A closer look
New York City successfully classified a playground for billionaires as an impoverished slum just to secure funding. Tax Increment Financing is supposedly designed to revitalize blighted urban areas by freezing current property tax revenues and using future tax growth to fund infrastructure. However, clever developers gerrymandered the district for the ultra-luxury Hudson Yards project, legally linking it to actual low-income neighborhoods miles away to subsidize high-end retail spaces.
