.webp)
9.5% increase in Property Tax For NYC. They deserve what they VOTED For. POLICY MATTERS!!! "ALLAH AKBAR" STUPID!!!
Mamdani floats increasing New York City property taxes as part of $127B budget plan
#NYC #ProertyTax #Taxes #RentControl #Mamdani
For The Weeds of The Situation:
The Renters' Betrayal: How Zohran Mamdani's Property Tax Threat Exposes Progressive Hypocrisy
There is a special kind of political deception that occurs when a politician campaigns on lofty promises of relief for the working class, only to reveal, once in office, that the bill for those promises will be paid by the very people who believed in them. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who swept into office on a wave of progressive enthusiasm, has now presented the city with a stunning ultimatum: raise taxes on millionaires, or he will be forced to raise property taxes by 9.5% a move that would devastate homeowners and, inevitably, renters.
The cruel irony is unmistakable. Mamdani campaigned as the champion of renters, promising free childcare, no-cost buses, and a four-year rent freeze for tenants struggling in an unaffordable city. He positioned himself as the defender of ordinary New Yorkers against the rapacious greed of landlords and the ultra-wealthy. Yet his first major budget proposal threatens to unleash precisely the kind of tax increase that will land hardest on the working-class and middle-class residents he claimed to represent.
The Shell Game: Tax the Rich or Tax Everyone Else
Mamdani's budget proposal lays out two paths to close a projected $5.4 billion budget deficit over the next two fiscal years. The first, his preferred option, would raise income taxes on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million a year and increase corporate taxes. This requires approval from Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature in Albany approval that Hochul, running for reelection, has made clear she will not give .
The second path, which Mamdani calls a "painful" and "last resort" option, would raise citywide property taxes by 9.5% the first such increase since the early 2000s. This move, which Mamdani can implement without state approval, would generate an estimated $3.7 billion in annual revenue. The mayor would also draw roughly $1.2 billion from the city's "rainy day" fund and retiree health care reserves.
"This is something that we do not want to do, and this is something that we are going to utilize every single option to ensure it does not come to pass," Mamdani told reporters.
But here is the uncomfortable truth: Mamdani's "last resort" is not a genuine fallback; it is a political hostage negotiation. He is holding New York's homeowners and by extension, its renters hostage to force Albany's hand. And if Hochul does not blink, Mamdani has signaled he will pull the trigger on a tax increase that the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission estimates would cost the typical owner of a one-, two-, or three-family home about $700 more per year .
Why This Hurts Renters Most
The progressive delusion that property taxes only affect property owners is belied by basic economics. As multiple news outlets have reported, multi-unit buildings where renters tend to live are taxed at a higher effective rate than single-family or low-density homes . While renters don't pay property taxes directly, higher property tax levies on their landlords will, over time, translate into higher rents .
Real Estate CEO Jay Batra put it succinctly: "All the costs that the landlords have to absorb have to be passed down to the tenants. It's a chain reaction".
The New York Apartment Association, which represents property owners and managers providing the majority of affordable multifamily housing in the state, condemned the proposal in forceful terms. CEO Kenny Burgos noted that roughly one-third of rent-regulated housing is already struggling due to rising costs, with property taxes being the biggest expense .
"This proposal, coupled with Mamdani's pledge to freeze rents for four years, virtually guarantees the physical destruction of tens of thousands of units of housing," Burgos said. "If the mayor truly cared about preserving regulated housing for the future, he would be fighting for tax reform, not using the city's largest stock of affordable housing as a piggy bank" .
Ann Korchak, board president of Small Property Owners of New York, went further: "The mayor has declared war on thousands of immigrant property owners, most of them multigenerational families, who have their entire life's savings invested in their small buildings" .
The Campaign Promises vs. The Governing Reality
Mamdani's campaign was built on a foundation of appealing to renters. His signature housing proposal was a four-year rent freeze on all rent-stabilized apartments in New York City . He promised to fight for property tax reform to help overtaxed apartment buildings . He spoke of redistributing wealth and making the wealthiest pay their "fair share" .
But as the old saying goes, campaigns make promises; budgets reveal priorities. Mamdani's preliminary budget, which swells to $127 billion a 55% increase over the last decade reflects a spending velocity that the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce correctly identified as the city's real problem . "New York does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending velocity problem," said CEO Jessica Walker .
