Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax isn’t far off Labour’s housing policy. Not that you’ll ever hear Starmer say it | Anna Minton

**TL;DR:** Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax isn’t far off Labour’s housing policy. Not that you’ll ever hear Starmer say it | Anna Minton

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The UK has its own progressive policies such as the second home and ‘mansion’ taxes. So why isn’t the PM shouting it from the rooftops? In April, to mark the day on which Americans are expected to file their taxes, the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, filmed himself on Billionaires’ Row , an enclave of super-tall apartment buildings just south of Central Park.

When he took office, he said, he would tax the rich, and now, outside the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s $238m penthouse, he was ready to make good on his pledge. “Today, we’re taxing the rich,” he said with a flamboyant smile, zooming his face into the camera. It was the opening to a short film unashamedly titled Happy Tax Day, New York. He went into battle armed with stats.

According to Mark Levine, NYC’s comptroller (a senior financial executive), the pied-à-terre tax on second homes will raise about $500m annually from about 11,200 properties. Anna Minton is reader in architecture at the University of East London. Her new book, Superprime: The Sterilisation of the City, will be published by Penguin next year Continue reading...

Source: Guardian Business

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Additional context: early-cycle stories often look bigger in headlines than in day-to-day impact. The useful move is to identify the smallest set of facts that would change your decision, then wait for those facts to land.