Judge Blocks ‘Nonsensical’ Mamdani Pied-à-Terre Rollout for ‘Doxxing’ New Yorkers, Tells Mayor To Start Over

A Staten Island judge scrapped the rollout of one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s signature policies Tuesday, unwinding the implementation of the pied-à-terre tax launched in July, just days before a deadline for homeowners looking to escape the $40,000-plus property tax surcharge.Richmond County Supreme Court Judge Wayne M. Ozzi sided with former deputy mayor Randy Mastro and homeowners on all counts, ordering the city to take down a roster of almost 1 million residential addresses, their owners and assessed property values that he said doxxed New Yorkers, and voiding thousands of billing notices the Department of Finance has issued in its quest to tax unoccupied second homes. “It is nonsensical to conclude that the legislature mandates that a change to the tax status of 17,000 properties requires a re-publication of essentially the entire residential tax roll of over 900,000 properties,” the judge wrote. He backed homeowners’ claims that the list exposed them to “harassment and other unwarranted intrusions,” rejecting the city’s argument that no one was harmed by the spreadsheet it made available for download. The city “compiled, and publicized” the massive list of addresses knowing that only 1 or 2 percent of the people on it would be subject to the tax, and released it to “significant public fanfare,” Judge Ozzi wrote. “The current term for such activity is ‘doxxing.’” “ With two clicks, a person could download an entire list larger than the population of San Francisco,” real estate broker Jason Haber said at a City Council oversight hearing last month, which Department of Finance Commissioner Richard Lee declined to attend. “Imagine the gift that this is to fraudsters, to scammers, to anyone with ill will.”As for the notices the city sent to suspected pied-à-terre owners, which Mr. Mastro dubbed “nastygrams” in court last month, Judge Ozzi took umbrage at the city’s refusal to look at income tax data it had on hand for 2024 in its quest to establish homeowner’s residency while the Department of Finance waited for state authorities to share the updated data for 2025.The department’s actions were not only in “direct conflict” with state and city laws, he said, but also contradictory. The department “affirmatively [set] forward the intent” to use income tax information, but then “literally days after” the passage of those rules, declared the data “impermissible due to the passage of time.” Mr. Mastro also launched a new suit Tuesday ahead of the decision’s release, challenging the New York statute underpinning the surcharge as unconstitutional in Suffolk County Court.The Real Estate Board of New York, one of several groups that has protested the pied-à-terre tax and its chaotic implementation celebrated Tuesday’s decision in a statement shared with The New York Sun. “Today’s decision confirms that the City’s rollout was deeply flawed and failed to provide basic procedural protections for homeowners,” the board’s president, James Whelan said. “This is an important victory for the thousands of New Yorkers who were wrongly swept into an arbitrary and confusing process. While the court’s ruling focuses on the implementation of the tax, it reinforces broader concerns about the legality and fairness of the tax itself.”Legal challenges to the surcharge are “far from over” Mr. Whelan added. The initial release of the property roll tagged as “related to the surcharge” scared thousands of homeowners from the Bronx to Staten Island who thought they could be on the hook for five figures. It was almost a week before the city clarified that the supplemental property roll covered virtually all of New York’s residential addresses.“If I were a multimillionaire, I would have moved a long time ago,” retired police detective Kit Ying Koon, 64 told The New York Sun in July after learning that his Staten Island home appeared on the supplemental property roll.

Judge Blocks ‘Nonsensical’ Mamdani Pied-à-Terre Rollout for ‘Doxxing’ New Yorkers, Tells Mayor To Start Over

Judge Blocks ‘Nonsensical’ Mamdani Pied-à-Terre Rollout for ‘Doxxing’ New Yorkers, Tells Mayor To Start Over

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