In April 2025, then-candidate Mayor Zohran Mamdani publicly stated that New York City “will use every single tool at our disposal, including seizing buildings from slumlords, to ensure that each and every New Yorker is given what is their right, a safe place to call their home.” But can the City of New York really just seize property from private owners simply because it deems them to be bad landlords? The answer to that is: it depends.

Under New York City Administrative Code (the “Admin. Code”) Sections 11-401 et. seq., the City has the right to seize “distressed” properties via foreclosure by commencing an “in rem” proceeding, assuming certain conditions are met. The City also has the right to seize property via eminent domain under the New York Eminent Domain Procedure Law(s)(the “EDPL”), if there is a public use or purpose underlying such eminent domain seizure.

When I started my legal career in the year 2000 at the City Law Department, Office of the Corporation Counsel (prior to entering private practice), I was assigned to prosecute tax lien sales and in rem foreclosures on behalf of the City. In rem foreclosure is a little-known tool that allows the City to foreclose on property when there are delinquent property taxes and a certain number of housing violations—and/or emergency repair charges thereon. 

So what exactly triggers an in rem proceeding and how does it work?

Pursuant to Admin. Code Section 11-319, the City is authorized to sell and/or foreclose tax liens on class 1 (single family) and class 2 (multi-family) properties where at least two years of delinquent real property taxes have accrued thereon, and on class 4 (commercial) properties where at least three years of delinquent real property taxes have accrued thereon. Water/sewer, environmental and other non-real property taxes with shorter delinquency times tax liens may be piggybacked onto the real property tax liens being sold and packaged together. This is called the City’s annual tax lien sale. 

Pursuant to Admin. Code Sections 11-401(4) and 11-401.1(a); Sections 11-404; 11-412.1, 11-412.3 and 11-412.4, without limitation, the City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (“HPD”) may identify distressed residential properties and ensure that the tax liens on them are excluded from the annual sale. Distressed property is defined as any class 1 and 2 property that is subject to a tax lien, with a lien-to-market-value ratio equal to or greater than 25% and an average of five or more hazardous or immediately hazardous housing code violations per unit, or with emergency repair liens in an amount greater than $1,000. See Admin. Code Sections 11-401(4) and 11-404; with some properties being eligible for in rem foreclosure only after one year of real property tax delinquency.

What does the City do with all of the properties it acquires in rem? In the olden days, the City would acquire these properties, manage them, take them off the tax rolls and assume full responsibility for their upkeep. This didn’t work because the City became the biggest slumlord in town; as the costs of maintaining the building, including the loss of tax revenue, significantly exceeded any income received from tenant rents. As a result, Local Laws 26 and 37 of 1996 and Local Law 69 of 1997 were enacted, allowing the City to enforce and sell delinquent real property tax liens pursuant to Admin. Code 11-301 et. seq. Since this still did not affect the City’s ownership status, the City started the Third-Party Transfer Program (“TPT”), which allowed it to foreclose in rem, then transfer the property to a third party deemed qualified and designated by HPD. See Admin. Code Section 11-412.2. The third party would then manage the property and theoretically rehabilitate it to prevent abandonment by the “bad landlord,” to protect tenants and ensure that the buildings remained in private ownership. Before a TPT deed can be conveyed, the City must wait four months from the date of entry of the final in rem judgment to give the owner time to pay off the tax liens and violations, and it must obtain City Council approval for transfer of the deed to the third party (usually a not-for-profit). 

The seizure of property “in rem” is neither quick nor easy, and it has not worked very well in the past. The TPT program was unofficially discontinued years ago, although it appears that the City recently used it again in 2025. Now what about seizure via eminent domain?

New York has embraced a broad definition of allowable public use/purpose for eminent domain seizures. Eminent domain has been used in New York for affordable housing, schools, parks and infrastructure projects, as well as to alleviate urban blight—virtually anything that serves a public use is a public purpose and allowed under the prevailing law of the land. See Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005). 

So can the Mamdani administration seize currently occupied, rent-regulated properties via eminent domain? Maybe.

In 2020, I represented the owner of 14 buildings who sold their properties to a City approved not-for-profit under threat of condemnation. In 2021, I represented the owner of 15 buildings in connection with the sale of their property to the same City approved not-for-profit, under threat of condemnation, for homeless housing. At that time, the properties were being partially used for homeless housing under the now obsolete cluster site program, which was discontinued at the end of the De Blasio administration. The stated public use for the potential condemnation of those properties was affordable housing, since many of the units were not occupied by rent-regulated tenants and were therefore free for occupation by formerly homeless families. Since the cluster site program ended, however, there has been a shortage of vacant rent-regulated apartments that could be used to house homeless individuals and/or families, so it is unlikely that the Mamdani administration could use that premise as a public purpose for condemnation purposes (since the rent-regulated buildings the administration would presumably be targeting are already deemed affordable housing).

There is a chance that the alleviation of urban blight would be a permissible public purpose under the EDPL and other governing law, in the event that the City decided to invoke eminent domain to acquire property from a “bad landlord;” with the understanding that the condition of any building subject to eminent domain seizure would play a big role in the determination of whether it is blighted or not.

So can the Mamdani administration seize property from bad landlords? Maybe. But as shown above, it won’t be so fast—or so easy. 

Jennifer Polovetsky is a partner at Duane Morris LLP.