Every January, New York City’s Department of Finance (DOF) does the same unglamorous thing it’s done for nearly 200 years: it puts a value on every property in the five boroughs and writes it down where the public can see it. The requirement traces back to 1830, when New York made recording property ownership mandatory statewide. In essence, for nearly 200 years, a nosy New Yorker could look up the value of their neighbor’s house, and that’s because New York has never treated property ownership as private: it’s a public record.
But that wasn’t the reaction to the publication of a supplemental roll by the DOF a “rich tax” dragnet, a doxxing operation, a “hit list.” Citadel’s Ken Griffin said he felt doxxed and called New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s April video, filmed outside his own $238 million Central Park South penthouse, a “dangerous” stunt—even though his purchase price, city valuation, and ownership have sat in the same public files for years. Nothing in the file was secret.
The DOF took two things it already tracks separately: assessed value, and which properties might not be a primary residence, and put them in one spreadsheet. Combining two already-public columns on an Excel file isn’t a breach. But the uproar does reveal a lot about the supposed socialist takeover of New York City.
