Amazon and more than a dozen of its subcontractors in New York City and the suburbs face union allegations they flouted a state law that protects employees from mass layoffs or closures.

A complaint submitted to the state Labor Department on Tuesday by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters charges that Amazon and 13 subcontractors violated the state’s WARN Act by failing to give the megaretailer’s delivery drivers at least 90 days’ notice of their impending terminations.

The complaints were filed on behalf of former workers who claim their shops were shut down with no warning between September 2023 and October 2025. The Teamsters estimate more than 1,300 workers were impacted by the closures.

The union also identified cases where Amazon subcontractors allegedly sent layoff notices after the layoff or closure date.

The move comes amid growing support in the City Council for a bill that would force Amazon to directly employ the army of drivers and depot workers who currently work for local subcontractors to deliver an estimated 2 million packages each day across the five boroughs. Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently came out in support of the bill, which Amazon and business groups vehemently oppose.

Among fired workers covered by the Tuesday complaint are Latrice Johnson, who said she was laid off from a job she “loved” as a delivery driver servicing Queens and Brooklyn in August 2025. She said she was at home on her day off when a group chat of her coworkers began blowing up: Managers had apparently told people who clocked in at the sprawling Amazon garage in Maspeth, Queens, known as DBK4 that the company would be shutting down immediately. 

Official word of the mass layoff came several days later, when Johnson received a boilerplate letter from Cornucopia Logistics, the Amazon subcontractor where she worked for two years. The state Labor Department’s WARN notice portal lists Aug. 20, 2025 as the garage’s closure date, but Aug. 26 as the notice date.

“It was devastating. I was looking forward to going back in and making next week’s paycheck,” Johnson, a single mother, told The City Reporter. “You call me a top driver two months ago, and now you’re giving me the boot?”

The Teamsters’ complaint lists Johnson’s former employer and a dozen others, as well as Amazon itself, among the companies it alleges flouted the WARN Act. The union estimates affected workers could be owed up to $11 million in back pay.

MORE: UPS Tops List of Bus-Lane Blockers Caught on Camera Last Year

In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly dismissed the complaint as bluster from the Teamsters. He reiterated that the impacted drivers were not Amazon employees, and that the tech giant bears no responsibility for its subcontractors’ operations, including “decisions about whether to close their businesses.”

The subcontractors, Kelly said, “are independent small businesses. They make their own decisions when it comes to hiring, fleet management, capacity planning and route assignments — and whether they want to work with other companies besides Amazon.”

Kelly noted it is the subcontractors’ responsibility “to comply with all applicable WARN laws” when they close their doors — and to give Amazon a heads-up, too.

In Amazon’s parlance, the subcontractors are known as “delivery service partners,” or DSPs.

“We ask DSPs to keep us informed so that if they do cease operations, we’re able to connect impacted individuals with other DSPs in the area who may be hiring and to ensure continuity of delivery services for customers,” Kelly said.

Spokespeople for Cornucopia and other subcontractors did not respond to requests for comment.

New York’s 90-Day Rule

In New York, private businesses with 50 or more full-time employees must give 90 days’ notice of closures or mass layoffs to employees and the state Department of Labor. Businesses that do not provide notice may be required to pay back wages and benefits to employees and pay a civil penalty.

Last year, the shuttered news outlet The Messenger agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a federal class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of nearly 300 staff who claimed they’d been laid off without warning. 

Amazon has for years insisted the workers delivering its packages for the company — who drive Amazon-branded vehicles, wear Amazon-branded vests and rely on Amazon for roadside support — are not actually its employees. In New York, Amazon’s delivery fleet is subcontracted by more than 40 delivery service partners, an arrangement critics say shields the tech giant from liability in case of accidents, wage theft complaints and collective bargaining.

In a six-page letter affixed to the complaint, Randy Korgan, the director of the Teamsters’ Amazon division, and the president of the union’s New York council, Thomas Gesualdi, urged the state Labor Department and the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to investigate Amazon and the workers’ direct employers for the alleged WARN Act violations and to “open enforcement proceedings where appropriate.”

A spokesperson for the state Labor Department said the complaint was being reviewed.

City Hall spokesperson Cassio Mendoza said in a statement that the Teamsters’ allegations “underscore the fact that subcontracting by companies like Amazon has become a way to outsource labor and accountability, leaving last-mile delivery drivers with unstable incomes and dangerous working conditions while making our streets less safe.”

The union is the leading force pushing the City Council to pass a bill that would force Amazon to directly hire delivery workers.

Amazon and business groups claim the bill, known as the Delivery Protection Act, will kneecap small businesses and lead to thousands of lost jobs. Representatives for Amazon have said the company may consider pulling out of New York entirely if the law passes.

The bill, introduced by Councilmember Tiffany Cabán of Queens, is backed by 34 lawmakers and Mamdani but has yet to be brought to a full vote.

Records show Amazon has bankrolled a campaign against the bill to the tune of more than $5 million, New York Focus reported.

“New Yorkers should not be forced to subsidize corporate profits with less safe streets and more precarious jobs,” Mamdani said in a statement last week formally throwing his support behind Cabán’s bill. “It’s time to end the subcontracting model that puts profits over people and build an economy that works for working New Yorkers.”

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Teamsters Hit Amazon Over Delivery Worker Layoffs, With Millions at Stake appeared first on The City Reporter.

This story was originally published by Documented. Sign up for their newsletter at documentedny.com/newsletter.

At Fleur de Lis Beauty & Esthetics in Flatbush, Brooklyn, clients typically arrive with an appointment. But in the nearly 10 years the luxury medical spa has been in the community, co-owner Wendy Jules says daily walk-ins weren’t unusual.

“You would get like at least five to 10 people come in and say, ‘What services do you offer over in the neighborhood’ or ‘We’re visiting from out of town,’” said Jules.

In recent months, those casual drop-ins have become much less common. In July, Jules said there were weeks when only about four people stopped in — a drastic change, especially in a neighborhood where summer typically brings more people outside.

“You can definitely see there’s a downturn on the activity in the street,” she said. “There’s usually more people out, more people shopping, or people stopping in to see what services are being offered.”

Jules first noticed the slowdown around the end of May, roughly the same time businesses and residents began sharing concerns about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the area.

“I haven’t seen it because I don’t know if they’re in uniform or not,” she recalled, “but there have been other businesses who would say, ‘Hey, there’s some activity on this street. Stay vigilant and keep your eyes open.’ It’s scary.”

