Three New York City homeowners are suing the Mamdani administration over how the city rolled out its new pied-à-terre tax, claiming warning letters and a public property roll mistakenly swept up their primary residences alongside the multi-million-dollar second homes the tax was designed to target. The lawsuit centers on Staten Island residents Rachel O’Brien and Carmine Morano and Manhattan resident Simon Hedley, who say their properties were wrongly included on the city’s list.
The suit, filed as a 23-page complaint, alleges the Department of Finance’s property roll publication caused mass confusion and facilitated unwanted scrutiny of homeowners’ personal information, according to the complaint cited by Business Insider. The Mamdani administration sent letters to every address that could potentially be a pied-à-terre property based on property value and internal records, a step the city says was required by the Department of Finance, per the outlet’s reporting. Homeowners now have until September 18 to appeal and prove they actually live in the home the city has flagged.
A Notification Net Cast Wide
The scale of the city’s outreach has become central to the dispute. According to Courthouse News, the Department of Finance published a public supplemental market value roll in July listing nearly 900,000 properties potentially related to the surcharge and mailed warning letters to roughly 17,000 property owners advising them they may be subject to the tax. A department spokesperson has said the roll is a preliminary estimation rather than an exhaustive list, not a final determination of liability.
That breadth reportedly reached some unexpected addresses. Per Storylines, the warning letters were sent to primary residences of prominent New Yorkers, including former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Park Slope home and the Department of Finance Commissioner’s own Flushing home — evidence, plaintiffs argue, of how automatically the records pull swept in owner-occupied properties. As of early August, only about 2,000 of the 17,000 notice recipients had completed exemption applications, while roughly 4,800 others had begun the filing process ahead of the extended deadline, the same outlet reports.
Plaintiffs Seek Emergency Removal of the List
The lawsuit asks the city to remove the property roll from the Department of Finance website as emergency relief for the named petitioners and similarly situated recipients. Randy Mastro, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said thousands of people who owe nothing were confused, exposed, and put to real expense, according to Business Insider’s account of the filing. Mastro also said City Hall mailed notice letters requiring New Yorkers to prove they live in their own homes and gave them only a few weeks to do so…