City, state tax laws force minority tenants to pay more: suit

The rent’s so damn high that people are suing.

Lawyers representing two tenants — one black, one Hispanic — filed an unprecedented class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the city and the state claiming property-tax laws are discriminatory.

They charged in court papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court that the convoluted rules overburden large apartment buildings that house mostly black and Hispanic tenants whose rents are jacked up to cover the higher tax rates.

At the same time, city and state legislation has gradually carved out breaks for owners of homes and smaller apartment buildings over the years, where more whites and Asians tend to live.

“If the suit is successful, it blows up the property-tax system,” said one real-estate source.

In 2013, homeowners paid half as much in total taxes as owners of condos and, co-ops even though the homes were collectively worth more than twice as much.

Among all the different types of dwellings, only owners of large apartment buildings don’t have a cap on how much their tax assessment can climb each year.

Property-tax quirks cited in the lawsuit include the recent sale of former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill’s penthouse at 15 Central Park West for $ 88 million — even though the city’s tax assessors had valued it at less than $ 4 million.

Lawyers at Newman Ferrara said the inequities have been an open secret for years, but the time was right to do something about it with Mayor de Blasio in City Hall.

“If we’re interested in rectifying income inequality, this is the issue he must confront right now,” said Randolph McGlaughlin, a lawyer on the case. “This is the opportunity for him to be true to his word.”

Tenants Ernest Robinson, of The Bronx, and Rosa Rodriguez, of Queens, were named as plaintiffs representing all African-American and Hispanic residents of city rental properties with 11 or more units.

Such tenants pay roughly one-third of their rent toward the owner’s property taxes, according to the Rent Guidelines Board.

“We will review the lawsuit once we are served,” said a city Law Department spokesman.

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