That fear extends beyond Fleur de Lis, and has affected businesses across Flatbush, one of Brooklyn’s largest immigrant communities. The neighborhood is home to roughly 20% of New York City’s Caribbean community and many of its businesses are immigrant-owned. 

A recent survey conducted by the Flatbush-Nostrand Junction Business Improvement District found that 70% of local business owners who responded reported a decrease in foot traffic within the last year. Fifty percent said customers had explicitly raised concerns about ICE and 33% anticipated a likely reduction in their workforce. This has been a trend across New York City, where immigrant-heavy neighborhoods have seen a decline in business and foot traffic, Documented previously reported.

Kenneth Mbonu, president and executive director of the Flatbush-Nostrand Junction Business Improvement District, said those numbers are especially concerning for the corridor’s smallest stores.

“Many of these businesses are brick-and-mortar,so they have a location on the commercial corridor and many of them survive primarily by the foot traffic,” Mbonu told Documented.

More than 80% of businesses in the district are minority-owned, according to Mbonu, who estimates that of those minorities, more than 70% are immigrants.

Many of the businesses, Mbonu said, were already adjusting to seeing fewer customers, a trend that began during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People were working from home, so the commute to and from work was less,” he explained. “But with those slight declines in foot traffic in the area, that affected a lot of us, more businesses that can’t really transform directly to these kinds of changes.”

Smaller businesses have fewer ways to adapt when customers stop showing up in person, Mbonu said, including limited online and social media infrastructure.

Those pressures have since been compounded by tariffs and heightened immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. The BID survey published in July asked merchants about both.

Among owners willing to disclose financial details, Mbonu said some reported significant losses.

“We saw that a lot of their revenues had dropped by even up to 50%. And that’s a drastic situation for many of these businesses because many of them would not be able to pay their rent, which is usually their biggest cost,” he said.

The decline in foot traffic has led some merchants to begin delivering products directly to people. “But that is an added cost on them,” Mbonu said. “But they don’t have a choice. They have to keep their clients happy.”

Immigration enforcement is also affecting staffing. Mbonu said some merchants have reported multiple ICE raids, while workers with pending immigration applications who are allowed to work still fear leaving home or reporting to their jobs.

“Many of them did not want to take any risk due to the indiscriminate nature of the ICE arrests and so on,” Mbonu said. “It’s just not a healthy environment for a lot of the small businesses and their challenges.”

That fear is not confined to people without legal status, he added.

“Some of them even have green cards or some of them even have their U.S. passports. They’re legal. But just the fear of being arrested in error and finding themselves in Venezuela and having to go through the process could be quite intimidating and frightening,” he said. “So they just don’t want to come out.” More than 170 U.S. citizens were detained by ICE in 2025, according to ProPublica. 

In Flatbush’s large Caribbean immigrant community, these conversations have also included uncertainty surrounding Temporary Protected Status and what changes could mean for Haitians who have spent years building lives in the United States. Many businesses have lost staff or closed because of TPS work authorization terminations, as Documented previously reported.

For Jules, a child of Haitian immigrants, the end of TPS work authorization has hit particularly close to home. It has affected her business, her customers, her neighborhood, and her family. 

“They [Haitians who no longer have TPS] have homes, they have cars, they have careers. Like, now does everybody just get up and go to Haiti and start over? Like, how does this work?” Jules said, adding that some have chosen to leave the country rather than risk detention.

The consequences can ripple through entire families, particularly in immigrant communities where relatives may pool resources, financially support one another or send money to family members in the Caribbean.

“Now all of the money that you’ve saved or your resources are drained through lawyers. You’re concerned about if your parent is eating, is your cousin eating? What if the person is pregnant and you know they’re not getting the best treatment? It’s not like you’re saying, ‘OK, let’s put you on a JetBlue flight and send you home.’ You’re going from facility to facility, far away to be processed and documented and all this stuff,” she said.

While immigration enforcement has not changed the services Fleur de Lis provides, Jules has found herself using the business as another place to share information with people worried about what could happen to them or their relatives.

“I always tell  people who are dealing with that situation, ‘Be very careful. Make sure you’re walking with your documents. If you have to report to somewhere, please let your family know. Get a power of attorney so if something does happen that you can have someone speak on your behalf,’” she said.

For the BID, documenting those experiences is a first step toward helping merchants. Mbonu said the organization hopes to use the survey findings to work with agencies and community partners on solutions for businesses confronting lower foot traffic, staffing concerns, higher costs and an increasingly anxious customer base.

“The small micro businesses are the crux of our community and nobody really actually appreciates the impact they have on the business community and on the community and the vibrancy of the neighborhood as a whole,” Mbonu said. “But once this has been challenged, the impact is quite seen here. And it’s just that we need to come up with flexible approaches to help solve many of these problems.”

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Flatbush Businesses Report Less Foot Traffic Amid Trump Immigration Crackdown appeared first on The City Reporter.

Millionaires who captured more than half of all of New York City’s income growth since the pandemic.

A poverty rate that keeps climbing and is much higher than the nation as a whole.

Stratospheric Wall Street profits.

Record numbers of New Yorkers receiving cash assistance and SNAP benefits.

The image suggested by these data points and more in the charts below is a K. An upward-sloping line that shows the gains by the few. And a downward-sloping line showing the deteriorating financial well-being of so many others.

The K-shaped economy, a concept popularized in 2020 by William & Mary economist Peter Atwater, is a national issue. 

And as the election victories by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his fellow democratic socialists show, its impact goes far beyond the economy. 

The Rich ‘Feel Invulnerable’

“The reason the K-shaped economy matters isn’t because of what it says about wages or wealth, but what it says about how people feel and their life experience,” Atwater told The City Reporter. 

“Today, those at the top feel invulnerable. Moreover, they have an overabundance in everything that matters,” he said. “Meanwhile, those at the bottom feel increasingly powerless and uncertain. They see scarcity in every direction they turn.”

Top officials in the Trump administration dismiss the whole idea.

“I can say here definitively, the K-shaped economy is over,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last month, arguing that wages are growing fastest for low-paying jobs.

But even if that is more than a statistical blip, it’s not true for New York City. 

“The way finance and tech are growing today, coupled with wage stagnation for most workers, makes the post-pandemic NYC economy more polarized than ever,” James Parrott, senior advisor to the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, said in an email.

The data and charts in this story show that the K shape may be the defining symbol of the city’s economy.

What follows is a series of data charts that show New York City’s extreme K, with an emphasis on income, the rise in New Yorkers’ reliance on safety net benefits, and the divergence in real estate ownership.

