By The City, linking to the new report by the Community Service Society and the Progress and Poverty Institute (formerly the Robert Schalkenbach Institute)
An email alert to readers of The City – and online New York City news publication began thusly:
| Dear New Yorkers, |
| The city’s convoluted property tax system overtaxes large multifamily buildings, making it harder to build enough apartments to solve the city’s housing crisis. |
| That’s according to a new report on the system called “Footing the Bill” released last week by the Community Service Society and the Progress and Poverty Institute. The organizations are calling for an overhaul of the city’s property tax system — a rare agreement between progressive groups, fiscal organizations and landlords. |
| The report finds that residential properties with between one and three units pay an effective tax rate of only 0.7% of their value, while apartment buildings with more than 10 units face an average effective tax rate of about five times as much. |
| The lowest property taxes are levied on homeowners, especially those who live in areas with fast-rising property values. And areas dominated by Black homeowners pay property tax rates that are double those of primarily white neighborhoods. |
| The system “benefits the haves over the have not,” the report concludes. |
| Read more here about the report that puts anti-poverty groups in agreement with real estate organizations on what needs to be done to make housing affordable in NYC. ============ The City article begins: New York City’s convoluted property tax system, now exactly 50 years old, overtaxes large multifamily buildings, making it harder to build enough apartments to solve the city’s housing crisis. The lowest property taxes are levied on homeowners, especially those who live in areas with fast-rising property values, even though two-thirds of city households rent. Areas dominated by Black homeowners pay property tax rates that are double those of primarily white neighborhoods. And the more expensive a cooperative or condominium unit, the more likely it will be to pay relatively low property taxes because of the city’s flawed system for assessing value. Those are the major conclusions of a new report on the system called “Footing the Bill,” released Monday by the Community Service Society and the Progress and Poverty Institute, aligning those two progressive groups with fiscal organizations like the Citizens Budget Commission and real estate groups like the Real Estate Board of New York in calling for an overhaul of property taxes in the city. =============== The full Progress and Poverty report is here: https://smhttp-ssl-58547.nexcesscdn.net/nycss/images/uploads/pubs/031425_CSS_TaxReport_it_V2_%281%29.pdf |