Mayor Zohran Mamdani is poised to cancel this 12 months’s tax lien sale, which has been extensively criticized as predatory and disproportionately impacting Black and Brown senior owners. His administration is planning on launching a six-month evaluate to switch the town’s system.
“What we’re doing is pausing this sale for six months as we direct the Division of Finance to steer a evaluate of this system with the intent of growing a extra equitable method to managing this sort of debt throughout totally different property varieties,” mentioned Mamdani.
When a property is on the town’s tax lien sale checklist, it typically means the proprietor owes property taxes or has past-due water, sewer, and different property-related expenses. Town can then promote the debt to non-public investor-backed trusts at a reduction. They in flip make a group for what’s owed, opening up owners to aggressive debt collectors and foreclosures. The checklist is often posted yearly in Might.
A tax lien will be triggered by even seemingly low money owed, which was the case for Brooklyn home-owner Filmore Brown in August 2025. His residence was auctioned off with out his data over a past-due $5,000 water invoice. Brown mentioned he wasn’t knowledgeable about what was occurring till the supposed new homeowners breached the home in the course of the night time, drilled out the locks, and put in surveillance cameras whereas his household and tenants had been woke up from their sleep.
In keeping with a NYU Furman Middle report, the town began authorizing “in rem foreclosures” in 1976, taking up 1000’s of properties within the subsequent few years till they positioned a moratorium on the method in 1993. Underneath Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the town got here up with the present model of the tax lien sale system in 1996. This generated enormous income for the town, greater than $1.3 billion between 1997 and 2015. These had been one to a few items properties or multifamily buildings concentrated in Black and Brown neighborhoods like Central Harlem in Manhattan; Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York and Starrett Metropolis in Brooklyn; Jamaica and Hollis in Queens; and a number of other elements of the Bronx, mentioned the report.
“I used to knock on the doorways of Queens owners whose names had been listed on the tax lien sale to attempt to get them off that checklist,” mentioned Mamdani, recalling his days as a foreclosures prevention housing counselor with Chhaya CDC. “And I knew then what so many New Yorkers have additionally observed, which is that it is a damaged system that disproportionately targets Black owners, particularly in central Brooklyn and Southeast Queens.”
Metropolis council made some strides in passing reforms for the tax lien sale and a city-established land financial institution final 12 months in an try and make the system extra equitable. The bundle of payments was vetoed by former Mayor Eric Adams earlier than leaving workplace. Nevertheless, the town council voted to override his vetoes and re-enact the payments in January 2026.
On the marketing campaign path, Mamdani vowed to finish the tax lien sale in addition to set up an Workplace of Deed Theft Prevention.
Deed theft can also be a widespread drawback, notably affecting Black New Yorkers, the place a house owner’s deed is cast and their house is actually scammed out from beneath them. In a single occasion, Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg indicted three individuals for deed theft and mortgage fraud for allegedly stealing a Harlem brownstone from a household that had owned their home for almost 40 years.
“I believe what we will see is that in each of them [deed theft and the tax lien sale], they’re disproportionately impacting Black owners. Particularly once more, Central Brooklyn, Southeast Queens, are the neighborhoods the place we see each of those points actually affecting owners’ skill to afford to remain of their properties,” mentioned Mamdani.
“And what we even have seen is that deed thieves have used the publication of the tax lien sale checklist as a software in concentrating on owners for deed theft,” he continued. “They method any individual who they know is behind on their water invoice or their property taxes. They promise them a refinancing to permit them to have extra entry to capital and as a substitute, what they find yourself doing is stealing that title from that home-owner.”
Mamdani mentioned that the Deed Theft Prevention workplace would coordinate all metropolis enforcement mechanisms to cease deed theft in progress. This contains submitting a movement to remain an eviction or foreclosures continuing beneath the 2023 state legal guidelines, which permit a neighborhood authorities company to research deed theft circumstances. The concept is to deal with locations the place deed theft has been rampant.
In the meantime, the deadline for the state finances approval is April 1. However it’s projected to be late due largely to negotiations over Mamdani’s proposed tax hike on the rich and local weather legislation rollbacks, mentioned state lawmakers. If that falls by way of, the town will probably be pressured to lift property taxes in an effort to cope with the remaining hole within the metropolis finances. Naturally, a whole lot of already financially confused Black and Brown renters and owners are slightly bit anxious with the looming uncertainty.
“Elevating property taxes is a path of final resort,” mentioned Mamdani. “And that’s one which I’ve been working to forestall ever since we needed to put ahead our preliminary finances. And I’ve mentioned then, and I’ll proceed to say, and I’m engaged on how to make sure our finances displays as a substitute an ending of the drain that has lengthy characterised the state’s relationship with the town. And in addition a plan that taxes the wealthiest New Yorkers and essentially the most worthwhile companies. Not a finances that’s being balanced on the backs of center class New Yorkers who’re simply struggling to make ends meet.”