Growing Income Inequality and Poverty 

The city’s top 1%, or some 40,700 millionaires, captured 53% of income growth over five years. Since 2019, the rate of income growth has ramped up for the city’s wealthiest, while it has slowed for the 99%.

Meanwhile, poverty has reached a record high for the third consecutive year in 2024, double the national rate.

More New Yorkers have turned to federal and state aid for health insurance and food, but many are losing access to the programs. Cash assistance enrollment has climbed steadily as more rely on the safety net, but thousands are losing benefits due to federal cuts to Medicaid and work requirement restrictions to SNAP.

“The cost of living in New York City, quite frankly, even if you had a full-time job and weren’t on SNAP benefits, it’s very challenging these days. Food inflation, the prices in grocery stores, people cannot afford [them] anymore,” said Lakisha Morris, division director for food and housing stability at Catholic Charities.

“You’re making decisions on whether three of us are going to eat tonight or I’m just going to feed my two kids. And these are true, hard facts,” she said. “There is no immediate relief. People are challenged. And the jobs that are paying a better living wage are hard to come by these days.”

The top 1%, meanwhile, are doing better than ever. Homeownership used to be the pinnacle of the American Dream. Now homeownership feels unreachable for younger Americans.

Speaking of Home Ownership…

The real estate market has seen signs of distress as more and more New Yorkers struggle to afford homes amid a booming luxury market. Manhattan is a prime example. Over the last year, the overall housing market saw an 8.2% loss, but contracts and listings for ultra-luxury homes have proliferated, with $5 million and $10 million+ homes dominating.

“I would expect to have an increase in home sales at that price point this year, even as the total number of sales in New York is flat,” said Mike Simonsen, chief economist at COMPASS, a real estate brokerage. 

“Those forces still seem to be underway, and there has to be some dramatic change in policy or macroeconomic conditions before that changes,” he said.

The vast majority of New Yorkers are renters — 69% of households rent their homes, according to a 2024 report from the city comptroller — but the cost of rent has steadily outpaced income growth.

This means more New Yorkers are falling into lower income brackets and becoming severely rent-burdened, spending half or more of their household income on rent.

‘You’re Either Poor or Rich’

Only high-wage industries, or the top 20% of workers, saw their hourly wage growth outpace inflation. Middle-wage workers saw their income stagnate or decline from 2024 to 2025 while top earners captured nearly all wage growth.

“It’s basically the almost-disappearance of the middle class. You’re either poor or rich,” said Mohamed Obaidy, economist and associate director of the Center for NYC Affairs.

“These are characteristics of developing countries… what this means for New York City is we’re coming backwards and becoming more of a developing country.”

The majority of jobs have also been low-wage labor, with exceptions in healthcare. High-wage industries grew slowly, adding comparatively fewer roles.

But in the last two years, higher-wage sectors like finance, tech, and consulting captured the largest wage and job growth.

The Price Tag For NYC Kids

This means that households must have working adults in higher-wage industries to exceed the living wage to support a child. Not a single industry’s average wage is enough to cover the cost of a child. In two-person households where only one adult is working, only those in management, professional, or tech industries can support a child. If two adults work, average wages for most industries pay enough, but some lower-wage industries do not.

Greg David and Kennedy Sessions contributed to this story.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Inside NYC’s K-Shaped Economy: A Few Do Well, Most Do Not appeared first on The City Reporter.

New Yorkers will soon once again be able to enjoy dining in restaurant roadside sheds year-round and enclosed sidewalk cafes during the coldest months of the year under a package of bills the City Council passed Thursday in a move to expand outdoor dining. 

Many of the city’s streets were lined with curbside tables during a pandemic-era outdoor dining heyday, but unkempt sheds, rodent infestations and dwindling parking spaces prompted lawmakers to pass regulations limiting the program. An estimated 12,500 restaurants citywide had outdoor dining setups at the height of that period, according to a 2025 city comptroller report, or nearly five times the 2,700 the city Department of Transportation says are currently allowed to operate. 

“It certainly is a re-imagining of streetscapes,” Andrew Rigie, head of the nonprofit New York City  Hospitality Alliance, told The City Reporter. He said the program’s expansion would create jobs, generate tax revenue and “help small businesses survive.” 

Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who sponsored the measure to bring back roadside sheds throughout the year, said Thursday that the city recorded a 90% decline in restaurants offering outdoor dining after the Adams administration implemented restrictions on the program in 2023, because, Restler said, it became “stupidly expensive” to reconstruct the structures every summer. The program also experienced a backlog of hundreds of permit applications this spring, with outdoor dining season running from April 1 through Nov. 29, Comptroller Mark Levine found.

‘Getting the Balance Right’

The legislative package also allows restaurants to weatherproof and winterize their setups, pay their annual fees in quarterly installments to reduce financial burdens on small businesses and requires them to clean up trash and keep out pests. (In 2022, former Mayor Eric Adams took a sledgehammer to an allegedly rat-ridden Manhattan sidewalk cafe.) Restler emphasized that, under the bills, operators would be penalized for repeated violations related to cleanliness and vermin.

Council Speaker Julie Menin said Thursday that the legislature is trying to fix a “broken” system through these measures. 

“This is about getting the balance right: supporting our small businesses, creating jobs and keeping our neighborhoods clean and livable,” Menin, a former restaurant owner, said in a statement. 

The promised expansion comes as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration pledges to cut red tape for small businesses. His Commission on Government Efficiency recently approved a ballot proposal to reduce the outdoor dining application timeline by an estimated 75%. Voters will get to vote on it in the November election. 

“Mayor Mamdani proudly supports this much-needed legislation to improve outdoor dining and looks forward to working with City Hall to implement a year-round program that is more accessible to more restaurants and ensures our streets can be used in a variety of ways to benefit all New Yorkers — not just vehicles,” City Hall spokesperson Jeremy Edwards said in a statement.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Bon Appétit: Year-Round Roadside Dining Set To Return to NYC Under Newly Passed Bills appeared first on The City Reporter.

Brooklyn Cyclones concessions workers have been getting stiffed on some of their paychecks this season, as tips disappeared under new management, according to interviews and records obtained by The City Reporter. 

Summer frequently draws long lines of spectators buying hot dogs and beers to the city-owned Coney Island stadium, where customers are automatically prompted to tip after every purchase. Yet employees have not received any tips on some paychecks, according to 15 pay stubs obtained from a half dozen workers between May and August. Many of the workers, youths in their late teens and early 20s, said the missing tips have made it more difficult to cover their living expenses. 

