For decades, political leaders and independent analysts have decried New York City’s property tax system as inconsistent, antiquated and regressive, acknowledging that it imposes unequal tax bills on property owners that bear little relation to their properties’ actual value.
A home that sold in 2015 in the East Tremont neighborhood of the Bronx for $585,000 has the same exact property tax bill ($4,297) as one that sold the same year for $9 million in gentrified Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, even though the latter property was 1500 percent more valuable.
The system is unfair to many different communities across the city—from the Bronx to Staten Island. Yet no one—including our allegedly progressive mayor, who has long conceded that New York’s property tax system is broken and needs reform—has taken even the smallest step toward a solution.
This lack of action is why a coalition of homeowners, renters, rental property owners and civil rights and social justice organizations called Tax Equity Now New York filed a lawsuit a year ago to seek justice and reform through the court system.
The mayor bristles at mention of the lawsuit and has actively worked to get it dismissed. But what really annoys him is when reporters or citizens bring up ethnic and racial disparities within the system, which he thinks are overstated. According to the mayor, the system is broken—but not that broken.
Perhaps that’s because the mayor’s experience with the New York City property tax system is as an upper-middle-class property owner in Park Slope—exactly the type of homeowner who benefits from the current system. The mayor, and many homeowners like him, pay a lower effective rate than those of us living in nonwhite areas of the city.
It seems the mayor has no appreciation for the burdens created by the effective property tax rate levied on homeowners or renters in areas such as East Tremont, Morris Park, Brownsville, South Jamaica or Melrose. If he did, then perhaps he wouldn’t shrivel when confronted with the uncomfortable and indisputable fact that New York City’s property tax system unfairly burdens minority and low-income neighborhoods.
The current system shifts the onus from wealthy Manhattan co-op and condo owners to renters and homeowners in the outer boroughs, disproportionately burdening neighborhoods that are home to racial and ethnic minorities and lower-income families least able to afford it. Further, because the system limits the amount a property’s assessed value can increase in any given year, areas of the city that have gentrified in the past 30 years are making out far better than those that haven’t. That is great for Brownstone Brooklyn—Park Slope, Fort Greene and Cobble Hill—but not so great for working class areas of the Bronx, Staten Island and Queens.
Higher assessments lead to higher taxes in nonwhite-majority neighborhoods across the city. People of color constitute a minority of the population in the 15 community planning districts in which condos, co-ops and rental properties are taxed at the lowest effective tax rates. By contrast, people of color constitute 72 percent—a super majority—of the 15 community planning districts in which those properties are taxed at the highest effective tax rates.
The disparities across City Council districts also highlight how unfair the system is. Homeowners in City Council District 12 (Wakefield, Olinville, Edenwald, Eastchester, Williamsbridge, Baychester and Co-op City) have an effective tax rate four times that of homeowners in City Council District 39 (Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill, Dumbo, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Downtown Brooklyn, Fulton Ferry, Greenpoint, Vinegar Hill and Williamsburg). That means, on average, the property tax rate of single family homeowners in Brooklyn Heights is 25 percent of the tax rate of single family homeowners in Eastchester. It’s disgraceful and shouldn’t be allowed to continue.
The inherent unfairness of its property tax system is not worthy of New York City. The racial disparities can no longer be denied. Justice can no longer be delayed. Inaction is no longer acceptable. Low-income and minority New Yorkers can simply no longer afford it. I urge everyone to join me in supporting Tax Equity Now New York and their lawsuit to force reform of the irrational and unfair property tax system in New York City.
