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Socialist Zohran Mamdani, the presumptive Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, is facing criticism over a campaign policy document that explicitly calls for shifting the city’s tax burden onto “richer and whiter neighborhoods.”
Mamdani caused a political earthquake in this week’s primary, trouncing former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a stunning upset, all but securing his place on the November ballot. Housing affordability has been a central pillar of his campaign.
A policy document titled “Stop the Squeeze on NYC Homeowners” from Mamdani’s mayoral campaign website argues that the city’s current property tax system disproportionately benefits wealthy, White homeowners, particularly in Manhattan and affluent areas of Brooklyn, by allowing them to pay far less in taxes due to outdated assessment caps.
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In contrast, Black, Latino and immigrant homeowners in neighborhoods like Brownsville and Jamaica in the outer borough of Queens are overburdened and at higher risk of foreclosure.
His solution?
“Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods,” the proposal reads. “The property tax system is unbalanced because assessment levels are artificially capped, so homeowners in expensive neighborhoods pay less than their fair share.”
The proposal would reduce the taxable portion of assessed property values citywide, and offset that by raising actual tax rates in wealthier areas. The result: lower tax bills for lower-income neighborhoods and higher ones for affluent areas — which the campaign describes as “richer and whiter.”
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The racial component of the policy position has come in for criticism online, with broadcaster Mark Levin sharing a New York Post story about the proposal and writing “Oh, and Mamdani is racist, too.”
Political commentator Eric Daugherty also brandished it as explicitly “racist” on X, while the New York Post editorial board also slammed the proposal as “pure racism.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani’s campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
The campaign document also highlights racial disparities in deed theft and “tangled titles,” which are situations where someone lives in a home they believe they own — often through inheritance — but their name is not on the deed, creating legal uncertainty about ownership.
The document states that predominantly Black neighborhoods face these challenges at much higher rates than White neighborhoods.
To address this, Mamdani is proposing a $10 million “Tangled Title Fund” to help city residents hire lawyers and clear legal titles so they can secure full homeownership rights and benefits.
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Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose preamble discusses a way to “end white supremacy and racial oppression because its destruction is in the interest of all workers, including white workers.”
Overall, the housing document frames the city’s housing inequities as structurally racist and economically unjust.
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The document also claims that the city’s tax lien sale system is exploitative and racist. When a homeowner falls behind on property taxes under the system, the city sells that debt to a private trust of Wall Street-backed investors, usually at a discount. instead of collecting the debt directly.
“The tax lien sale has been particularly harmful to Black, brown, and working-class homeowners, leading many homeowners to lose their home to foreclosure, or forcing them to sell below market value in order to pay off their accumulating debts,” the document reads. “The city is six times more likely to sell a tax lien in a Black neighborhood than a white neighborhood. This policy is extracting wealth from Black, brown, and working-class communities and stripping New Yorkers of their homes.”
Mamdani said he will end the system on his first day in office and create a new tax collection system that provides “additional opportunities” for homeowners to enter into payment plans, pay down their debt and stay in their homes.
The Queens assemblyman wants to build 200,000 new publicly-subsidized affordable homes and immediately freeze rents for the city’s 2.4 million stabilized tenants. His proposals call for multi-year rent freezes and massive investment in public housing. Critics argue his proposals could worsen existing problems in the rental market,
Fox News’ Madison Colombo contributed to this report.
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