Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council named officials to a seven-member working group that will design a land bank to acquire unpaid municipal debts, negotiate payment plans, and take control of some problem properties — replacing a tax lien sale system critics say drove foreclosures.
A seven-member working group, including administration commissioners and council appointees, will design a municipal land bank to acquire tax and water liens and manage troubled properties.
The land bank is intended to replace the decades-old tax lien sale model, which sold liens to private trusts and has been linked to increased fees, larger debts, and foreclosures.
Implementation follows City Council legislation that ended the lien sale system by 2028 and required certain city officials to serve or designate representatives on the land bank board.
New York City's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and the City Council have advanced the next step toward creating a municipal land bank to handle properties with large tax or water debts and those in disrepair. The administration has named members to a seven-person working group charged with designing the land bank's operations.
The working group includes four city officials: Cea Weaver (Mamdani's director of the Office to Protect Tenants), Housing Commissioner Dina Levy, Finance Commissioner Richard Lee, and Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Garcia. The Council named Councilmember Linda Lee and two veteran housing practitioners: Christie Peale of the Center for NYC Neighborhoods and Ted Houghton of Terra Linda Housing Services.
Under the legislation passed by the Council, the land bank would be able to acquire municipal debts such as unpaid property taxes and water bills. Rather than selling liens to private investors, the land bank would negotiate payment plans with property owners, take control of some buildings, and aim to steer troubled properties toward nonprofit and tenant-group ownership or affordable housing conversion.
Critics say the lien sale system disproportionately affected homeowners of color in parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Then-Mayor Eric Adams vetoed land bank and lien-elimination bills that the Council passed, but the Council overrode that veto. Mamdani suspended lien sales in March and has pushed for an alternative.
The land bank effort is connected to a 2019 lawsuit brought by homeowners whose properties were seized through the previous tax-debt program. The city is also moving on complementary Council legislation designed to transfer hazardous apartment buildings to new owners more likely to make repairs.
The Council had passed legislation requiring the city to end the tax lien sale system by 2028. The newly formed working group will now develop the operational details for the land bank: which debts it will acquire, how payment plans will be structured, which properties it might take control of, and how to prioritize transfers to nonprofits or tenant groups.
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