Unpaid NYC property taxes to hit record $880M this year: ‘There are no consequences’
NY Post
New York City officials are forecasting overdue property taxes will surge to a record $880 million in the current fiscal year — and they say it’s because they’ve lost the power to enforce punishments for delinquencies.
The staggering figure — forecasted for the fiscal year ending in June — marks a jump of more than 30% from three years ago, according to an offering document for a city general obligation bond sale Tuesday obtained by Bloomberg.
“It’s not just the absolute dollar amount that I think should worry us all,” Preston Niblack, the city’s Finance Commissioner, said at a City Council finance committee meeting earlier this month.
It’s people realizing that “there are no consequences for not paying your property taxes,” he added, per Bloomberg. “That just can’t be allowed to continue.”
Among the highest debtors are the owners of a 16-unit rental building in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, who owe $52.2 million, as well as a 49-unit apartment building in the Bronx that owes $24.7 million, according to a list compiled by the city’s Department of Finance for Bloomberg.
City officials have blamed the rise in unpaid property taxes on the end of a tax-lien sales program that punished delinquency during the pandemic, according to Bloomberg.
