Mamdani, Cuomo and Sliwa Talk Housing, Property Taxes

8 October 2025

There’s one thing New York City mayoral candidates all agree on: property tax reform is a lightning rod.

But despite consensus that the system is unfair, there has yet to be any meaningful change.

“The problem with property tax reform is you’re going to have winners, and you’re going to have losers, and the political system does not like having losers,” Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during a mayoral forum hosted by Crain’s on Wednesday. “That’s why no one wanted to go near it.”

Without specifying exactly how, some of the candidates want to harness the energy around the issue.

During Wednesday’s event, a rare opportunity to see all three candidates under the same roof, Assembly member Zohran Mamdani said he “absolutely” supports comprehensive reform to the city’s lopsided property tax system.

Mamdani noted that he is on the Assembly’s standing committee on real property taxation and that he wanted to introduce legislation to amend the tax system, but was told “in no uncertain terms” that the state was waiting on the mayor to deliver a citywide plan.

Previous administrations have promised and failed to change New York’s property tax system. Mayor Eric Adams pledged to fix the city’s property tax regime within his first year in office, and when that didn’t happen, repeatedly committed to do so but did not deliver reform.

Mamdani also cited Tax Equity Now New York’s nearly decade-old lawsuit challenging the system and recommendations made at the end of the de Blasio administration as potential paths forward.

“I think that there are a number of proposals that can make it easier with circuit breakers, also to ensure that any fix is not one that then creates a new level of burden on a different class of homeowners or owners of different sets of rental properties,” he said.

Cuomo, acknowledging that likely nothing will change otherwise, said the courts may need to force the city’s hand.

He cited TENNY’s lawsuit, which argues that the city’s property tax system is inequitable. Most recently, the group has asked a state court to require the city to make changes to how one-, two- and three-family homes, as well as condo and co-ops, are assessed.

“The legal case can actually be used, frankly, as a facilitating device to say, ‘we have to do this,’” Cuomo said, adding that a court order would give City Council members political cover from the angry condo and co-op owners who would see their tax bills rise as a result of reform.

Embracing court-powered reform is a departure from previous administrations, which have argued that lawmakers should enact change.

Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa repeatedly noted the need to slash property taxes, alongside other taxes.

The pitch

At Wednesday’s forum, the three mayoral contenders appeared separately, each making their case to the business community. For some that was a bigger challenge than others.

Mamdani acknowledged that he likely wasn’t their “dream” candidate, but said he believes there is “far more commonality” between their visions for the city.

When asked who he is planning to hire if he becomes mayor, Mamdani demurred, but noted that he is talking to current and former members of the Adams administration, including former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer and City Planning head Dan Garodnick, in preparation.

He also echoed a comment made by Real Estate Board of New York President Jim Whelan at a Crain’s event last month. Whelan said his advice for Mamdani would be to hire the “best people,” citing how former Mayor Michael Bloomberg built up his team. Mamdani also name-dropped Bloomberg and the need for mayors to surround themselves with top talent.

Mamdani’s plan to freeze rents for stabilized apartments for four years, meanwhile, doesn’t sit well with many in the real estate industry. When asked about the rent freeze, and the fact that this promise comes before the city’s Rent Guidelines Board has had a chance to deliberate on the issue, Mamdani said the move would help align the board’s actions with its own analysis of the city’s rent stabilized housing stock. He pointed to increased landlord profits and stagnant tenant wages.

Landlord groups have long criticized the board’s reports detailing rises in buildings’ net operating income because those calculations include market rate units.

He also said a freeze isn’t meant to punish landlords and doesn’t preclude other actions aimed at helping struggling property owners, including alternative insurance options, reforming property taxes and combatting rising utility rates.

Housing timelines

Mamdani indicated that he wants to encourage the private sector to build more housing and said that in conversations with real estate leaders, he’s been “taken aback” by the fact that some of the largest costs they face in building housing is the “cost of waiting.” He mentioned the prospect of reforming the city’s environmental review process.

Still, he did not commit to supporting four housing-related ballot questions, most of which are aimed at speeding up approval of housing projects in the city. He said he is glad that New Yorkers will get to decide these issues in November, but has not himself taken a position on the measures.

Throwing his support behind the measures is politically tricky: Two powerful unions that have endorsed his run for mayor, 32BJ SEIU and the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, oppose the three most controversial questions that, if approved, weaken or skip the City Council’s role in certain land use approvals.

Sliwa called the ballot measures “City of Yes on steroids,” referring to the zoning changes approved last year.

“I am opposed to the City of Yes, that would destroy the residential makeup, especially of the outer boroughs,” he said. “I am a preservationist in many ways, which clearly these two candidates are not. Andrew Cuomo is in the back pockets of the developers and realtors as is his predecessor, Eric Adams.”

When asked what he would do to make it easier to build affordable housing, he pointed to inefficiencies at the Department of Buildings.

“The Department of Buildings is often your enemy, whether you’re making changes in your existing occupancy or you’re trying to build a new facility,” he said.

He has previously said that he would make cuts to the DOB to help pay for his proposed tax cuts.

Cuomo said a top priority if he is elected mayor will be building 500,000 new homes across 300 sites “simultaneously,” though it’s unclear how that would be accomplished in terms of labor and financing if he was speaking literally.

Crain’s reporter Nick Garber asked Cuomo how he would work with a progressive City Council, and why the business community should have confidence that he could block leftist legislation, given the passage of significant reforms to the state’s rent law in 2019 when he was governor.

Cuomo said vetoing the 2019 law would have been the politically easy route: The legislature had the votes to override a veto. He said he opted to negotiate for a better bill instead.

He said the City Council will be easier to wrangle because it is a lot smaller than the state legislature.

That idea could be put to the test with one of his latest proposals. During the forum, Cuomo revealed a new proposal to abandon the city’s plan to close Rikers in favor of rebuilding the jail. The borough jail sites slated to replace Rikers would instead be used for housing and commercial use. Doing so would require buy-in from the City Council, which passed a law in 2019 to shutter and replace the complex with four new jails.

Council member Sandy Nurse, who co-chairs the City Council Progressive Caucus, called the proposal “inept” on social media and said the City Council would not backtrack on the 2019 law.