Owners Fear Mamdani’s Pied-à-Terre Tax Intimidation Campaign Could Open Their Homes To Squatters

Property owners who found themselves on the massive list circulated last week as part of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax rollout say they now fear home invasions as well as further attacks from the Democratic Socialist administration.The list, deceptively labeled as “those properties that may be subject to the surcharge” on nonprimary residences, was in reality an unfiltered roster of New York’s roughly 960,000 residential tax lots, including their owners and current valuations. While already public, the information is not usually subject to such high-profile scrutiny.As hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers realized they were on a list attached to a tax-the-rich scheme, Mr. Mamdani defended the confusion and alarm his office created as “following the law” required for the incoming surcharge on secondary residences.At the same time, the Department of Finance posted a breakdown on its dedicated surcharge webpage last week, announcing that, instead of only going after luxury urban vacation homes valued at more than $5 million as advertised, condos and co-ops worth $1 million may also face the pied-à-terre tax. Then, the department started sending letters to owners — including lifelong residents who say they own only one property — giving them a month or less (at the height of summer) to prove their unit is someone’s home or face bills running into the tens of thousands of dollars.Amid the assaults on privacy and guilty-until-proven-innocent approach to tax policy, New York property owners say the mayor has created a scavenger hunt of sorts for vagrants ready to capitalize on unoccupied homes and New York’s lenient squatting laws.“ They just gave a list of every empty property and potentially created a nightmare for some potential property owner who returns to find their place inhabited,” Small Property Owners of New York board president Ann Korchak told The New York Sun. Squatters are a persistent problem within the five boroughs, where until 2024, they received many of the same protections as tenants. In April, a report by the Department of Investigation revealed that police reclaimed more than 500 public housing units from unauthorized occupants between January 2022 and May 2025 alone.While reforms have made it easier to remove squatters, owners still face risks ranging from law enforcement refusing to assist with a removal, up to criminal penalties if they take measures such as changing the locks to keep a trespasser from re-entering.On X, one social media user proposed retitling the property tax roll “Squatter’s Guide to NYC.”Author and former advisor to President Bill and Hilary Clinton Mark Penn offered a more historically-minded perspective in a separate post about the public tax roster.“Now many will recall that persecutions frequently begin with a list — a list that can be used by the authorities and that is where Mamdani started — and he published it to boot. And smiled about it as though those high-value owners deserve what’s coming to them,” Penn wrote. “But with a million people on his tax hit list, welcome to the lie of socialism – it starts with the idea that only ‘they’ are going to get it — a small group of 30,000 homeowners — and before you know it you are on the list.”Penn’s remarks echoed a statement Democratic Socialists of America co-chair Megan Romer made at the party’s convention — an event Mr. Mamdani also attended — promising to wreak havoc. “We will win by making conditions so intolerable to the ruling class that they would rather give in to our demands than live with the disturbance we cause until we are able to fully seize power ourselves,” she said in 2025. Romer doubled down on the remarks during an appearance on FOX News this month, saying of the statement: “It’s aimed from the working class to the ruling class.”

Owners Fear Mamdani’s Pied-à-Terre Tax Intimidation Campaign Could Open Their Homes To Squatters

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