Mayor Mamdani Doxxes His Own Residents

Mayor Zohran Mamdani just revealed the personal information of thousands of New York City property owners in what critics view as a transparent scheme to harass and intimidate his own residents.

Last week, the New York City Department of Finance (DOF) announced that more than 31,000 properties could be subject to a new surcharge known as a pied-à-terre tax. The levy targets certain residences that are not used as their owners’ primary homes. For the 2026-27 and 2027-28 property tax years, the tax applies to one-, two-, and three-family homes valued by the city at more than $5 million, as well as condominium and cooperative units assessed at $1 million or more.

But DOF didn’t stop at just announcing the policy or quietly informing property owners that they may have to shell out even more in taxes.

Instead, Mamdani’s government published a searchable online database identifying properties that could be subject to the tax. This database included names and addresses across all five boroughs – effectively a hit list of the supposedly “wealthy” New Yorkers whom the socialist Mamdani has long lambasted as enemies of the public.

The move was widely criticized as an unnecessary and potentially dangerous invasion of privacy – especially after questions emerged about the accuracy of the list itself.

New York City Council Minority Leader David Carr (R-Staten Island) blasted the release as “a reckless and foolish move,” warning that thousands of properties included in the database may never owe the tax at all.

Carr knows firsthand. His own home appeared on the list despite serving as his primary residence for decades. “I’ve been living in [my place] 365 days a year since 1994,” Carr said. “So, this whole list must be messed up.”

His experience appears far from unique.

Although city officials estimated roughly 31,000 homes would ultimately be subject to the new tax, reporting by the New York Post found that information connected to hundreds of thousands of residences and property owners appeared in the publicly released database. Many of those properties seem to bear little resemblance to the luxury second homes Mamdani promised to target.

Dozens of modest homes on Chaffee Avenue in the working-class Bronx neighborhood of Throggs Neck, for instance, appeared on the list, despite average home values ranging from the mid-$500,000s to low $800,000s – below the city’s median home value of about $820,000.

Similar middle-class neighborhoods on Staten Island were also swept into the database, even though there is no confirmation that many of the homes are second residences. One listed address even belonged to the Breezy Point Shopping Center in Queens – a small outdoor retail plaza rather than a private vacation home.

DOF defended the publication, saying state law requires a preliminary property roll to be made available whenever a new tax is enacted.

“As per State law, a property roll was released for public inspection,” a department spokesperson said. “From this list, DOF will identify properties that may be subject to the new non-primary residence property surcharge.”

But that explanation has done little to calm critics, particularly because the city has yet to explain how it compiled the database or why publishing homeowners’ full names and addresses was necessary in the first place.

Steven Fulop, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, called the decision “a mistake and a dangerous precedent.”

“Publishing names and addresses singles out people who have done nothing wrong, at a moment when the far-left already treats success itself as something to be punished,” Fulop said. “Most of the people on that list aren’t billionaires by any stretch – they’re people that believed in NYC, worked hard and bought a second home. All this does is make people feel less safe in their own city, and less welcome in it.”

Yet Mamdani has shown little sympathy for those concerns.

In a post on X announcing the new tax, the mayor addressed wealthy homeowners directly.

“Check your mailbox when you’re back in the five boroughs, because you’ve got mail,” he wrote. “The best city in the world deserves the best parks, libraries, and schools in the world. That’s only possible when we pay our fair share.”

But whether the tax ultimately delivers on that promise remains an open question.

City Hall projects the surcharge will generate roughly $500 million annually. New York City Comptroller Mark Levine’s office, however, estimates the actual figure will fall between $340 million and $380 million each year – and could decline over time as property owners simply pack up and leave.

That possibility helps explain why many economists and real estate professionals worry less about the tax revenue itself than about its long-term consequences.

Real estate is one of New York City’s economic cornerstones, generating roughly $40 billion annually in real estate-related taxes. Those revenues account for approximately 30 percent of the city’s overall budget and nearly half of all locally generated tax revenue.

High-end residential real estate, especially, has long served as one of New York City’s most reliable sources of tax revenue. Luxury home purchases generate transfer taxes, annual property taxes, construction jobs, renovation projects, brokerage commissions, and spending at local businesses.

Any policy that discourages investment in residential property risks affecting far more than luxury homeowners – it threatens one of the financial foundations supporting the city’s public services.

Early signs suggest those concerns may already be materializing.

According to the Post, Manhattan’s luxury housing market stalled almost immediately after the tax took effect. During the first week following implementation, just one home priced above $10 million entered contract. Realtors told the newspaper that three to five such homes typically go under contract during a normal week, making it the weakest performance for Manhattan’s trophy-home market since late December.

The pied-à-terre tax also represents just one part of Mamdani’s broader tax agenda. Earlier this year, he warned that city property taxes could increase by as much as 9.5 percent unless Albany approved additional taxes on wealthy New Yorkers to close what was then projected as a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. He has continued to advocate for even higher taxes on high-income earners and property owners.

Meanwhile, Mamdani’s own family residence in Kampala, Uganda, remains private and untouched by the policy.

Whether the pied-à-terre tax ultimately survives legal and political challenges remains to be seen. But the controversy surrounding its rollout has already become a powerful illustration of the risks of using government power to target certain economic classes. In an effort to take more money from a relatively small number of wealthy homeowners, City Hall instead exposed the private information of thousands of New Yorkers.

But while bureaucratic incompetence may be one explanation for this invasion of privacy, a far more disturbing possibility is that this isn’t really about tax policy at all. Mamdani himself is on video saying that his ultimate goal is to abolish private property altogether. On the campaign trail, Mamdani promised to go after “the wealthy.” But the definition of who counts as “wealthy” has apparently already come down to New Yorkers living in $1 million condos – homes hardly above the city’s median property value.

In this context, the pied-à-terre tax and release of homeowners’ personal information appear less like an effort to “make the rich pay their fair share” and more like a scheme straight out of the communist playbook, laying the groundwork for the government to seize private property outright.