It’s too taxing a fight for Bill now
Calls bias 2nd-term topic as lawsuit looms
MAYOR DE BLASIO on Monday criticized a lawsuit demanding that he fix the city’s unbalanced property tax system as wrongheaded — but wouldn’t say how the problem should be fixed.
A coalition of civil justice and real estate interests called Tax Equity Now NY will file suit Tuesday charging that the system is racially biased and favors the affluent over working- and middle-class homeowners.
After dodging questions on the suit Sunday, de Blasio rejected it as the wrong way to address a problem he agrees needs fixing.
“Putting it into the court system, that's not the way to make decisions,” he said at an unrelated press conference. “And also I guarantee you that will be years and years of litigation that won’t result in anything anytime soon.”
At the same time, de Blasio won’t be getting around to fixing it anytime soon, either. He said the issue is far too complex to take on at the moment, and will have to wait until after he’s reelected.
“There’s no way I could give the outline of a plan today because I think it's going to take a year or two to develop,” he said. “We didn’t do it because we had to work on a lot of other priorities that were crucial and necessary and available to be acted on, versus this which I knew would be a very involved, difficult process.”
Critics note the mayor first promised to fix the problem when he got the job in 2014.
“Nothing ever happened,” said former City Councilman Sal Albanese, who’s running against the mayor in the Democratic primary. “Three and a half years into de Blasio’s term, we don’t hear a thing about it.”
Bo Dietl, who’s running against the mayor as an independent, noted the mayor’s personal tax bill of $3,500 on a Park Slope, Brooklyn, rowhouse the city values at $1.5 million. The News found homeowners paying more in East New York, Brooklyn, and Laurelton, Queens, on homes worth far less.
“Let us all pay the same amount. Whatever it’s gonna be, it’s gotta be equal,” said Dietl, who’s had his own issues paying back taxes.
The system favors neighborhoods with high-value property because it caps the amount the city can hike assessments at 6% per year and no more than 20% within five years.
Data show the city undervalues properties in wealthier, white-majority neighborhoods and overvalues properties in less affluent neighborhoods that are mostly black and Hispanic.
The lower the assessment, the lower the tax bill.
In Greenwich Village and SoHo, which are 72% non-Hispanic white, the city assesses property at 94.4% of full market value. In East New York, which is 95% minority, it’s assessed above full market at 111.5%.
In the West Village, homeowner Russell Horton, 75, agreed that all properties should be treated equally, but he still struggles to pay a $25,000 tax bill on a brownstone the city values at $5.9 million.
“I think everyone should pay fair. The value of my property happens to have gone up drastically, while my income has not,” he said. “If it goes too much higher, I don't know.”
In East New York, Marcus Richardson, 53, owns two one-family homes the city tags with totally different full market values.
“I thought it was unfair because mine is a one-family and they got it at $370,000. I have another one-family on Essex St. and it’s $470,000,” he said.
The father of five is resigned to dealing with a system he says works against him.
“East New York, Brownsville’s paying a lot more than people with more money,” he said. “Historically, the rich pay as little as possible. That’s how they stay
rich.”
Numbers feature prominently in the movie “Hidden Figures.” In one scene, Al, the head of the Space Task Group responsible for figuring out how to have an American orbit the moon, says: “Look beyond the numbers. Around them. Through them.” Katherine, the AfricanAmerican mathematician “computer” at NASA, said, “Math is always dependable.” And as it was in space travel, so it is when it comes to the New York City property tax — the numbers tell the story. To have the best and most efficient property tax system in the world, New York City needs a change. For years, political leaders and independent analysts have decried New York City’s property tax system as unfair, antiquated and outdated. They’ve acknowledged that it imposes unequal tax bills on property owners that bear little relationship to actual values. The current system of unfair assessments, irrational effective tax rates, confusing disparities between property types and neighborhoods that make the system fundamentally unfair for racial minorities, renters and less affluent homeowners did not happen overnight. It predates the current administrations on both sides of City Hall and on both ends of the Hudson River. New York City has and will become more reliant on the revenue that property taxes generate — which means that each year, we become more reliant on a system that is regressive, discourages the construction of rental housing, and is, in a word, broken. The problem is complex: Inequities exist within and between each tax class. Single-family homeowners in one neighborhood may be paying a significantly higher effective tax rate than single-family homeowners just a few blocks away. New condo owners could be paying significantly more in taxes than a similarly valued co-op right next door. And perhaps most problematic in a city of renters, it’s estimated now that as much as 40% of the cost of rent is comprised of property taxes in some neighborhoods. But perhaps more insidious: Data show that racial minorities are particularly harmed. Higher assessments lead to higher taxes in minority-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 property are taxed at the lowest effective tax rates. By contrast, people of color constitute 72% of the 15 community planning districts in which those properties are taxed at the highest effective tax rates. Martha Stark, former city commissioner of finance, serves as distinguished lecturer at Baruch College and director of policy for Tax Equity Now NY.