Let me tell you something. When a Staten Island judge has to step in and tell the mayor of New York City to stop sending threatening letters to people who live in their own houses, we are through the looking glass, folks. We are past gone.
On Monday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax rollout. The city has to take down that public tax roll, the one with nearly a million names on it, and they can’t send any more of those notices. The next hearing is August 31. And I will be watching with both eyes open, because I’ve seen what happens when nobody watches.
Here’s what the city did. They published a list of 960,000 properties. Nine hundred and sixty thousand. The tax is supposed to hit luxury second homes worth $5 million or more, or condos and co-ops valued at $1 million-plus. But according to the city’s own data, fewer than 3% of the properties on that list, about 24,000, even meet the threshold. Martha Stark, the former Finance Department commissioner, filed an expert affirmation saying the real number of properties that should be subject is between 5,000 and 6,000. They sent 17,000 letters. Do the math with me. That’s not a tax roll. That’s a fishing net dragged across the whole city.
Karamccurdy (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia CommonsAnd here’s the part that makes me want to put my head through the kitchen table. The city told homeowners: prove you live here, or pay up. You have to upload your income tax returns, your utility bills, your driver’s license, your voter records. Records the government already has. As real estate attorney Benjamin Williams put it: “You’re guilty until proven innocent.” I’ve got four kids. I know what a power trip looks like. This is a power trip with a letterhead.
Simon Hedley, one of the plaintiffs, lives in Chelsea. It’s his only home. He has no idea how he ended up on the list. He actually supports Mamdani, voted for the man, and even he’s standing there saying the rollout was bungled. Rachel O’Brien and Carmine Morano, the wife and father of City Councilman Frank Morano, both Staten Island residents, got flagged too. These are not billionaires with penthouse pieds-à-terre. These are people who live where they live.
Randy Mastro, the lawyer representing the homeowners, received one of the notices himself. At his Upper East Side home. The one he’s lived in since 2016. He was literally first deputy mayor under Eric Adams, a job that required him to live in New York City, and the Department of Finance still couldn’t figure out he was a resident. He wrote in his filing that it was “inconceivable” they didn’t have records showing his primary residence. Inconceivable is a word I don’t use lightly. But I’d use it here.
Mamdani’s spokesman said the Finance Department has been “working around the clock” to provide clear information. Working around the clock! They published a list of a million people, sent 17,000 letters to the wrong addresses, and now they’re working around the clock. That’s like setting my kitchen on fire and then telling me you’re working around the clock to find the fire extinguisher.
Leeloo The First / PexelsThe judge said from the bench that the notices caused irreparable harm because they didn’t even explain why people were flagged. Didn’t explain why. They just said: you might owe us five figures, prove you don’t, or else. The judge said that causes irreparable harm. Because it does.
Mamdani put out a video earlier this year telling owners of second homes worth more than $5 million to “check your mailbox.” Cute. Real cute. The kind of thing you post when you think the camera loves you more than it does. He said the tax is “specifically designed for the richest of the rich.” Except the letters went to people who aren’t rich, aren’t second-home owners, and aren’t hiding anything. They’re just living in their houses.
I don’t care what side of the aisle you sit on. When the government puts a million names on a list and tells them to prove their innocence, that’s not a tax policy. That’s a shakedown. And a judge just said so.