Humberto Lopes heard the opening bell, drew his fists and posted a profanity-laden TikTok urging landlords to stop paying their property taxes.
“Let’s start not paying the property tax for this quarter coming up. We’ll fucking bankrupt this city!” he shouted in the video posted on Tuesday. “The minute we don’t pay your property tax, New York City will fucking crumble.”
“You can’t foreclose on all of us,” he said.
“When you destroy us, we can destroy the fucking city,” he concluded.
In the video, Lopes holds up a poster released by the Mamdani administration this week announcing dates for five “rental ripoff” hearings, where tenants are invited to speak out about their experiences renting in the city. The image featured the text “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” evoking a boxing match.
Landlord groups were not amused by the imagery.
“Framing his ‘rental ripoff’ hearings as a prize fight between tenants vs. landlords makes it disturbingly clear that this new mayor’s housing policies are going to be driven by marquee-like politics, circus-like slogans, and us-versus-them divisiveness,” Ann Korchak, board president of the Small Property Owners of New York, said in a statement.
“Show trials may make good theater, but they don’t solve problems,” Anthony Burgos, CEO of the New York Apartment Association, said in a statement.
Lopes echoed these sentiments, but with more f-bombs.
“What do you think you are going to accomplish that HPD didn’t accomplish?” he asked, clutching the poster, referring to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
He also questioned why the administration isn’t including NYCHA in the hearings. (Public Advocate Jumaane Williams called out the city’s public housing authority last month as the city’s true worst landlord, though it didn’t make his official list.)
When asked on Friday, Lopes said he is in earnest about urging owners to withhold property taxes, comparing it to when tenants stop paying rent to force landlords to make repairs. He said he’s consulting with attorneys about following through with the threat.
How many others would follow him in such a protest is unclear. Korchak said that while small property owners are “frustrated with the anti-landlord vitriol,” withholding property tax payments “would bring greater financial harm and distress” to owners. She thinks a more constructive route is pushing the state to amend the 2019 rent laws.
Lopes heads H.L. Dynasty, which owns and operates 1.2 million square feet of real estate in New York and Florida, according to the company’s website. Lopes recently launched a landlord group, dubbed Gotham Housing Alliance, inspired by his longtime love of Batman (in videos, Batman figurines can be seen on his desk, and in at least one video, a life-sized Caped Crusader statue appears in the background). Lopes noted in a call Friday that Batman’s M.O. is to bring the “city back to normal.”
The video features a bombastic style seen in his other videos on social media, where he speaks directly to the camera. Lopes has griped about other city policies in these videos, including the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, or COPA.
“If a poster about ‘bad landlords’ strikes a nerve, it’s worth asking why. Our focus isn’t on rhetoric — it’s on results,” a City Hall spokesperson said in a statement. “We’re eager to partner with anyone who’s committed to providing safe, stable homes and helping us build a city that everyday New Yorkers can actually afford.”
Tenant advocates say the “rental ripoff” video proves the need for the hearings.
“Hit dogs holler,” Charlie Dulik, director of tenant organizing at Housing Conservation Coordinators, said. “His rage about tenants being offered a simple chance to speak about the conditions they endure shows exactly why these hearings are necessary.”
The first hearing is slated for Feb. 26 in Downtown Brooklyn. As one of his first acts as mayor, Zohran Mamdani signed an executive order establishing the hearings to give tenants the opportunity to speak about “abusive, deceptive, or unconscionable landlord practices.” The executive order lists property managers and landlords as potential speakers as well.
Within 90 days of the final hearing, scheduled for April 7, city agencies must issue a joint report outlining common themes raised during the hearings and recommending policy and other changes to address them.
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