Meet the Staten Island Retirees Targeted by Mamdani’s Pied-à-Terre Tax

Retired New York City police detective Kit Ying Koon, 64, has lived in his home at 217 Abingdon Ave on Staten Island for almost 34 years. He and his wife raised four children there, and now eight grandchildren converge regularly on the semi-detached family home, adorned for the summer with American flags and bunting.While the home’s value has appreciated well over the years, it still clocks in well below $1 million. It is also the only home Mr. Koon owns. Nevertheless, he and all of his neighbors on Abingdon Avenue are named on the roster of potential targets for the city’s incoming “non-primary residence property surcharge,” also called the pied-à-terre tax — an annual fee Mayor Mamdani touted as a means to collect city revenue from the rich.Mr. Koon was surprised to learn that his home was on the list published by the New York Department of Finance last week. The target-rich accounting identifies more than 170,000 addresses on Staten Island — located in the only borough that Mr. Mamdani outright lost in the mayoral 2025 election — that “may be” subject to the surcharge.“If I were a multimillionaire, I would have moved a long time ago,” Mr. Koon told The New York Sun on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Koon and his wife would like to relocate to Tennessee, he said, but his health insurance as a former city worker offers limited coverage outside the state, a growing concern as the couple ages.Mr. Mamdani advertised the additional property tax earlier this year as “an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million whose owners do not live fulltime in the city.” The video announcement outraged even some of his donors over its name-checking billionaire Ken Griffin and identifying the location of his Manhattan penthouse. Across the street from the Koons, Stanislaw Slisz, 75, and his wife, Zdzislawa, 70, were startled and displeased to see their names on the Finance Department list. The couple owns two houses on the block, their own two-story home and one inhabited by Mr. Slisz’s mother, he told The Sun. Mr. Slisz said he has lived in the neighborhood for more than 40 years. He spoke to the Sun after helping another neighbor with mobility issues park her car. “I was born in Poland, so I know about communism and socialism, and this guy should not be in,” he said, referring to the mayor.Mrs. Slisz confirmed that the couple does not own a vacation home. “I could have a vacation if I moved out of New York and went to Florida,” she said, grinning while gritting her teeth.Another homeowner, Charles Anastasia, whose manicured yard displayed a pair of hand-painted fawns, was more blunt. “Tell the mayor I said, ‘Drop dead,’” he told the Sun from his porch, his remarks punctuated by the tinkling of windchimes.None of the residents of Abingdon Avenue who spoke with the Sun was aware of the pied-à-terre tax, their inclusion on the list, the potential need to apply for an exclusion, or how to do so.“The mayor’s an idiot. What can I say?” homeowner Ralph Micelotta said upon learning of his inclusion on the possible surcharge list. Mr. Micelotta said he has been considering selling his home and getting out of the city, but is waiting for his son to finish high school first.The mayor and Finance Commissioner Robert Lee announced the first round of letters to homeowners facing the pied-à-terre tax last Thursday. The Department of Finance’s director of public information did not immediately respond to inquiries from the Sun as to how the seniors of Abingdon Avenue came to be included on the list of surcharge candidates or whether all of the notification letters have been issued.The press release announcing the surcharge launch also advertised a new webpage “to support property owners throughout the process.” The deadlines to apply for exemptions is August 21 for residential homes and condos and August 24 for cooperative units.When advised that she could request an exemption online, a woman homeowner who asked not to be identified told the Sun, “I don’t have a computer in here.”Homeowners can check whether their properties are on the surcharge list and apply for exemptions at a website of the city’s Department of Finance. New Yorkers without internet access should call 311 for guidance.

Meet the Staten Island Retirees Targeted by Mamdani’s Pied-à-Terre Tax

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