De Blasio Says City Real Estate Taxes Not Racially Biased

Mayor Bill de Blasio is not spending all of his waking hours raising money for his pending re-election run. Last week, reports The Jewish Voice, he actually took time to address the city’s out-of-whack system of assessing real estate taxes – by slamming a lawsuit that claims the system is racially biased.

Speaking during his weekly show on WNYC radio, de Blasio said, “I don't accept the notion of this lawsuit for a variety of reasons. This is not about race. This is about a system that is now outmoded, and has inconsistencies and a lack of transparencies that have to be addressed.”

Frustrated by decades of political inaction on the issue, a group calling itself Tax Equity Now New York has filed a class-action lawsuit, claiming the city’s property tax system favors white homeowners. The group, which includes the Black Institute, the NAACP, and major landlords and developers, contends that the caps on assessments of single-family homes discriminate against members of minorities who own property in lower-incomes areas. 

Statutes bar the city from raising assessments on one- to three-family homes by more than 6 percent in a year and 20 percent over five years. The mayor himself owns two homes in Park Slope, a gentrified area of row houses that benefits enormously from the present system, as the real property values have vastly outpaced the city's ability to charge more in taxes. As Crain’s reports, the mayor has promised to address the matter through legal reforms should he win a second term. Yes, and he promised to address the matter before he won a first term – and so far has done nothing.

De Blasio argues that legislators, not the courts, should tackle tax reform. “There is an inequality that needs to be addressed,” he said. “But it should be done in the full light of a public process, and then openly in a legislative process. That is how we should make our laws."

The biggest losers under the current system are renters, who essentially have their landlord’s property taxes baked into their rent, followed by the owners of co-op and condo apartments. Combined, these three groups account for less than a quarter of the city’s residential market value but pay 37 percent of the real estate taxes.