The mayor has largely blamed the budget gap on former Mayor Eric Adams' budgeting tactics and a Cuomo-era policy that he claims shortchanges the city on state funding . But this blame-shifting ignores the fundamental reality that New York City's budget has ballooned under successive Democratic administrations, with expenses consistently outpacing revenue growth .
The Progressive Blind Spot: Landlords Are Not the Enemy
The Mamdani administration's housing agenda is being shaped by figures like Cea Weaver, his pick to head the resurrected Office to Protect Tenants. Weaver has been pilloried for calling homeownership a "weapon of white supremacy" and declaring that private property and homeownership merely "masquerade as 'wealth building' public policy" . She has railed against property ownership as "an individualized good and not a collective good" .
This ideological hostility toward private property and homeownership blinds the administration to a basic truth: the private housing sector is the engine of affordability. When landlords are crushed by tax increases, they cannot maintain their buildings. When they cannot maintain their buildings, units fall into disrepair or are taken off the market entirely. The result is the opposite of what progressives claim to want: less housing, higher rents, and more displacement.
The Furman Center and the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development have documented the severity of the financial distress facing older buildings . Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit that builds affordable housing in New York, has said that six out of every ten affordable projects it financed is losing money and in trouble . Yet Mamdani's response is to threaten a tax increase that would compound this distress.
A Contrast in Governance: Massachusetts Shows Another Way
The New York Post offered a striking contrast between Mamdani and another progressive Democrat: Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey . Healey, the nation's first LGBTQ state chief executive and a fierce critic of "systemic racism," has nonetheless broken ranks with her fellow leftists on housing policy. When faced with a ballot referendum in favor of statewide rent control, Healey said no.
"Rent control is not going to be the solution to how we get through this crisis," she said. "We need to build more homes".
Healey understands what Mamdani apparently does not: that freezing rents inhibits new supply, that poorly maintained buildings and falling housing stock are the predictable results of rent control, and that the private housing sector must be welcomed as a partner, not treated as an enemy .
An MIT study found that prior to Massachusetts' 1994 abolition of rent control, Boston had more than 10,000 vacant apartments, as overall rental housing stock fell by 12% . Healey fears a replay and has acted accordingly. Mamdani, by contrast, seems determined to repeat the mistakes of the past.
The Bipartisan Pushback
Remarkably, Mamdani's proposal has drawn fire not only from Republicans but from his fellow Democrats and even his own political allies. City Council Speaker Julie Menin, a Democrat, issued a joint statement with Council Member Linda Lee declaring that "significant property tax increases should not be on the table whatsoever" . They called for the administration to pursue additional savings and revenue options first .
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, an ally to the mayor, said a property tax hike would "worsen our wealth inequality and overall affordability crises, while threatening to return us to the days of the 2008 financial catastrophe, when Southeast Queens was the national epicenter of property foreclosures" .
Comptroller Mark Levine, also a Democrat, warned that relying on a property tax increase and a significant draw-down of reserves could have "dire consequences," leaving the city vulnerable to economic turbulence .
Even Governor Hochul, the target of Mamdani's ultimatum, has made her position clear: "I don't think a property tax increase is necessary" .
Conclusion: The Renters' Champion Exposed
Zohran Mamdani campaigned as the champion of renters. He promised relief, reform, and redistribution. But his first major budget proposal threatens to raise taxes on the very buildings where renters live, driving up costs and driving down housing quality. His "last resort" is a tax increase that would hit working-class homeowners and, through them, the tenants who can least afford higher rents.
The progressive playbook is predictable: promise the moon, blame others when the bills come due, and threaten to make ordinary people pay if the wealthy don't volunteer their wallets. Mamdani's property tax threat is not a serious budget proposal; it is a political weapon aimed at Albany but loaded with ammunition that will ultimately strike New York's homeowners and renters.
Conservatives have long argued that the path to affordable housing is not through rent control, tax increases, and hostility to private property, but through supply-side reforms, sensible tax policy, and partnership with the private sector. Mamdani's budget proves the point. His agenda, if implemented, would make New York less affordable, less hospitable to working families, and more divided than ever.
The renters who believed in Zohran Mamdani deserve better. They deserve a mayor who understands that you cannot help tenants by destroying landlords, and you cannot build housing by taxing it out of existence. Instead, they got a socialist with a ultimatum—and a tax hike waiting in the wings.