t just pick it up and move it,” Appel added. 

Over the last three years, hundreds of asylum seekers have entered the farm, finding food, water, clothes, community and resources. It’s also been a place where Club A Kitchen, a mutual aid group, has distributed thousands of free meals to the community, including up to 1,800 a week during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the group. 

But the farm does not have a current agreement with Roshodesh, the owner, to use the space, complicating its status.

It isn’t the first time the farm has faced eviction. In 2017, Roshodesh sent a letter telling volunteers it had days to shut down, but after a protest and public outcry, he eventually decided to allow the farm to stay open.

That’s why, since 2017, longtime volunteers, like Mariel Acosta, have spoken at City Council hearings and reached out to local politicians, pushing the city to step in. Ideally, the group wants GreenThumb, the community garden operator for NYC Parks and Recreation, to take over the space.

“It’s confusing and convoluted, and I guess that’s the nature of bureaucracy, paperwork, going to meetings, and trying to get in touch with politicians,” said Acosta. “It’s just painstaking, and it shouldn’t be taking this long.” 

A spokesperson for the Parks Department said GreenThumb met with Bushwick City Farm leaders in 2025, but said there is currently no active discussion or plan for the city acquiring the farm.

For the city to buy the farm, Roshodesh, who did not respond to THE CITY’s requests for comment would have to agree to sell it. Then funding for the purchase would have to be secured — likely from a mix of public sources. The property would also have to go through the city’s lengthy Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) process, according to the spokesperson.

“I just don’t want any headaches,” Roshodesh told volunteers last week as he locked the farm gates. “This is too much. I’m done!” 

Fines and Taxes

In recent months, the farm hit an impasse as volunteers struggled to prevent people from sleeping on the grounds overnight, they said. 

Gardeners said that after weeks of reaching out unsuccessfully to the Department of Homeless Services about helping the men find shelters or housing, Appel said members of the local precinct council suggested getting a vacate order to prevent them from sleeping on the property. 

But when officials from the city Department of Buildings conducted their inspection, they fined the owner for having structures, including a gazebo, that were over 7 feet tall without a permit. 

That joint inspection with the New York Police Department and the Department of Sanitation resulted in multiple violations on the farm and its neighboring lot, 23 Lewis Ave., according to DOB records.

Inspectors reported two violations, fining Roshodesh and his company, Arrow Property, $1,250 for a 10-foot-tall gazebo that was used to distribute food without a permit, according to Department of Building records, and $2,500 for electrical wiring that took power from a public streetlight for use on the privately owned lot. 

Roshodesh is set to appear at an April 15 hearing with the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings to address the violations. 

The fines come as Roshodesh owes the city more than $550,000 in property taxes — $285,865 for the 23 Lewis Ave. lot and $267,771.20 for the 354 Stockton St. lot, according to Department of Finance records. 

Councilmember Chi Ossé, who represents the area, said he’s working with city officials, Roshodesh and the site’s volunteers to find a solution. 

“We are looking into the citation, speaking to all parties involved and see how we can chart forward,” Ossé told THE CITY. “I think community gardens are integral to this district, to this community and social opportunities for people at a time when things are very divisive.” 

For Acosta, the farm is important because of what it represents. 

“It’s been a space of pedagogy, of transmission of knowledge from elders in the community to us, who are like older millennials, to the youth who were little kids,” she said. “It’s very meaningful and a space of respite for an area that doesn’t have many green spaces.”

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New York City’s complex property tax system affects everyone in the city, not just people who own property. The cost of those taxes affects retail space, how much you pay for rent and how (and where) things get built.

In the five boroughs, there’s been longstanding and widespread agreement that the system is convoluted and its outcomes unjust. 

How so? Currently, the system favors small homes and lavish condos over apartment buildings. And owners of similar homes in different neighborhoods face drastic differences in the taxes they pay. For instance, tony brownstones in Brooklyn and fancy condos in Manhattan frequently have lower effective tax rates compared to similar homes in Queens or The Bronx. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani came into office promising to fix the system. But, like many mayors before him found out, doing so is not easy.

But before his administration makes moves to fix the system, Mamdani said he is weighing a 9.5% across-the-board increase on property taxes to make up a $5.4 billion city budget gap — unless Gov. Kathy Hochul agrees to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Property taxes are the engine of New York City’s budget. They are the city’s largest revenue source, amounting to about $33 billion of the $112.4 billion budget for fiscal year 2025. 

