Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood in front of a camera along one of New York City\u2019s most exclusive strips of real estate with a message for his constituents: \u201cToday we\u2019re taxing the rich.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before he outlined a new plan to tax multimillion-dollar pied-\u00e0-terre properties that dot the city\u2019s luxury towers, he moved uncomfortably close to the camera, looked into the lens and pecked at it with his finger.<\/p>\n
But the mayor was tapping into something much bigger. On the city\u2019s streets, an anti-rich current has been building, highlighted by the election of the mayor himself who ran on an affordability platform. And this week, a mix of events appeared to indicate new levels of intolerance for New York\u2019s \u00fcber-wealthy.<\/p>\n
On the same day that Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a new pied-\u00e0-terre tax backed by the mayor on second homes with assessed values of $5 million or more, doormen, superintendents and others who typically earn a salary of $62,000 a year and enable the trappings of a luxury life threatened to go on strike<\/a>. Then on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani confirmed to Hell Gate<\/a> that he and his wife planned to snub the Met Gala<\/a>, a springtime rite of celebrities and the wealthy, criticized for its annual display of elitism. (This year, the billionaire Jeff Bezos is sponsoring the event.)<\/p>\n Inequality is part of the rhythm of the city, on full display in places like Billionaires\u2019 Row, where on a recent afternoon whiffs of the perfumed lobbies of the luxury towers wafted toward a man in ragged clothes sprawled across the concrete.<\/p>\n \u201cIn New York we all live together. You have much more class overlap than in other places,\u201d said Marissa Thompson, an assistant professor of sociology and the co-director of the Center for the Study of Wealth and Inequality at Columbia University. \u201cAll of that has come to a crescendo. People are feeling the squeeze of inequality.\u201d<\/p>\n The image of the city\u2019s ultra wealthy class looms in the sky, hovering over the rest of New York in supertall luxury apartment towers.<\/p>\n