New Yorkers Protest Against Luxury High-Rise's $35 Million Tax Break

Feb. 25, 2015 — It's becoming a tale of two sides of one city. On the one side, you have the working and middle class, struggling to make ends meet, vying for affordable housing, fighting to keep rezoning plans from driving them out of their homes. On the other, you have the mega rich, snapping up ultra-luxury condos in high-rise buildings such as Midtown's One57. And which side ends up getting the tax breaks, you ask? It looks like, in this case, it's good old One57, which just sold its penthouse for $100 million and got a $35 million tax break, "a subsidy offered to billionaire developers under 412-a tax abatement program," reports the Daily News. It also looks like hundreds of New Yorkers got mad as hell and protested the program last week in front of the high-end tower. According to the Daily News, "the protest comes amid a growing push to end the abatement program, which is set to expire this year unless it’s renewed by Albany pols." The Daily News, which featured One57 as a symbol of the city's growing divide between rich and poor in a separate news item, reported that "the feds are probing how One57 scored its tax break."