How can lawmakers reform that key driver of revenue, how does the system work and why should you care? Read on:

How does New York City’s property tax system work?

We can thank state law from 1981 for the basic structure of the property tax system today.

A property’s tax bill depends largely on what kind of property it is. There are four categories, known as classes, for taxes purposes:

• Class 1: One-, two- and three-family houses
• Class 2: Residential buildings with four or more apartments, including cooperatives and condos
• Class 3: Utility company equipment
• Class 4: Commercial property like offices, stores, hotels and factories

Each of these categories has its own tax rate, which the City Council sets. The rates are based on the share of total property taxes paid to the city. Think of the property taxes the city collects as a pie, and each class is assigned a differently sized slice of the pie.

There are other important factors that go into determining a property’s specific tax rate — the “market” and “assessed” value, more on these later — but its class category underpins it all.

What’s the issue with how the system works?

Primarily, there are huge differences in how much is paid by owners of the same types of buildings in different neighborhoods — and between different types of buildings, even if they’re located in the same area — multiple studies have shown.

Areas with more Black homeowners pay property tax rates that are twice those of primarily white neighborhoods, according to a 2025 report by the Community Service Society and Progress and Poverty Institute. 

In some cases, two types of the same property in different locations would pay very different effective property tax rates.

That report highlighted a two-family building in the East Village with an annual property tax bill of just over $13,000 in 2022, compared to a two-family home in Canarsie that paid $5,600 in property taxes that year. The East Village building had a market value of over $5.5 million, meaning its effective tax rate is just 0.2%. Compare this to the Canarsie home, valued at $550,000 — putting its tax effective rate at 1%.

Plus, there are rules around how assessed values are calculated and caps imposed on those values for different property types that lead to vast inequities in the system. More on that below. 

I don’t own property in New York. Why does this matter to me?

Property taxes hit your wallet, even if you don’t own an apartment or a building. Landlords often factor property taxes into rent they charge, whether for renters or commercial tenants. 

So, if a tax rate is high for your apartment building, or the building of your favorite shop or bar, that can affect the rent. Businesses can pass along some of those costs to you, affecting how much you might pay at a restaurant, or for anything else.

Utility companies also pass along property taxes in the electric and gas bills you pay. Higher property taxes were a key driver of Con Ed’s latest rate hike, THE CITY previously reported.

The cost of property taxes can also stymie housing development — much of which only happens with tax incentives that lower what developers pay. And because rental housing is taxed at a higher rate than condominiums, developers may be incentivized to build condos instead of rentals (more on this later).

“The property tax touches everyone, it absolutely does,” said former city finance commissioner Martha Stark. She is also the policy director for the coalition Tax Equity Now New York, which filed a lawsuit in 2017 aiming to get the courts to force property tax reform. 

“It pays for things we care about,” she added. “Whether you’re poor or rich, you are availing yourself of things that are paid for by this tax.”

How is my building’s real tax rate calculated? 

The tax rates based on building class discussed earlier are not always the rate that appears on a bill.

That’s because the city Department of Finance figures out property taxes using a complicated formula based on the class of the property, market value for the property and the “assessed value.” (To figure out a property’s final bill, the agency multiplies the assessed value by the tax rate.)

Confusingly, the market value — in the context of the property tax system — does not typically indicate how much the property would sell for on the market if the owner were to put it up for sale.

So, what sets the market value for tax purposes? For small homes (Class 1) the finance department determines the home’s value based on sales data for comparable properties. For commercial and residential buildings (Class 2 and 4) the DOF determines the value based on net income — even if the building doesn’t actually have rentals.

For co-ops and condos, where residents own their apartments, state law requires DOF to determine market value based on how much rental income they would generate if those buildings were rentals.

Stark said that approach means DOF significantly undervalues many expensive co-ops and condos — and there’s a consequence.

Remember that each class of property is required to pay a different slice of the pie, which is all the property taxes paid to the city. So within each slice, if a set of buildings pays less, others will pay relatively more to make up for it. 

“Because all apartment buildings are in the same tax class, if some buildings are [valued] very low, other buildings in that tax class are picking up extra burden as a result of it,” Stark said. “That kind of policy results in people paying more who own more modestly priced co-ops and condos and rental buildings.”

