Rising Bensonhurst Property Taxes Constitute “Class Warfare” Angry Reader Asserts

This morning we discovered a frustrated email in our inbox from a local who keeps seeing property taxes increase on his Bensonhurst home. To add insult to injury, this reader not only experienced a high tax rate, but discovered that his friend in Carroll Gardens did not share the burden. Indeed, according to this area man, his buddy in the brownstone belt reported stable property taxes over the same period in which the Bean reader has watched his increase.

Have any of you experienced similar property tax increases? Our readers beyond southern Brooklyn — have you experienced stable property taxes?

We’ve reached out to our local southern Brooklyn politicians regarding what they have to say on the matter, and if anything is being done. No one’s gotten back to us yet, but we’ll keep you posted.

Here’s his email in full:

I am the owner of a three family home in Bensonhurst and have just received my latest property tax bill. I have found that The NYC Department of Finance has for the second time this year increased the property tax rate on 1 to 3 family homes, this time from 19.5% (up from 19.1% last year at this time) ) to 20.0%. Meanwhile, the property tax rate on residential properties of four units or more is 12.9%, down from 13.2% last year at this time (all figures rounded). I also had an “adopted tax” add-on of $100, and I have no idea what that represents. All I know is that my property taxes have nearly doubled in the past eight years, while a friend of mine who owns a four unit brownstone in upscale Carroll Gardens tells me his property taxes have been stable over the same period. He pays several thousand dollars less than I do each year on a property easily worth three times more than mine. The city has cut the property taxes for apartment houses (including those owned by slumlords) and brownstones (most of which, like my friend’s, contain four units and are located in politically connected gentrified areas). It is all too apparent that to compensate for the lost revenues, the city has jacked up the property tax rate, along with valuations, on small homeowners like me in working class and middle class “outer borough” communities scattered across the city. This is ongoing class warfare of the most blatant kind, with both racial and ethnic overtones, and disgracefully appears to have escaped the attention of my local representatives, none of whom to my knowledge have publicly spoken out on behalf of their constituents.