Op-ed: Mamdani should fix property tax inequities before asking New Yorkers to pay more
New York City’s property tax system rests on a basic legal promise: Similar properties must be assessed uniformly and treated fairly under the law, especially for everyday taxpayers who expect the government to follow its own rules.
Yet across all five boroughs, from middle-income homeowners on Staten Island to tenants in the Bronx and families in lower-value co-ops and condos in Brooklyn, that promise is routinely broken. When assessments drift from reality, they produce unequal tax bills, erode public trust, and burden the very communities the law was meant to protect.
Now Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned on fairness and affordability, is proposing a property tax increase that would make an already regressive, inequitable and racially skewed system even worse. Raising rates on top of unlawful and unequal assessments does not solve inequity. It deepens it, and it punishes the New Yorkers this administration promised to help.
An ongoing lawsuit filed nearly nine years ago by the Tax Equity Now New York coalition exposed how the city’s system flouts the law’s guarantee of uniform assessment. Similarly valued homes, especially in Black and brown neighborhoods, face arbitrarily higher assessments and resulting taxes, while more expensive small homes and many luxury co-ops and condos are assessed at far lower amounts.
In its 2024 ruling reviving TENNY’s case, the New York Court of Appeals described the city’s property tax system in stark terms. The court found that assessment practices create “substantially unequal tax bills on similarly valued properties” and bear “little relationship to fair market value,” with significant racial disparities.
The state attorney general likewise argued that these policies are administered by New York City and that the city has the power to correct them. The court agreed: Responsibility sits squarely with City Hall.
Yet at recent joint budget hearings, Budget Director Sharif Solomon, sitting beside Mayor Mamdani and First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan, said the administration will pursue state legislation instead of using the authority New York City already has. The claim that only Albany can fix these core inequities is simply wrong. The courts have said so. The state has said so. New Yorkers have seen this playbook before: delay, deflect and ask Albany to take the heat.
By refusing to act now, this administration risks repeating the failures of past administrations that allowed unequal assessments to persist year after year. Proposing a tax increase while the system remains unlawful only adds fuel to the fire of inequality.
Despite the headlines, property taxes rise every year, and outer-borough rental buildings and co-ops already face record-high bills. New Yorkers feel these increases every month, whether City Hall admits it or not.
The mayor campaigned on breaking this decades-long cycle of delay. He promised fairness for Black and brown homeowners and renters who are disproportionately harmed when rental buildings are assessed far above comparable properties. He said equity could not wait. But shifting responsibility to Albany in an election year repeats the same pattern: talking about fairness while postponing action that City Hall can take today. Justice delayed is justice denied.
Property tax inequity is not abstract. When expensive co-ops and condos are assessed far below the income they generate, modest rental buildings in Queens or the Bronx end up carrying a greater and disproportionate share of the burden. Tenants, many of them Black and brown New Yorkers, feel the consequences first. Middle-income homeowners on Staten Island and families in lower-value co-ops and condos face the same structural problem: assessments detached from reality and tax bills that strain already-tight budgets.
The court of appeals has already acknowledged these disparities. They are measurable and deeply felt because inflated assessments lead directly to higher bills and greater housing insecurity.
The Black Institute has always been clear: Equity requires action, not excuses. City Hall has the authority to begin fixing unequal assessments now. It should do so before even considering a property tax increase.
Mayor Mamdani has a choice. He can continue the politics of delay, or he can follow the law and deliver fairness to homeowners, tenants and working families across this city. Fix the system you control. Reform unequal assessments now. New Yorkers deserve a government that follows the law before asking them to pay more.
Bertha Lewis is the founder of The Black Institute.