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

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?

I n 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 fromabout 11,200 properties.

The political theatre with which Mamdani packaged his promise is as eye-catching as the policy itself. The video was clearly shot in the service of an adversarial messaging demonising the rich. It would probably come as a surprise to many people that across the Atlantic, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been quietly pursuing their own policies targeting the ultra-rich owners of luxury properties, who have driven up the cost of housing in cities and towns across the UK.

As with the pied-à-terre tax, a new tax on second homes and the “ mansion tax ”, announced in last year’s budget, take particular aim at the most exclusive parts of the city, in so-called super-prime areas. The taxes in New York and England are a step in the right direction, but they alone won’t solve the causes of the housing crisis. This is rooted in a far broader and deeper financialisation of real estate, combined with hugely inflationary monetary policies introduced after the 2008 financial crash that have put the ideal of home ownership out of reach for the majority.

But they are effective policies at raising revenue and they allow politicians, if they take the opportunity, to tell a story about how wealth operates and its wider impact on our cities and society. In New York, the super-talls are called “ghost towers” because barely anyone lives there and the lights are off; owners and investors with multiple homes around the world, whose identities remain mostly hidden, are critiqued for treating the properties as little more than safety deposit boxes in which to stash their millions. The last census in 2021 found that more than a quarter of properties in the City of London, Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea are empty . The knock-on effect of such high prices means property prices become unaffordable across the city. Billionaires displace multimillionaires, who in turn displace millionaires, who move into what were once affordable areas, fuelling price rises there.

The pied-à-terre tax in New York, which will be implemented on 1 July, is framed as a fair way of targeting ultra-wealthy non-residents, to help fund essential services – and it is backed by the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, who is considered to be a centrist Democrat. She too is bullish . “If you can afford a $5m second home that sits empty most of the year, you can afford to contribute like every other New Yorker,” she has said.

Part of the reason for Starmer’s reticence in framing his policies in such a way has been a fear of antagonising the rich. Mamdani has faced a similar backlash in New York , but he has dealt with it very differently, leaning into it and reframing it rather than retreating from it. Predictions of doom and the escape of billionaires to Florida, amounting to a propaganda campaign that accompanied the election, have not been borne out.