“I had to get a second job just to pay for my tuition because I was counting on this job,” said one cashier. “With our pay being so low and not getting tips, it wasn’t going to be enough to get me through my semester.” 

Employees began noticing the missing tips after the team’s owner, Diamond Baseball Holdings, took over managing the concessions from a contractor at the start of the 2026 season. In previous years, workers could earn as much as $200 or more on a busy night. The concessions do not accept cash, so all tips are made via credit or debit cards. Some workers have put out tip jars in a mostly futile attempt to make up some of the difference, they said.

Failing to pay employees their tips violates state labor laws. Credit card tips must be paid out by the end of the same pay period. Employers who illegally retain tips can be prosecuted for wage theft and charged with grand larceny under the state’s penal code. Workers agreed to speak with the City Reporter on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. 

“The law, especially in New York, makes it very clear that tips are the property of employees,” said Mel Gonzalez, director of the Employment Law Project at the New York Legal Assistance Fund. “If I give someone some money and somebody else comes and takes it, that’s just stealing.”

In an interview, Elbert Sanders, the Cyclones’ food and beverage director, said that he learned of the issue after workers showed him that their pay stubs did not include tips. He gave conflicting information about when he learned about the withheld tips, and suggested that a recently-terminated manager was responsible. 

That manager was fired for allegedly adding tips to other people’s paychecks as well as their own, emails obtained by The City Reporter show. 

“I can’t tell you my level of disappointment that you would have a person leading people who wasn’t paying attention to the tips being paid out,” Sanders told The City Reporter. “It’s inexcusable.”

Sanders said he reported the problem to the Cyclones’ owner and fixed the issue himself. “I made sure each one of those people got tipped out for the time that they were there,” he said.

Still, pay stubs reviewed following the termination of the manager show that as recently as August 7, some employees have not received tips. In interviews, workers said they’ve heard nothing about back pay for lost gratuities from earlier in the season. Others received tips inconsistently — on some pay checks their wages included tips while others did not, records show. 

“Even if we’re getting our tips now, what about all of the other weeks?” one employee said, as she reviewed a pay stub on a recent afternoon in Coney Island.

The Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league affiliate of the New York Mets, were purchased in 2024 by Diamond Baseball Holdings as part of an acquisition spree that saw the conglomerate snap up almost 50 minor league teams nationwide. The team’s home base is at Coney Island’s Maimonides Park. The company manages all aspects of the franchise, including ticketing and concessions.

“We take employee matters very seriously and have taken necessary steps to ensure employees have received their appropriate compensation in the wake of the transition between service providers,” said Lauren Flemming, a vice president of communications for Diamond Baseball Holdings. The company took over the concessions operation from a contractor in 2026. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has prioritized enforcing labor laws after campaigning on affordability issues. Last month, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection reported that 70,000 delivery drivers have made an additional $104 million in tips this year after the city began enforcing a law that required delivery companies to present tip options at checkout. 

Minor League Spending Spree

Maimonides Park first opened in 2001 as part of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s pledge to bring professional baseball back to Brooklyn. After the park was built with $20 million in public funds, the Mets moved an affiliated minor league team from Massachusetts to Coney Island, renaming it the Cyclones after the famous rollercoaster nearby. The team has won six division titles and produced more than 30 MLB players.

A onetime part of Mets owner and billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen’s New York City empire, the team’s ownership changed hands in late 2024, when private equity firm Diamond Baseball Holdings acquired the Cyclones from Cohen Private Ventures. 

Established in 2021, the little-known firm has invested at least $2 billion in acquisitions and upgrades in the last five years, according to the Sports Business Journal. The company has picked up teams across the country including in San Jose, California; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Memphis, Tennessee. Diamond Baseball Holdings is in turn owned by Silver Lake Partners, a firm with a vast portfolio of technology and entertainment investments, including a share of Madison Square Garden and the WWE franchise.

The company’s strategy has included appealing to local governments to support renovations and new stadium constructions. Gov. Kathy Hochul allocated $6 million to Diamond Baseball Holdings in this year’s state budget to help rehabilitate the upstate stadium of another New York team, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. 

The City Reporter reviewed public employment postings of the 49 teams acquired by Diamond Baseball Holdings. In many of its stadiums, the company still contracts with vendors to staff its concession stands, according to job posts. But in at least 15 of its stadiums, the company employs concession workers directly, the postings show. That includes Maimonides Park. 

Until last year, the park’s concession stands were operated by global food services company Aramark. Current workers said that while working for Aramark, they each had a unique login that allowed them to track the credit card tips earned during each shift. At the end of each week, employees knew exactly how much they had earned.

Tips make up a significant part of concessions workers’ earnings. One employee averaged more than $150 per week in additional tips under Aramark over a five-week period last year, worker bank statements show. The amount of tips the worker received last year was equal to more than 12 hours of hourly pay after taxes, or two to three shifts. 

Employees who worked at the stadium both last year and this year said that during a packed weekend game, their tips could sometimes reach hundreds of dollars in one night. A weeknight game may be sparsely attended but promotional nights — like Seinfeld night on August 1 that included a bobblehead giveaway and an Elaine Benes dance competition — can draw capacity crowds to the 7,000-seat stadium. 

Before the start of the 2026 season, Diamond Baseball Holdings emailed staff explaining that they would need to be rehired, since it was no longer contracting with Aramark. Returning workers described a cursory hiring process. Upon accepting the job, each worker signed an employment agreement that contained no mention of tips as well as an arbitration agreement, according to documents reviewed by the City Reporter. 

By signing the arbitration agreement, employees waived their right to a trial for any disputes over their employment, including their wages, the document shows. Instead, employees must settle any disputes individually and class action suits are prohibited. 

Labor advocates have repeatedly criticized these agreements as frequently exploitative of low-wage workers.

“Arbitration is never a worker-friendly forum,” said Carmela Huang, a senior attorney at the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. “It’s a way of really keeping workers from accessing their rights once they’ve been established.”

Under Diamond Baseball Holdings, managers told employees, rather than earning tips individually, gratuities would be pooled and distributed between the employees of each concession stand, according to interviews and emails. But cashiers can’t track the amount of tips their stand earns because everyone uses the same login. 

Still, for weeks, cashiers earned no tips on their paychecks at all, paystubs show. Under New York labor laws, when tips are paid to employees on a credit card, they must be paid out by the next paycheck. 

Even with the shift to pooled tips, the company must be able to clearly account for how they are divided between staff, said Richard Blum, an employment attorney with the Legal Aid Society. 

