🏡 Why Property Taxes Are (Probably Not) Changing Soon

🌟 Author’s Note

Hello and welcome to the 1 new advocate of the Better Block Project! Our total group of advocates is now 79 individuals working to make their blocks even better than before 🪴 

Save the date for Saturday, August 23rd at 9:30am for our 🖼️ Sidewalk Art Installation to educate residents to 🛑 stop illegal dumping on Fulton Street! We’ll be starting at Franklin Avenue and Fulton Street, in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts, and installing sidewalk art at each heavy dumping corner including Franklin & Fulton, Spencer & Fulton, Nostrand & Fulton and finally Fulton & New York Avenue. Street artist Felix Morelo will be doing the art, and we’ll be there passing out fliers to educate folks on the right way to take out the trash! If you want to help volunteer to organize this event, just reply to this email. We would love the help.

🏡 Why Property Taxes Are (Probably Not) Changing Soon

One of our first advocacy efforts at the Better Block Project was property tax reform. Many members of Better Block are concerned about how potential reforms might raise taxes dramatically (potentially 3X) for longer term residents, and result in displacement.

For those not in the know, the property tax system in New York City is deeply broken. It’s class system is overly complicated. Caps on tax growth have driven payment inequities between higher price-growth neighborhoods (like northern Brooklyn who pay lower taxes) and lower price-growth neighborhoods (like Staten Island who pay higher taxes). A lack of transparency makes it near impossible to understand why you are taxed a certain way in a given year. It’s clear that it is unfair today, and many argue that the system is preventing growth in new housing. Tax Equity Now has robust research on this if you want to dive deeper.

As a result, many politicians have called for reforms to the tax system. Bill De Blasio created a Property Tax Reform Commission in 2018, Mayor Eric Adams called for reform in 2021, and top Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has called for reform in his platform. There even was a bill in the State Assembly this year that called for a new commission, but didn’t get out of committee. So, why has nothing happened? There’s a clear recognition of the issue, many politicians have stated publicly it needs to change, yet we still have the same property tax system we’ve had since 1981. Well, Ralph (one our longer term members) and I went on an a mission to better understand this, and advocate for more transparency and affordability measures to protect long term residents. Here is who we spoke to:

• Andrew Gounardes, State Senator and outspoken Property Tax reform advocate and sponsored property tax reform circuit breaker credit

• Edward Braunstein, State Assemblymember and sponsor of the property tax bill above

• Justin Brannan, candidate for Comptroller and Finance Chair of City Council

• Phara Souffrant Forrest, Assemblymember and co-sponsor of the property tax bill above (from the prior year)

• Zohran Mamdani’s office, Assemblymember and member of the Real Property Taxation Committee

• Simcha Eichenstein’s office, Assemblymember and member of the Real Property Taxation Committee

• Chi Osse’s office, City Council member in New York City

Through this effort, we learned a lot about the state of the issue, and why it’s so challenging for anything to get passed.

First, surprisingly, most of the individuals we spoke with didn’t have a deep understanding of the issue. In the calls we had, Ralph and I (and I would rate myself as a novice) were often speaking from a position of authority, with most of our information coming from the December 2021 commission report. I’ll give credit to Senator Gounardes as the best expert on property taxes, followed by Edward Braunstein and Justin Brannan. I found the lack of knowledge fairly frustrating, as property taxes represent 31% of New York’s city budget, and if reform does happen, it’s likely going to have a huge impact on many residents. However, after speaking with Senator Gounardes, he gave insight as to why: as an elected, you’re inundated with requests across the spectrum on issues that impact your constituents. Unless it is an issue you deeply care about, how could you keep up with all of it?

Secondly, a big reason why property tax reform is unlikely to happen is a lack of a political coalition to actually push the issue through. In order for reform to happen, it involves deep collaboration between the New York State Legislature, the New York City Council, Governor and our Mayor’s office. In the words of Assemblymember Braunstein, the state simply wouldn’t pass any reform without consent from New York City. However, due to the significant amount of controversy surrounding our current Mayor, it’s very difficult for him to pass any meaningful legislation. In conversations with Justin Brannan we learned that when they discussed the latest budget, property tax reform wasn’t on the agenda.

There’s also another dynamic at play: if you read the commission report above, you’ll realize that any reform is likely to create winners and losers from the tax reform change. After all, many residents are paying lower effective tax rates than they should right now, and have been for many years. This has happened because tax growth is capped year to year, so while property values have grown significantly, the taxes have not. It’s only fair that they should pay more in the reform, but it’s very difficult politically for that to happen. Elected officials that represent these districts likely don’t want to be responsible for raising taxes on many of their constituents. As a result, there is no clear coalition of elected officials at the moment that are actually pushing any legislation, despite the phantom bills on the State level. Even if we have a new Mayor who is eager to change this issue (which if you look at other Mayoral campaigns property taxes is somewhat of a requirement to have in your platform 🙃 ), they still have to overcome the winners and losers inertia to pass reform. With a tidal wave of other issues that constituents care about, it’s likely this will continue to be on the back burner.

🧑‍⚖️ When Might Property Tax Reform Happen

In speaking with Senator Gounardes, the most likely way for property tax reform to happen is through a court-ordered mandate. The current version of the property tax system was created this way, from Hellerstein v. Assessor of Islip in 1975 (follow the history here). There is currently a lawsuit making its way through the court from the group Tax Equity New NY, arguing the system taxes similar buildings very differently.

A potential outcome from this court case is a judge would order the legislature to reform the property tax system, which would serve as the catalyst for reform to finally happen. Until then, we wait.

For now, we at the Better Block Project are going to continue to monitor progress of any legislation and more importantly, the Tax Equity Now NY court case. Once it becomes clear that legislation will happen, we’ll pick up our work advocating for a more transparent system and one that doesn’t displace low and middle income residents.

⏳ Where we are on the other problems we’re working on

• 🐝 Enabling Residents to Make Their Own Tree Repairs: I spoke with Joshuah Chrisman this week, community liason at NYC Parks. In order to change policy to allow residents to make more tree repairs, he confirmed this will have to come through City Council legislation. We have a couple of leads with City Council members that would be interested in this, so we’re planning to pursue that and organize a community meeting so NYC Parks can hear concerns about how the broken system is impacting residents

• 🏠️ Improving Vacant Buildings on Fulton, Jefferson and Macon: For 73 and 75 Macon, we’re continuing to investigate what’s happening with the deed theft case, and we’re going to attempt to work with the block to find any relatives of the former owner of the properties. If we can find a relative, we might be able to convince them to not sell 75 Macon, and instead pass it to a relative so the family can maintain the wealth from the asset. This is a bit of a long shot right now, but we’re going to make the effort

• 🚌 Improving the Bus Stop on Franklin and Fulton: Isis from the Franklin Avenue Brevoort Place Block Association has been making progress improving this bus stop. The 79th Precinct has said they are going to prioritize cleaning up the area and Homeless Services and Sanitation continue to clean up the space. We haven’t heard back from either elected representatives to do a walk of the space, but we plan to follow up this week, and go to the first Community Board meeting in September if necessary to raise awareness of the issue

• 🗑️ Fulton Street Trash Clean Up: DSNY continues to be silent on our proposals to increase collection routes and increase illegal dumping fines, but we will follow up this week. Our next big step in solving this problem is raising awareness through our Sidewalk Art installation, which we hope will spark more action from the city to truly solve the problem

That’s all for this week’s update. If you like what we’re doing here, share betterblockproject.com with other community members you know who are looking to drive change in Brooklyn.

See you next week,

David