A City Council Finance Committee hearing on tax-lien enforcement on Wednesday brought council members, agency commissioners, housing advocates and affected homeowners into a heated but mostly technical exchange over a five-bill package intended to curb foreclosures and keep homes in community hands.

Council Member Brannon, who chairs the committee, said the bills aim to let the city collect overdue taxes and water charges "without pushing working people out of their neighborhoods" and to add oversight and compassion to a system that for decades relied on private, investor-backed trusts. "What we're talking about today might sound technical, property tax enforcement reform, but this is something very, very real to people, their homes," Brannon said.

The package includes legislation to establish a city land bank (Intro 5-70a and companion bills), to require council approval or additional oversight when the Department of Finance sells liens (Intro 14-07), to require condo-board notification when a secondary-unit lien is to be sold (Intro 14-11), to require annual reporting on liens unresolved for more than 36 months (Intro 14-19), and to transfer existing liens to the land bank once it is established (Intro 14-20).

Why advocates back the bills

Speaker Adrienne Adams, the prime sponsor of the land-bank bill, framed the package as an equity remedy: she said lender- and investor-driven lien sales disproportionately affected Black, Latino and Asian New Yorkers and stripped intergenerational wealth from neighborhoods. Adams said the land bank would replace Delaware-chartered trusts with "a public entity designed to preserve affordability, create stability, and reinvest in neighborhoods," and would set a higher bar before a primary residence could face foreclosure — "going forward, debts would have to be the lesser of $200,000 or 20% of the property's market value before the home is subject to this final stage of foreclosure." Adams said the bills still allow the city to collect revenue while adding safeguards.

Advocates and community organizations that testified during the public-comment portion supported the core reforms and urged stronger implementation details. Representatives from Neighborhood Restore, East New York Community Land Trust, New Economy Project, Brooklyn Level Up and other groups described cases of properties left in limbo, large unpaid balances on houses owned by long-time residents, and low approval rates for the new "easy exit" program meant to keep owner-occupied properties out of the sale.

Administration concerns and financial tradeoffs

City officials acknowledged the reforms' aims but warned of fiscal and operational tradeoffs. Preston Niblack, commissioner of the Department of Finance, endorsed two bills that increase notification and reporting (14-11 and 14-19) but said the land-bank proposals raise fundamental concerns because state land-bank law focuses on vacant, abandoned or distressed properties while many lien-sale properties are occupied and not blighted. "We fully support the goal of avoiding foreclosure whenever possible," Niblack said, "but the land bank as drafted would be empowered to foreclose on tax-delinquent properties for development purposes through the in rem process, and that would create an inherent tension."

Rohit T. Agarwal, the Department of Environmental Protection commissioner, told the committee that collections from the lien-sale process are an important revenue tool for the water system's capital program. DEP said reforms and outreach in the last year moved many properties off the sale list: the department reported $374 million brought into good standing, including $180 million in cash payments and $172 million in payment agreements, with only $22 million realized from the sale itself. DEP warned the Office of Management and Budgetestimates that the legislation under consideration could reduce DEP annual revenues by $105 million to $150 million; Agarwal said that shortfall would force either cuts to capital investments or higher water rates.

Process questions: servicers, trusts and auctions

Committee members pressed agencies on how the current trust- and servicer-driven model operates. Officials described a multi-step foreclosure timeline under state law that can stretch years, with servicers and the trust manager (identified in testimony as entities such as RESF and servicers like Tower Capital) responsible for payment plans and, where necessary, initiating foreclosure. Commissioners said servicers follow contractual criteria and are generally incentivized to work with owners to resolve debt rather than foreclose; the Department of Finance said it oversees servicers but does not routinely approve individual foreclosure actions once liens are sold.

Reporting and unresolved properties

Council members emphasized Intro 14-19, which would require DOF to annually report properties with liens unresolved for longer than 36 months and share that list with the council and other agencies so enforcement and safety issues can be addressed. DOF told the committee there are about 2,900 separate parcels in a so-called "graveyard" trust, with 655 meeting the unresolved threshold; among that unresolved subset DOF identified roughly 199 parcels classified as vacant land and about 671 one-family homes that may merit special attention.

Public testimony and individual cases

Multiple public-testimony speakers described long delays, difficulty accessing post-sale protections and examples of properties where liens or service issues created serious neighborhood impacts. Legal-services representatives and nonprofits urged strengthening pre-sale protections (the "easy exit" program and income-based payment options), improving outreach and requiring cross-agency inspections of chronically unresolved properties.

What's next

No formal vote was recorded at the hearing. Committee members and agency witnesses said they would continue negotiations on statutory language and technical fixes. Sponsors asked for more data from agencies on how servicer criteria are set, the number and type of unresolved properties, and operational details for any proposed land bank or lien bank.

The committee recessed after public testimony; sponsors and agencies said they plan follow-up meetings to refine the bills before any final vote.