“They should be indicating to people what the total amount of tips was, and then each person should know how much they’re getting,” he said. 

As frustration grew among employees, some workers resorted to putting out empty soda cups to earn some extra cash, the City Reporter observed at several games. Occasionally, employees have warned customers not to bother tipping on their credit card, since the money wasn’t going to concessions staff. 

But more often, amid the fast pace of the concessions counters, employees didn’t have the opportunity to say anything.

“People just usually tap their card and hit the tip button real fast,” said one worker. “I don’t want to tell them that we’re not getting it after they’ve paid.”

While tips have begun appearing on some paychecks, the payments have been inconsistent, workers said. The City Reporter reviewed pay stubs from throughout the season that did not include any notation for tips at all. Even when tips began appearing on some employees’ pay stubs, on some occasions they totaled as little as $30 after several shifts. 

Manager Fired

In early July, Diamond Baseball Holdings accused a manager of misappropriating employee tips and terminated her, according to emails obtained by the City Reporter. 

“We conducted a thorough investigation and found evidence that you distributed tips to employees who were not clocked in during the relevant shifts and added tips to your own paychecks,” wrote Tara Tillman, a human resources director at Diamond Baseball Holdings. The July 6 email continued that “this constitutes theft and a serious breach of fiduciary responsibility incompatible with continued employment.”

The employee disputed the outcome of the investigation in a follow-up email, offering documentation to support her account. Tillman did not respond to additional questions from the manager about her termination, according to the emails. 

Diamond Baseball Holdings did not respond to detailed questions from the City Reporter about whether the company conducted any wider investigation into how the tips are distributed among stadium workers. It said it did not comment on individual personnel matters when asked about the termination of the manager. 

After the manager was fired, employees continued to question whether their tips were correct. On July 17, a cashier wrote to Sanders, the Cyclones’ director of food and beverage, to inquire about how the tips were distributed, emails show. She discovered her tips were significantly lower than one of her friends working at the same stand, according to pay stubs and interviews.

The director responded that the tips were pooled daily among the workers at each concession stand and did not include managers. He encouraged the employee to offer better service. 

“The stands with the least amount of drama and conflict tend to have higher tip pools,”  he wrote. 

In an interview with the City Reporter, Sanders reiterated that all tips have been paid out. “I know that I did what was right,” he said. “Once I got there, I made sure that that was no longer an issue.”

Still, not all employees are receiving tips as part of their wages. Two workers shared copies of their most recent pay stubs with the City Reporter, dated August 7. Although both employees had worked multiple shifts during that pay period, neither received any tips, records show.

“If workers have not been getting their tips, that’s clearly illegal under the New York Labor Law,” said Louis Pechman, a labor attorney who teaches a course on wage theft at Fordham Law School. 

Even though tips have been included on some employees’ pay checks, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the company is in compliance with the law, Pechman said. “The obvious concern is whether the workers receive back pay for tips that were misappropriated by management,” he said.   

In a second interview, on Wednesday evening, Sanders insisted that all eligible employees had received their tips.

The Cyclones’ season ends on September 6, with a home game at Maimonides Park. Concessions employees said they were already applying to better paying stadium gigs. The base pay for a cashier working at the U.S. Open is about $23 per hour. 

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Brooklyn Cyclones Withheld Tips From Concessions Workers, Records Show appeared first on The City Reporter.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani may have capped rents for tenants in stabilized apartments, but for the rest of the city, the cost of renting just keeps going up.

Average, median and average per-square-foot rents rose to a record in Manhattan in July, with the median rent reaching $5,000 for the first time, 6.4% higher than a year ago, according to a new data tracker from real estate expert Jonathan Miller and industry publication The Real Deal.

All three metrics also hit records in Brooklyn, with median rent now at $4,500, a whopping 17% higher than a year ago.

Several Possible Factors

Miller attributed the increase in part to rising mortgage rates, which have meant New Yorkers who would like to buy homes can’t afford to and have remained in their rentals, diminishing the supply of available units.

But the 2025 FARE Act, which largely eliminated brokerage commissions paid by new tenants, may be playing a role in declining available apartment inventory in both Manhattan and Brooklyn. Miller said he thinks landlords are holding units off the market while they try to figure out how to avoid paying the brokerage fee.

Only 6,000 new leases were signed in Manhattan in July, a 20% decline. In Brooklyn, the 3,000 new leases were down by almost a third.

Other real estate experts have said landlords whose buildings include both stabilized and market-rate apartments would increase rents on the market-rate units to offset the rent freeze on regulated ones.

Apartment rents tend to rise during the summer, when many New Yorkers move, and then level off in the fall. Miller said he isn’t sure that will happen this year.

“I think that rents will continue to rise since mortgage rates are expected to rise, given the forces embedded in the economy, such as tariffs, the Iran War with its higher energy and transportation costs, and a new chair of the Federal Reserve” who is signaling that interest rates may have to increase, Miller said.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Wait, How Much? Manhattan and Brooklyn Rents Hit Record Highs appeared first on The City Reporter.

Nearly six months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a raft of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, few New York City small businesses have benefited from tariff refunds, even as they struggle under new import levies. 

Importers across the country have claimed $121.75 billion in refunds since the landmark February decision that struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs, but almost none of that money will reach the places New Yorkers dine and shop at, according to experts and businesses. 

The tariff mess is a significant drain on small businesses in New York City. A recent report by the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce cited tariffs as among the top factors, along with inflation, that are squeezing bottom lines across the five boroughs. Small businesses in the New York metro area are “absorbing an estimated $4.5 billion annually in tariff costs,” the report said.

And small importers say that filing for a refund is a daunting process that does little to alleviate the uncertainty of when the next cycle of Trump tariffs might come. Meanwhile, retailers and restaurants who buy from importers say tariff refunds have not been passed onto them — or to their customers.

‘Take the Hit’

Greg D’Agostino, who imports Italian wine to a New Jersey warehouse and sells to retailers in New York and Connecticut, said he qualified for a tariff refund but hadn’t bothered to file.

“When you’re in business, you just realize, ‘You know what, I just got hit by a car,’” he said. “Your car is damaged, so you just keep driving. Small business, you don’t have time for this.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it did not have a state-by-state breakdown of refunds, so it’s hard to know how much tariff money New York importers have clawed back from the government. 

But some business owners said they wouldn’t bother.

“There’s a lot of money out there that could be refunded if people hadn’t been so beaten down by the whole tariff process,” said Liz Picarazzi, the owner of a Brooklyn company manufacturing aluminum trash bin enclosures. “Maybe you engaged a lawyer last year, and you just got nothing but bills.”

