784
Mamdani Threatens 9.5% Property Tax Increase if Wealth Tax Is Not Passed
(www.nytimes.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
784 points (100.0% liked)
News
36043 readers
2534 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Better pass a rent freeze first or that property tax increase will just get passed on to the people who can afford it least.
He's working on it. Link
Rent freezes make landlords only do the bare minimum maintenance required by the law since they can't increase rents when doing any remodelling.
Honey landlords already do the bare minimum.
Only in rent-controlled markets. In other markets they remodel to jack up the prices, but you would complain about that too
You need more life experience if you think landlords only do the bare minimum in rent controlled markets.
I guarantee you, you are getting taking advantage of left and right without even realizing it.
Landlords will do more if they can charge a higher rent later. It's simple economics
Anyone with a brainstem would complain about that i think. Though I don't grant your premise in the absolute least.
So if landlords put more money into renovation it's bad, if they don't it's also bad
He's doing whatever he can to avoid admitting that he bought into rhetoric that only exists to make people richer than him even richer.
Ahh, so what you're actually saying is rent freezes discourage landlords from renovating their property (with their tenant's money) and charging more rent afterwards?
Most people struggling to pay rent want a place that's functional, not one that's lavish. Once everyone has a functional place to live for a fair price, then we can focus on frivolities.
Yes, of course, we're comparing spending more money to improve the property and charging more for it to doing nothing.
Who would improve the property out of just good will? They have a business to run
Yah you're right, all these poor, hard-working Landlords who serve the people must be protected at all costs, they do so much for the average renter, we can't dare touch their clockwork perfect system that SOOOO many people love.
Jesus christ, grow a clue.
Another way of looking at this is landlords won't be able to fancy up units and jack up prices which push out low income renters. Also, if landlords can't make a profit, they will sell which will allow more people to buy rather than be forced to rent. This does decrease the number of rental units in the future which could drive up prices, but it could be combined with a plan to renovate office spaces into apartments to counteract this.
We want landlords to do this to serve the renters that want to pay more. Office spaces will be renovated to make apartments when rents are high enough to pay for this expense. You don't need a plan when market forces cause people to make sound business decisions.
The only thing you need to fix is zoning
That assumes market forces are doing what you want. There are always levers that can encourage the market to move where you want it to go. For example raising property taxes but giving a 10 year tax break to converted office spaces (and changes to zoning of course).
That makes markets less efficient in the long run. It might cost less in rent, but your office is far away and you pay for it in commute time. You didn't even know that in a parallel universe your company moved to a better office space that's in your city
Efficiency and resilience are opposing forces. Think of the spare tire on a car. Is it efficient to carry around a fifth wheel all the time? No. But it is resilient because it will make it possible to quickly recover from a disruption (i.e. a flat tire).
The housing system needs a certain degree of resilience or people end up homeless. If that costs landlords money, too damn bad. It's the job of government to force them.
Lmao how many properties do you own?
Exactly 0
So you do the bidding of a class you don't belong to? How fucking sad is that.
Wrong. Renters already pay what the market is able to bear.
Renters are already fucked in NYC. Stop making their lives worse with proven failures like rent control.
Rent control works in specific applications. First, it must be short term as a response to market shocks (like a sudden tax increase). It also must have a graduated taper off period where prices are allowed to gradually increase to meet the market rate. With the dramatic increase in work-from-home, office spaces are going empty. This creates an opportunity to counteract the usual reduction in the quantity of rental units that comes with rent freeze. Reductions of red tape and streamlining conversion of office spaces into apartments would stabilize or even increase the number of rental units.
The entire point is that there needs to be a comprehensive strategy, not just a simple tax.
NYC has had rent control for decades. If we are talking about short-term rent control working, we are necessarily talking about removing rent control from NYC.
Talking about adding more rent control in NYC is doubling down on failure, doubling down on fucking over NYC renters.
I'm not necessarily saying rent control is the best response. It's just that raising property taxes is going to raise rents which is exactly what the city doesn't need.
How is rent control a failure?