Is your head spinning yet? Stick with us, because that last piece is a major reason why some co-op and condos pay wildly different property taxes than others.

Why do ordinary co-ops pay relatively more in taxes than luxury condos??

To get an answer, we have to look at the landscape of New York City’s buildings before the city’s current tax system was put into place — in the 1980s.

Back then, New York’s ownership rate was quite low, and condos were exceedingly rare. There were many conversions from rental buildings to co-ops, but with a mix of rent-regulated tenants and owners. This history shows the roots of why the DOF considers theoretical, would-be rental income for many buildings that have few or zero rental apartments.

Stark said back then, state lawmakers didn’t want to discourage homeownership by valuing the co-ops higher. 

The result? A kind of distortion of the value within co-ops and condos, said Ana Champeny, vice president at the Citizens Budget Commission.

“The value of an apartment unit like a co-op unit or a condo unit, based on its rental potential, is much, much lower than its actual sales price,” Champeny said.

Nowadays, of course, the city is filled with condos and the number of renters in co-ops has shrunk. And the city’s process of determining the value of a condo or co-op — again, that is much lower than its actual market value — means luxury condos have a lower effective tax rate than more modest co-ops or condos. The luxury condos pay less in taxes relative to what they’re worth.

A notable example of this is the $238 million penthouse condo located on Central Park South that billionaire hedge fund founder Ken Griffin purchased in 2019. The DOF valued the apartment at $9.4 million, and the effective tax rate was just 0.22%, City and State reported at the time.

Why are similar properties in different neighborhoods taxed so differently? And why are smaller homes taxed less than larger buildings?

The main culprit here is a property’s assessed value. (Remember, to determine your tax final bill, the DOF multiplies your property’s assessed value by your tax rate.)

“The assessed values are a percent, a fraction of the market value,” said Mark Willis, senior policy fellow at the New York University Furman Center.

State law sets the official percentages, which vary based on the type of property — 6% for small homes in Class 1 and 45% for properties in the other classes. This is part of the reason smaller homes are taxed less than larger buildings.

The way the state determines assessed value is also one of the reasons there are tax burden inequities among different property types and between similar homes in different neighborhoods.

That’s because state law limits the extent to which the assessed value of small homes and smaller apartment buildings can grow each year. So, in neighborhoods that have seen property values climb rapidly — as many areas of New York have in recent decades — the effective tax rate gets out of whack.

Take a brownstone in neighborhoods like Park Slope or the Upper West Side, which have seen property values rise a ton in the span of a generation. 

In places like that, the market value will exceed the cap on the assessed value, limiting what the owner would pay in taxes relative to what the house is worth. As time passes, the assessed value of that brownstone becomes an increasingly smaller share of the market value of the home. 

“Rapidly appreciating neighborhoods have lower tax burdens than more stable, slowly appreciating neighborhoods,” Champeny said.

The bottom line: There’s a good chance that a coveted three-story townhouse in Fort Greene, Brooklyn has a much lower tax rate than a same-sized, same-era townhome in Richmond Hill, Queens.

Larger apartment buildings, commercial property and utility property do not have caps on assessed values, so taxes can rise at a higher rate than for smaller homes and apartment buildings.

OK, but can we actually fix this system?

This has been the hope for years and years, starting as far back as during the administration of Mayor David Dinkins. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, a commission looking at tax reform released a report with recommendations to reform the property tax system, but those didn’t go far. Mayor Eric Adams also promised to fix the system, but didn’t.

Mamdani indicated the administration would deliver a bill to state lawmakers to reform the system within weeks.

It’s not hard to imagine why real reform has been slow; changing the tax code is a fraught political hot potato. While some property owners would see their taxes decrease, some will certainly end up paying more.

This is particularly complicated when thinking about one-, two- and three-family homes in neighborhoods that have become more expensive quickly, like Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Some property owners have higher incomes and bought their homes recently in a more expensive market, but others are long-term owners, perhaps with lower or fixed incomes. A change to the way the city would tax class one properties would hit both types of owners, regardless of ability to afford the taxes.

To Champeny, those neighborhoods create “a self-perpetuating loop,” where “rapidly appreciating neighborhoods have lower taxes, and they appreciate even more because the taxes are low and it keeps escalating.”