For others, getting money back means waiting for their importer of record, often a freight forwarding company, to receive a refund and pass it on to them, which can be a lengthy process.

“You can imagine they have had a huge backlog of people put in for refunds and requests,” Lan Oppenheimer, the owner of the packaging company Golden Box, told The City Reporter. Oppenheimer said he’s waiting for a refund on the 12.5% tariff he paid on two years of imports. “I understand that, you know, it’s not their fault,” he said. “They were just the ones who were collecting it.”

Some importers, meanwhile, are “fearful of any kind of retribution from the government,” said Joseph M. Spraragen, a customs attorney at Grunfeld Desiderio Lebowitz Silverman & Klestadt. “I’m not saying it’s a well-grounded fear, but there are folks out there in the business community that are just afraid of making any kind of a claim.”

Even with the February decision that eliminated the majority of tariffs on imported goods, some importers say that they will keep prices where the tariffs pushed them, out of the fear that Trump could unleash a new round of disruptive duties without warning. 

“I’ll just take the hit and I’ll just move,” D’Agostino said of a potential new tariff on his wines and liquors. “And if it goes away, then I keep my price where it is, and I’ve built in an extra margin into my bank.”

He is not wrong that another one is always coming. 

When the Supreme Court struck down the emergency powers tariffs this February, Trump announced a global tariff within hours under a 1974 trade law — which, when it expired in late July, was succeeded by “forced labor” tariffs on goods from more than 60 countries, including the European Union. 

 “When you don’t understand what the cost of importing a product is, and the laws and rules are changing constantly, it’s very difficult to do business planning,” Sparagan said.

‘We Just Want Stability’

Picarazzi says she has lived in a constant cycle of tariff torment for the aluminum that she needs to make her trash enclosures. After standing at 7.5% for more than five years, tariffs shot to 50% for the most of 2025, and fell to 25% earlier this year. 

“My husband, who’s my COO, and I say, ‘I can’t believe we’re celebrating 25%,’” she said ruefully.

Picarazzi said she spent a total of $400,000 on tariffs alone in 2025. Her trash enclosures were triple tariffed at one point, with bamboo taxed at between 15% and 25%, aluminum at 50%, and components coming from China at 20%. 

What the businesses want most is a sense of certainty over a refund. Even Picarazzi, who received a partial refund on her tariffs, said: “I actually have every reason to believe that it could go up.”

“We just want to have stability,” she said.

In a May order compelling the U.S. Customs commissioner to testify in a lawsuit over tariff refunds, Judge Richard Eaton of the Court of International Trade observed that “it is understood that most of the refunds that have been processed so far have gone to large importers, not small.”

V.O.S. Selections, a Manhattan liquor importer, was one of the main plaintiffs in the case that brought down the tariffs at the Supreme Court and started the refund process. A refund took six to eight weeks to arrive after V.O.S. filed on the day that the government’s refund portal opened. 

“It’s like seeing is believing,” said Chloe Schwartz, the company’s vice president. “When that money actually landed in the bank account, I was like, ‘Wow, okay.’”

Food and beverage is one of the industries most hard-hit by tariffs — nearly a third of the table wine Americans drink is imported, while 60% of fresh fruit and as much as 38% of fresh vegetables come from other countries, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Anthony Angrisani, who runs a liquor store on Arthur Avenue in The Bronx, says four of his imported staples saw price increases, led by Stara Sokolova, a Serbian brandy whose price went up by a third after Trump hit Serbia with a 35% tariff. Angrisani’s sales of Sokolova fell 20% and his gross sales are down 18% to date.

The Tomato Index

The same squeeze is happening at restaurants, which rely heavily on imported ingredients. Evette Zayas opened a combination burger joint and bakery called CakeBurgers in East Harlem in November 2019 and has not raised a single menu price since, which means every tariff increase is a direct hit to her margins. 

Her records show a dramatic increase in the costs of ingredients — a 25-pound case of tomatoes that cost $17.93 in April 2025 peaked at $79.95 this April. She gets her tomatoes directly from a domestic restaurant distributor but ascribes the volatility in tomato pricing to a 17% tariff on Mexican tomatoes.

The U.S. imported $7.74 billion of beef in fiscal year 2026, and the Trump administration is now considering lifting tariffs for beef to lower the price. The ground beef in Zayas’ burgers went from $3.95 a pound last year to $4.58 this year.

“We’re surviving because we’re not paying ourselves, number one,” she said. “And number two, we’re eating at cost,” meaning that she eats most of her meals at her own restaurant. 

Avoiding Avocado

Dana Morrissey, who co-owns a Mexican restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said she was surprised to see that prices haven’t gone down since the tariff refunds were announced in February. 

“We’ve not seen a meaningful decrease in any of those prices now that those tariffs have been rescinded,” she said. “We thought we were going to get a break, and we were very excited about it. And we did not.” 

Rather than raise prices, she has now re-strategized to avoid pricey ingredients on the menu, even when it means veering away from staples of Mexican cuisine.

“We’re featuring ingredients that are not astronomical,” she said. “We’re moving away from using products like avocado and tomatoes, and putting things that we can have our normal margins with.”

“Only the party that paid the duty, meaning the importer, is eligible to receive refunds,” Spraragen, the trade lawyer, said.

By the time a tariff reaches a Bronx liquor shelf or an East Harlem restaurant, it has already been included in the price of purchase and the businesses have no recourse to get it back. Whether importers choose to pass refunds down is, in Spraragen’s description, “very much a commercial case-by-case situation” — he has seen credits, splits, and importers that kept every dollar.

“These corporations are gonna get whatever they’re gonna get back,” Zayas of CakeBurger said. “They have not given us anything.”

Retailers suspect that some of the price increases they’re absorbing have nothing to do with  tariffs.

When plantain prices shot up at a local supermarket where Zayas buys her produce, she asked why and was told it was the tariffs — but the tariffs had not yet taken effect.

“I was a little bit angry, because I know about tariffs,” she said.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post ‘I Know About Tariffs’: Small Biz Struggles With High Costs, Trump Chaos appeared first on The City Reporter.

The digital age is dawning for older bus riders who refuse to dump coins for the MTA’s new fare-payment methods.

With OMNY now in use on 92% of paid bus trips, according to the MTA, the transportation authority is nudging golden-aged holdouts who still drop loose change into fareboxes to switch to the tap-and-go technology before coins are no longer accepted later this year. 

