Black senior homeowners in South Ozone Park and Jamaica draw a sharp line: protect our homes, soak the millionaires
In Southeast Queens, the Property Tax Debate Lands Differently
When Philda Barnes, 67, heard that Mayor Zohran Mamdani was floating the possibility of raising New York City property taxes by 9.5 percent to close a massive budget gap, she got angry. She has lived in her Jamaica, Queens home for more than two decades. A tax hike of that magnitude, she said, could drive her out. But ask Barnes about taxing millionaires, and her answer changes completely. “Them one percenters who make astronomical money, please kick in,” she told Gothamist while standing with neighbors outside a friend’s house in South Ozone Park. She urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to act. “I think that she feels she’s in a safe place and she doesn’t have to make the hard decisions about the one percenters.”
Barnes is not an outlier. Gothamist spoke with 10 Black homeowners in South Ozone Park and Jamaica — all seniors — who uniformly opposed the property tax hike but broadly supported Mamdani’s push to tax the wealthy. Their position is not a contradiction. It is a coherent expression of the economic reality of communities that built wealth through homeownership precisely because other avenues were closed to them — and who now watch with alarm as that hard-won equity is threatened by rising costs and fragile budgets.
The Politics Are Personal
City Councilmember Ty Hankerson, who represents the Southeast Queens district once held by former Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, said his phone was flooded with texts and calls when word of Mamdani’s dual proposal became public. “When there are only two options, the last resort isn’t far off, right? So that is very frightening,” he said. Hankerson supports the millionaire tax but is deeply worried about what the property tax threat signals to the communities he represents — communities whose Black population has already dropped by roughly 200,000 in recent years as the cost of living has pushed longtime residents to the South and the Sun Belt.
Cambria Heights homeowner James Johnson put it more bluntly at a February rally: “You are giving only two options. You’re saying if we don’t tax the rich then I gotta increase property taxes. We are not a pawn in Southeast Queens. We are not part of your negotiation tactics.” Another resident, Vivian Campbell, who bought his two-story single-family home in Cambria Heights in the 1990s, said he felt deceived. “He lied,” Campbell said, referring to Mamdani’s affordability messaging on the campaign trail. “It’s obvious.”
A Broken Property Tax System Makes It Worse
The anger in Southeast Queens is compounded by the well-documented inequity of New York City’s existing property tax system. Research and litigation have consistently shown that the current system — last overhauled more than 40 years ago — assesses properties at different effective rates based on their type and location, with the result that Black and brown homeowners in middle-class outer-borough neighborhoods like Southeast Queens pay higher effective rates than owners of luxury condos in Manhattan or brownstones in brownstone Brooklyn.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who endorsed Mamdani, has called a blanket property tax increase “deeply tone-deaf to Black, Brown, and working-class homeowners” who are already “shouldering a disproportionate share of the property tax burden.” Martha Stark, former city finance commissioner and policy director for Tax Equity Now New York, has argued that the city already has the legal authority to reform the assessment system without waiting for Albany — and that failing to do so while threatening a tax hike deepens inequity rather than addressing it.
Hochul in the Middle
The residents of South Ozone Park have a surprisingly clear analysis of the political dynamics at play. Aracelia Cook, president of the 149th South Ozone Park Civic Association, called Mamdani’s property tax threat a “scare tactic” aimed at forcing the governor’s hand. “Maybe it was a scare tactic to make the governor realize that she has to do something because, really, in hindsight, he can’t,” Cook said. “The state has to step in. Gov. Hochul has to step in.” Pat Burrell, 78, suggested that Hochul might be taking the community’s Democratic votes for granted. “The pressure from Zohran’s campaign means the demands of what New Yorkers are expecting are high,” said Jasmine Gripper of the New York Working Families Party.
The Wider Stakes
The debate unfolding in Southeast Queens is part of a larger national conversation about housing wealth, racial equity, and tax policy. The Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center has documented how homeownership in communities of color represents a fundamentally different kind of asset than in wealthy white neighborhoods — one that is more vulnerable to policy shocks, more dependent on stable local public services, and less buffered by financial reserves. A property tax increase of 9.5 percent is not an abstraction in Jamaica or South Ozone Park. It is an existential threat for residents on fixed incomes who have spent decades building equity that they cannot afford to lose.
Mamdani’s political coalition was built in large part on the enthusiasm of low- and middle-income New Yorkers of color who believed he understood their struggles. The homeowners of Southeast Queens voted for him. They are now telling him clearly: taxing millionaires is the promise they heard, and it is the only acceptable path. Whether Albany will deliver that outcome before the June 30 budget deadline — and whether Mamdani will find a way to protect his most loyal constituents from the “last resort” — is the most consequential political question of his early tenure.