Changes could also impact the housing market, since higher property values can be tied to lower taxes — and higher taxes reduce the amount of mortgage a buyer could take out.

What are the chances that Mamdani will actually raise property taxes?

Mamdani would need the City Council to support raising the tax to his proposed 9.5% level, a prospect Council Speaker Julie Menin dismissed in a statement saying increases “should not be on the table whatsoever.”

Other lawmakers and officials swiftly criticized the proposal, highlighting how higher property taxes would disproportionately squeeze renters, as well as lower- and middle-class homeowners in majority neighborhoods of color.

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani presented a “last resort” option of raising the property tax rate to close an estimated $5.4 billion budget gap, as Gov. Kathy Hochul continues to resist raising taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

“We remain firmly in a budget crisis. It is a crisis that we can and will overcome — but we cannot do so without either significant structural changes in Albany, or the painful decision of last resort,” he said during his preliminary budget address Tuesday afternoon at City Hall.

“We would have to raise property taxes. We would also be forced to raid our reserves.”

He said it’s a “more harmful path” than making the richest New Yorkers pay 2 percentage points more in taxes, which requires state approval. 

Under his proposal, which requires City Council approval, the tax rate for all properties would increase by 9.5%.

The last property tax rate increase happened under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who first raised it after taking office and then temporarily decreased it, before raising it again because of the Great Recession. The city’s effective property tax rate has remained the same since then.

Mamdani continued to blame the budget gap on underbudgeting from former Mayor Eric Adams, leaving gaps larger than those during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. 

The mayor said City Hall is “being as aggressive as we can in recognizing additional revenue” and looking for other ways to rein in spending. Agency-wide “chief savings officers” will each release a report by March 20 showing ways to save significant money in the city’s budget. 

Gov. Hochul told reporters at an unrelated event Tuesday that she did not “think a property tax increase is necessary.”

She has repeatedly said she would not raise taxes on the wealthy this year.

On Monday, she announced an increased $1.5 billion in state money to help fill that gap, including more than $500 million in recurring funding, which reduced the budget gap from last week’s $7 billion to more than $5 billion. 

“This investment protects services and puts the city on stable financial footing,” she said in a statement.

Mamdani’s property tax increase proposal was immediately shot down by other elected officials, who vowed to fight the increase. 

“We do have a big gap to fill, and he’s put a pretty extreme option on the table, which is a combination of raising property taxes and taking money from reserves and relying on some pretty aggressive revenue projections to boot,” Comptroller Mark Levine said Tuesday morning, after he was briefed on the plans.

“This is absolutely a non-starter for me,” Donovan Richards, the Queens Borough President, told reporters, noting there should be reform of the current system before any increase. 

Deputy Council Speaker Nantasha Williams, who represents predominantly Black homeowners, said the plan wasn’t “equitable.”

“To advance a tax increase without first addressing that inequity feels deeply tone-deaf to Black, Brown, and working-class homeowners like the families I represent in Southeast Queens who are already shouldering a disproportionate share of the property tax burden,” she said in a statement.

Kenny Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association and a former colleague of Mamdani’s in the Assembly, said the mayor should “be fighting for tax reform, not using the city’s largest stock of affordable housing as a piggy bank.”

Mamdani campaigned on reforming the city’s complex property tax system, which is more than 40 years old and favors single-family homes and owners of luxury condos while burdening multi-family buildings, which then pass on tax costs to tenants.

Homeowners in predominantly Black neighborhoods also pay property tax rates that can be double what homeowners in primarily white neighborhoods pay.

The disparity – and many stalled attempts to reform it – was highlighted by Mamdani in hisinauguration speech. 

“Because no matter what you eat, what language you speak, how you pray, or where you come from — the words that most define us are the two we all share: New Yorkers,” he said on Jan. 1. “And it will be New Yorkers who reform a long-broken property tax system.”

Last week, Mamdani’s budget director, Sherif Soliman, said the city planned to introduce a property tax reform legislation “in a matter of weeks.” 

The city had been projected to face a $12 billion budget gap over two fiscal years, which the mayor blamed on former Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

During his appeal to state lawmakers in Albany last week, he said that gap had shrunk by $5 billion, thanks to Wall Street bonuses, some cuts and $1 billion from the city’s reserves. 

In 2024, the state’s highest court voted to reinstate a lawsuit by a group called Tax Equity Now New York looking to overhaul it.

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