“One thing we have been doing is just being vocal,” said Demetrius Crichlow, president of New York City Transit. “We have been out there in every outlet possible, I have personally gone to a lot of senior centers and talked directly about the transition.”

But even after making the case for OMNY in presentations at more than 110 senior centers, as well as libraries, public housing developments, religious institutions and other locations with heavier coin usage on buses, the MTA still faces pockets of resistance among some older riders.

MTA officials announced the discontinuation of coin fares on buses last October, after eliminating hand-to-hand cash transactions at subway station booths in the early days of the pandemic. Cash transactions were permanently banned at the booths in 2021, though OMNY vending machines accept paper bills and change.

Yet coins still have a following on the buses.

Carmen Collazo, 77, said she prefers paying for bus fares by reaching into her sack of loose change instead of loading money onto her reduced-fare OMNY card.

“I feel more comfortable with the coins, but I guess I have to get used to it, go with the times and do what I need to do,” she said. “I have no choice.”

‘I Always Carry Extra Change’

MTA officials Alberto Roldan and Charley Cohen last week visited an East Harlem senior center to promote the tap-and-go payment system. The pair set up shop at a table stocked with lens tissues featuring a map of the subway system and with pamphlets on how riders 65 and older can tap into OMNY via farecards or mobile devices.

When Roldan, the MTA’s assistant director of government and community relations, asked the room of older New Yorkers how many had received reduced-fare OMNY cards, most of the attendees thrust their hands into the air.

“That’s a good start,” he said.

But Roldan was received with a “say what!” and an “oh, wow!” — along with a few groans — after informing the crowd that coins will no longer be accepted as payment on buses “at some point later this year.” 

“That’s why I always carry that extra change, just in case I don’t have no money on my OMNY card,” said Coleta Horton, 68. “I don’t want to beat the fare.”

MTA officials have emphasized that unlike MetroCards — whose sales ended at the end of 2025 — OMNY cards can be refilled online, at more than 2,700 retail locations and without having to set foot into a subway station.

“In the OMNY ecosystem, we have retail vendors — that means CVS, Walgreens, delis that we’ve partnered with — where a coin-based customer [or] a cash customer can go into these retailers and do these transactions, upload value into the OMNY cards,” said Quemuel Arroyo, the MTA’s chief accessibility officer. “They can do it from their homes if they have access to a computer.”

Even as the MTA has faced a host of complaints from riders during the yearslong conversion to OMNY, the tap-and-go technology is now used for 99% of paid subway trips, according to the transportation authority. 

But on buses — where about half of all passengers dodge the fare, according to MTA data — riders can still nickel-and-dime their way into a trip. (Officials have also said foreign coins and old tokens sometimes get dropped into the farebox.)

Ediberto Sanchez, a laborer from The Bronx, used quarters and nickels to partially pay the fare on a Bx12 bus he boarded on Fordham Road earlier this month.

“I pay what I can with coins, and when I start getting paid for work, then I will refill the card,” he told The City Reporter in Spanish. “Until then, I’ll pay $2 in coins, or whatever I can afford.”

‘You Can’t Do That With OMNY’

One of the chief complaints about OMNY that the MTA has faced is that fare readers on buses and in the subway do not tell riders the remaining balance on a fare card. Trip records are available online, but some OMNY converts said they still carry loose change.

“With the MetroCard, once you paid, you could still see how much you had on your card, but you can’t do that with OMNY,” said Edna DeLoatch, 72. “Then you get tired of lugging around those extra coins.”

Janno Lieber, the MTA’s chair and CEO, said last month that the transit agency is developing software updates to allow riders to more readily access OMNY balances when tapping in for a trip.

Cohen, who serves as senior accessibility officer at the transportation authority, reiterated that goal during his presentation at the East Harlem senior center.

“We know it’s an issue and we’re working to fix it, hopefully, by the end of the year,” he said.

While waiting for a bus along Fordham Road this month, 69-year-old Nydia Santana said she still sometimes pays the fare with loose change, but conceded OMNY has grown on her.

“Once you get used to it, it’s easier,” she said. “Plus, I’m tired of collecting coins.”

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post For Some Older NYC Bus Riders, Change Comes Easy. Just Not OMNY. appeared first on The City Reporter.

As New York City rolls out a new tax on pricey second homes, the state will be watching for evidence of potential tax fraud by owners who claim they mostly live elsewhere — thereby avoiding local or state income taxes or higher car insurance premiums — but actually spend most of their time in the city.

A spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul, who partnered with Mayor Zohran Mamdani to enact the pied-à-terre tax this year, told The City Reporter on Wednesday that her office is actively looking into any such cases revealed through the exemption process for the new surcharge — though it’s not immediately clear if the state will staff up for these audits.

In effect, the pied-à-terre tax could expose local residents who try to reduce the income taxes they owe by declaring homes outside of the city — in places where those taxes are lower — as their primary residences. The scope of the problem is murky, but city and state officials have long sought to combat residency fraud and collect legally owed levies.

“Hard-working New Yorkers pay taxes that fund our schools, roads, transit and public safety,” Hochul spokesperson Jen Goodman told The City Reporter in a statement. “The pied-à-terre tax was designed to ensure people who can afford luxury second homes, but don’t pay New York income taxes, are still contributing to the city they benefit from. If you’ve been falsely claiming to be a non-resident in order to cheat the system, it’s time to come clean — or our Department of Taxation and Finance will take action to ensure you pay your fair share.”

Matt Rauschenbach, a spokesperson for Mamdani, said City Hall shares Hochul’s goal of making sure everyone who claims a tax benefit or exemption is “actually supposed to be receiving it.

“We are committed to ensuring that every New Yorker who owes the pied-à-terre tax pays it — and helping those who don’t file for an exemption,” Rauschenbach added in a statement.

Mamdani and Hochul have estimated the second-home tax could generate up to $500 million annually to shore up the city’s budget. After a debut that confused many residents last week, the city is determining who must pay the tax, which will appear on affected property tax bills due Jan. 1. Owners have until Sept. 18 to seek an exemption from the city’s Finance Department.

As part of the rollout, the department said it sent letters to about 17,000 homeowners notifying them their property “may be subject to the new surcharge.” In some cases, recipients told The City Reporter and other news outlets they were full-time residents and were blindsided by the letters requiring them to prove they live in the city.

The tax covers one-, two- and three-family homes assessed by the city to be worth at least $5 million, as well as condo and coop units assessed to be worth at least $1 million. There are exemptions for non-owner-occupied properties occupied by a tenant, someone who collectively holds a majority interest in a corporate entity that owns a property, an owner’s immediate family member or a trust beneficiary.

