The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: New York Just Sent This Letter to Nearly One Million Homeowners

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Zohran Mamdani's proposal to impose a new surcharge on certain New York property owners expanded far beyond the $5 million homes initially discussed, with notices sent to nearly one million homeowners whose properties are valued at more than $1 million. The policy has sparked criticism over its burden on longtime homeowners, retirees, and families whose homes have appreciated in value despite modest incomes. The proposal is presented as part of a broader effort to redistribute wealth, generate new tax revenue, and pressure property owners to sell. It also raises concerns about due process, government overreach, and the unintended consequences of publicly identifying homes believed to be vacant, including increased risks of squatting and burglary. Alliance Defending Freedom - Visit http://www.JoinADF.com/HANSON or text HANSON to 83848 and for a limited time your first gift to ADF will be DOUBLED by a special matching grant—while funds last. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility, Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. He's broke. He's had all of these lavish welfare ideas that are not fundable because he's driving out the upper, upper middle class and the wealthy, and they're living and drove. Some estimates, maybe $11 billion already in real value and revenue. So he needs money. Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson for the Daily Signal. Zoran Mondami, the mayor of New York, has just stirred up a lot of controversy. He said that he wanted to go after property owners who had homes worth more than $5 million,

and they were likely to be second homes. In other words, they had a primary residence elsewhere, either in the state of New York or outside the state or in a foreign country. And he wanted to tax them with a new surcharge in addition to property tax. But then when the letters went out, they didn't just go to the upper, upper, upper middle class or the wealthy who owned $5 million properties. Mondami went back on his word and sent almost... 950,000 letters out to property owners who, on the register had a home worth more than $1 million. Now, this is where it gets interesting. He's under a lot of criticism for this because he was bragging, and he kind of, as he always does,

in his cute socialist smile, remember he got in front of Ken Griffith's second home and looked into the camera and said, ha ha we're coming for you type of thing. This email was supposed to be cute. Something's coming in the mail. But here's the problem. A person can have a relatively modest house, and maybe they inherited it from their parents or they bought it 50 years ago for 50,000.

And in crowded New York, it's worth a million dollars. They're hardly wealthy. But more importantly, in the United States, Mr. Mondami isn't familiar, apparently, with an age-old foundational principle that you're innocent until proven guilty. In other words, you don't word a letter to people that say, I assume you are guilty of having a house, which is not your principal residence. You have three weeks to prove to me that you're not guilty,

and then maybe I will adjudicate your innocent and not slap a surtax. Can you imagine hundreds of thousands of people getting a letter in the mail that they owe $5, $10, $20, $80,000 on top of their property taxes and going into panic and then going to the New York City website with other hundreds of thousands of people trying to get in and say, look, I've been in this house. I'm not a second property owner. It was designed to cause confusion and anger and chaos and make Mondami an object of fear. Don't cross. the mayor. He has a long memory. But here's the other thing.

Besides inverting the idea to you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent, what's wrong with having a second house? It's a free country. You have a right to have a free house. So what was he doing by sending this letter and threatening you? Well, one of the things is he wants, he's broke.

He's had all of these lavish welfare ideas. that are not fundable because he's driving out the upper upper middle class and the wealthy and they're living in droves. Some estimates may be $11 billion already in real value and revenue. So he needs money. And more importantly, by sending this surtax out, on addition to property taxes, if you have a property that's worth a million or $2 million and you're paying 20 or $30,000, $40,000 in property tax, and this surtax comes in 10, 2030, a lot of people are saying, you know,

I'm not getting that much rent. If it is a second home, if it's their primary home, they're saying, I already pay this huge property and I have maintenance costs. If you're renting, you have rental costs. You're subject to oversight. There's rental subsidies for your renter. There's rent control. And so what he's trying to do is force people to sell.

either sell their second home or he considers them affluent enough that they had their turn and it's time to sell because they will not be able to afford, especially retired people, a surcharge property tax on top of a property tax, on top of insurance. And if you have a lot of sales, the house price drops. If the house price drops, Mondami can come in and either buy them for the city or subsidize. the quote, oppressed poor to buy it. It's a huge redistribution plan. There's a third more sinister agenda behind Mondami's enemies list. If you send out the names of over 900,000 New Yorkers in various boroughs, and you say these people, I accuse these people until they can prove me wrong of having a second property or a vacant property that is worth over a million dollars. And you give the name as he did and the address, as he did. Then you're going to have a lot of envious people saying, oh, Mr. Smith down the road.

He's on that list. Oh, Mr. Jones. I didn't know that he wasn't living in that house. Hmm. And that's the best interpretation. There's two, I think, more accurate and maybe even more disturbing. We have an epidemic in this country of squatting. So you are a potential squatter where the law protects you once you get possession of an empty home,

it's almost impossible to evict you unless you spend thousands of dollars. So all these would-be squatters are going to be looking at this list. And they're going to say, well, the mayor of New York accuses this person at this address of having a vacant home. Let's check it out. Maybe he's wrong. Maybe we'll go down the list, five, six, seven, ten of them,

but we will find a vacant house. And we'll know he's not going to come and we'll just crash and move in. And then the whole legal apparatus of the city protects us and we can get two, three, four years of free rent. An even worse scenario is there's a lot of home

burglary professionals in New York, especially in New York. And they are saying it's much easier to break into a vacant home than one occupied. And these homes, well, they're all worth a million, and there's some worth a lot more. But we'll just give our team a scouting expedition and go and see, drive by these addresses, and see whether they're actually occupied or not. And then we can come back and break into them.

Do we think Mondami didn't know that? Of course he knew that. But what am I getting at? He is a redistributionist. He believes that people got money through malpractice, unethical activity, criminality, kind of like Balzac said, behind every great fortune is a crime, with himself exempted, and his socialist colleagues, of course, exempted from the consequences of their own ideology.

But what he's trying to do is put fear into the people that he's going to do something or out. And the R. Al says, you better come and beg and beg and beg to me that this is your home and you're occupying it. You better do it in three weeks, R.L. It reminds me in conclusion of a general truism that we should apply to all of these socialist candidates. Socialists run as moderates. They disguise their socialism. Maybe the socialist activists will be honest enough to say they want to abolish the Senate or abolish the Supreme Court or the people.

presidency or get rid of the border or destroy the Pentagon. But elected officials don't say that when they run as candidates. Once they're in power, however, they're not socialists. They're not moderates. They're not even socialists. They rule as communist. So if you see a socialist, he will run and convince you that he is a moderate. When he gets into power, he will think socialism is a fuddy-duddy, moderate waste of time, and he will be a full-fledged Marxist. Trust me, it'll happen. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hansson from The Daily Signal. Female athletes are being forced to compete against biological males, sometimes without their consent or even their knowledge. In Washington, high school's sophomore, Callie Keeler,

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Text Hansen to 83848 or go to join ADF.com slash Hansen to have your gift doubled. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansan.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.