Hochul sits with Brooklyn politicians, community leaders on deed theft issue

Gov. Kathy Hochul sat down with homeowners and elected officials in an intimate gathering at a Brooklyn brownstone last week to brainstorm ideas about how to further prevent deed theft at the grassroots level.

Deed theft has long plagued historically Black and Latino neighborhoods in the Five Boroughs. It is regarded as a crippling housing issue that’s become so prolific as of late that it’s shaped elections and policies at every level of government.

“This has been a challenge brought to my attention,” said Hochul. “Homeowners are being targeted by despicable criminals.”

Sitting across from Hochul were Maurice and Marilyn Reid, homeowners of the Bedford-Stuyvesant brownstone where the small roundtable was hosted. The couple and their friends are avid members of the Brownstoners of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Inc., a community group established in 1978.

Combatting deed theft really began with small organizers seeing their neighbors lose their homes and banding together to raise awareness for almost 50 years, said Reid. She said one method that worked well against the city’s tax lien sale system was steadily educating homeowners that they were on the list and therefore at risk of losing their homes.

“We have worked very, very hard to hold onto our homes,” said Reid. “We’ve saved hundreds of homes in this community [by] going door to door — 250 of us going door to door in threes. We were able to do this so successfully that they … changed the law, in terms of adding the water bills to the [definition] of the lien. We need to get out there and go hand by hand, foot by foot, letting people know you do not have to lose your home.”

In May 2026, the state passed a $268.5 billion budget for fiscal 2027. Hochul allocated $4.5 million in the state budget to increase enforcement, support community outreach, and education related to deed theft. The budget also includes $40 million for the Homeowner Protection Program (HOPP), administered by the New York State Office of the Attorney General, to support free statewide housing counseling and legal services for homeowners.

In 2024, Hochul signed laws criminalizing deed theft for the first time, in partnership with New York State Attorney General Letitia James’s office. The law also created additional preventive measures to protect inherited property by prohibiting non-heirs from forcing partition sales, giving rightful heirs a right of first refusal to match an external offer to buy out another heir, and allowing for Transfer on Death Deeds in lieu of formal wills, providing tools to help safeguard generational wealth. In the grassroots

At the city level, elected officials are organizing to attack deed theft on multiple fronts as well. Mayor Zohran Mamdani opened the Deed Theft Prevention office and moved to pause the city’s tax lien sale this year. While the City Council allocated $7.5 million for Specialized Deed Theft Units in district attorney offices across the five boroughs.

Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said that his borough has been at the epicenter of deed theft because of a rise in housing stock, primarily among Black families. With the changes in the laws criminalizing deed theft and pushing for enforcement, his office has even been able to return some homes to families. He plans to use funding to create a Housing Justice Bureau to continue addressing deed fraud and protect vulnerable homeowners and tenants from harassment, lockouts, and the theft of generational wealth.

“It’s making a difference,” said Gonzalez at the meeting. “It used to be a time when we talked about ACRIS [the Automated City Register Information System], right? The deed fraud was simple. People came in and they forged someone’s signature, they filed it, and they took it, but today, it’s much more complex. There are networks of people working behind the scenes to identify people with vulnerabilities and assets. They make fraudulent promises, and they hurt people.”

Gonzalez added that this network of deed thieves forces fractional sales, buys homeowner’s debt, attacks when people fall behind on bills and wind up on the tax lien sale, or promises to help homeowners with the bank or a short sale but never follows through. They then hold onto the deed for years until the statute of limitations runs out and it goes to civil court while a homeowner has lost their livelihood and housing, said Gonzalez.

A number of politicians who have adamantly fought for anti-deed theft laws and funding in the budget were also in attendance at the roundtable. This included Assemblymembers Stefani Zinerman, Brian Cunnigham, Latrice Walker; and Senator Kevin Parker.

“What I would like to see is [homeowners] sign off every time people go to access a deed, because … they research the court records downtown,” said Zinerman. “They are allowed access to that information because it’s public information, and they look at your age, they look at the location, and then they start their predatory practices. That’s why so many older adults have been in a situation where they’ve lost the deed.”

She concurred that door-knocking and community workshops about deed theft prevention are effective ways to keep homeowners informed.

“You’re talking about people not just losing their home where they live currently, but also all of the equity, all of the things, all the sacrifices they made,” said Parker, in talking about his home in Flatbush that was passed down to him by his parents. “Particularly in Black and Latino communities where it’s so hard. Had to fight through redlining, fight through people like Trump and their family who didn’t want to show you a property in certain neighborhoods. My family, when I moved to where I lived, was the second Black family, not only just on my block, but within blocks.”

Parker suggested engaging the city and state Department of Aging to potentially identify elderly homeowners who could be targeted by deed thieves, launching a public awareness campaign, and developing ways to slow down the pipeline of predators.

From a legal standpoint, Walker said nonprofits can hold workshops and offer some legal advice, but it’s the defense bar associations, a network of qualified attorneys who litigate criminal and civil cases, that can actually go to court with affected homeowners.

For trusts, wills, and heirs situations, people are unable to leave their children as legal executors on the property if they were justice involved or had a felony conviction, said Walker. She said this is especially an issue among aging homeowners in Brownsville and Ocean Hill that want to keep the building in the family. “I think the investment is incredible but it’s not hitting where the rubber meets the road,” said Walker.

Both Walker and Gonzalez pointed out that glaring issue is when a new homeowner buys a house that’s in the middle of a deed theft case. Many times the original homeowner never gets their house back.

“Too often, by the time they come to the DA’s office, those cases are past the statute of limitation. It has been a civil court for years,” said Gonzalez. “Once someone loses that house and a new person comes and buys it, there’s a decision of who has to take the loss — the old homeowner or the new [technicallly] bonafide homeowner. We want to prevent that from happening.”