As of Wednesday, about 2,600 people had submitted exemption applications to the city, according to NY1.

“The point of this is to make sure that only secondary homes of non-resident New Yorkers that are worth more than $5 million are the ones that are being subject to this tax,” Mamdani said at a press conference Wednesday. “I know there are some New Yorkers who bought their home and put it in a trust, others who bought their home and put it into an LLC [limited liability company], and therefore the city just wants to make sure that this is a primary residence holder.”

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post NYC Pied-à-Terre Tax Puts Primary-Resident Free Riders in Double Bind appeared first on The City Reporter.

Amid a decline in foreclosures citywide, the number of homeowners in The Bronx facing such cases has nearly doubled from the prior year, highlighting worrying economic trends in the borough.

A recent report from PropertyShark, a real estate research platform, shows first-time foreclosures of single- and two-family homes as well as coop and condo apartments in New York dropped 5% overall between the second quarter of 2026 and the same time period last year. Manhattan and Brooklyn each saw a four-year low.

But in The Bronx, the number of first-time foreclosures has risen from 57 last year to 109 this year. Many foreclosures came from the northeast neighborhoods of The Bronx, including Williamsbridge, where 10 foreclosures happened in the past quarter. Queens saw a smaller increase, from 128 to 140, according to the report. 

The Bronx’s figures are most worrying to experts because that borough has a much lower rate of homeownership than other boroughs do. In Queens, the homeownership rate is 45%, the highest in the city, but in The Bronx, it’s 20%, the lowest.

The uptick in Bronx foreclosures is likely to continue, as advocates warn of mounting debt and the added pressure of lien sales — currently under city review — that could make the situation worse.

Part of the trend, experts say, is explained by the reemergence of foreclosure cases that have been stuck in a backlog left over from a pandemic-era state moratorium on foreclosures.

“This was quite sudden, the uplift in cases in The Bronx. We’ve seen [foreclosures] grow more and more since 2022, after the moratorium was lifted,” said Eliza Theiss, a researcher at PropertyShark. 

She said foreclosure activity has yet to reach pre-pandemic levels, but is climbing.

One major red flag worrying advocates who spoke with The City Reporter: a climb in tax liens, or debt claims. At the same time, a temporary pause of the city’s tax lien sale — the public auction of homeowners’ unpaid debt — has reignited a debate about whether the Mamdani administration should continue or abolish the practice.

Other factors are exacerbating the trend in The Bronx, foreclosure prevention advocates say. The ongoing cost-of-living crisis and the end of federal assistance vouchers — a Biden-era initiative meant to last through 2030 that was terminated under the Trump administration — have created a domino effect. 

“We’ve definitely seen an uptick in individuals coming to us for help,” said Martha De Jesus, director of Bronx Legal Services’ Neighborhood Stabilization Project, which helps people navigate foreclosure litigation.

“This is the first time we’re seeing the surge at full bend … so we are in the middle of the perfect storm of conditions in The Bronx,” she said.

A Brewing Storm

Experts say the coming crisis is underscored by a major measure of distress for homeowners: getting hit with tax liens, a claim on a property that has debt.

While only two of the foreclosures in the PropertyShark report came from tax liens, over 3,400 of those were sold in The Bronx, according to De Jesus — a rise from previous years. She estimates thousands of homeowners may face foreclosure because they can’t afford to pay down their debt.

Gladstone Johnson, executive director of Bronx Neighborhood Housing Services, said he is seeing a huge uptick in notices of default. The city contracts with his organization to do outreach to residents at risk of foreclosure before their cases snowball. 

Johnson regularly receives from the city’s Department of Finance a list of people who have notices of default against their home. The number of contacts on the list has grown “substantially” between last year and now, he said, from around 4,000 Bronx residents to over 5,000. 

While around half of those residents were able to pay off their debt with BNHS’ alert, Johnson said the city-funded grant for the organization’s outreach program is insufficient, considering the growing list of names.

“This is the largest amount I’ve seen in the three years I’ve been here,” he said.

The Tax Lien Debate

Amid rising foreclosures in The Bronx is a debate about how the city should handle those with tax liens on their homes.

Starting in the Giuliani administration, the city previously held a tax lien sale each year where homeowners’ property and water bill debts are sold to private investor-backed trusts, which attempt to collect the debt while charging homeowners additional fees and interest.

Then the city paused the sale during the pandemic. Last fall, during the final months of the Adams administration, the city held its first tax lien sale in years. But in March, the Mamdani administration froze the sale again. 

Now a question remains about what City Hall will do next, as the city’s six-month moratorium on the tax lien sale ends in October. Without a full abolition of the sale and a focus on underlying issues, advocates say the risk of further mass displacement is high as foreclosed homes are purchased at auction by private investors.

“It is clear that the tax lien sale is a way for people to lose their homes,” said Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, in an interview with The City Reporter. He recently lost a two-family Brooklyn home he did not live in through a foreclosure after taking a “bad loan” on it to fund a sandwich business venture, he said. 

“The systems of home ownership and property ownership have always seemed to work against Black and brown communities, just from the inception,” Williams said.

Mamdani, a former foreclosure prevention counselor in Queens, called the tax lien sale “predatory” during his mayoral run. Now, a spokesperson for his administration says the review of the tax lien sale is “ongoing.”

“We look forward to sharing an update when the review concludes, as we work to create a fairer, more affordable city,” spokesperson Casey Berkovitz said in an email to The City Reporter.

Some, including Sean Campion, director of housing and economic development studies at the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission, say the tax liens program is an effective tool to get people to pay their property taxes and water bills.

“In previous periods where the tax lien sale has been suspended, we’ve seen that property tax delinquencies have gone up. If there are no consequences, people won’t pay their property taxes,” Campion said.

When Mamdani imposed the six-month moratorium and review on the sale in March, it resulted in an $80 million projected loss for the city’s preliminary budget, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office.

De Jesus said the tax lien moratorium serves as a “Band-Aid on a gunshot wound” of the foreclosure trend that disproportionately affects Black and brown communities and vulnerable populations like the elderly. She works with people who have owned their home for decades but risk losing it because of a missed water bill that compounds over time.

“Because they’re older and facing mental health issues, or their dementia becomes a big factor, they forget to make a payment,” she said.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Bronx Foreclosures Have Doubled. Experts Say Many More Are Coming. appeared first on The City Reporter.