“It leaves a lot of question marks in the industry as to what you could do with apartments,” Spinola says, estimating that the city of New York could lose millions of dollars over it. “We won’t drop it. We will be going back and saying there needs to be some act by the Legislature and government to clarify this.”

Besides J-51, REBNY was advocating for a tax cap for affordable structures under the 421-A program itself. Spinola says in order for developers to able to preserve the low-income units included in the city's 80/20 program--which includes 20% of units set aside for low-income households and the remaining 80% sold as market-rate units in newly constructed buildings--the city should place a cap on taxes for such buildings in return for preserving those low- income units.

Now, Spinola fears that the city will lose as many as 5,000 low- income units over the next number of years. "They could be converted into market-rate condos," he says. “I don’t think there’s anything in negotiations for the balance of this legislative session, but again, I’ve learned that no issues go away, good issues or bad issues. We are going to continue to raise the issue with the city and the state.”

On the homeowner front, Spinola says he supports the 2% property tax cap because it “sends a message” to local municipalities and governing bodies to reign in spending, though it doesn’t affect the city directly. “The real positive story about the Legislative session is number one, we didn’t raise taxes, and secondly, there is this property tax cap that will be imposed that seems to be a fair, workable cap on the rest of the state outside the city,” he says. “There needs to be fiscal responsibility throughout the state. The governor really pushed that and deserves a great deal of credit,” describing it as a “big win” for the state’s business community as well.