New York Spent $65.7 Million to Erase $476 Million in Taxi Medallion Debt

New York City built the taxi medallion into a monopoly asset, sold it at auction, taxed its resale, and let brokers pitch it to immigrant drivers as a retirement plan.▸ Then it collapsed, and the city that profited from the bubble started writing checks to clean up the wreckage. It has now spent $65.7 million in public grants to erase $476 million of medallion debt for the owners of just over 2,300 medallions — a fix that arrived years after at least nine drivers had already taken their own lives, and one that still leaves hundreds of others out.

The medallion isn't a market accident.▸ New York's 1937 Haas Act capped the number of taxi licenses at 13,595 and made them freely transferable — creating, by statute, a virtual monopoly on street hails that the City Council's own Taxi Medallion Task Force says has barely moved since: the TLC's 2025 Annual Report puts today's count at 13,589. The city didn't just permit the medallion market — it ran it. TLC set the minimum bid price at its own auctions, and its marketing pitched medallions as a sure thing: a 2004 promotional pamphlet was headlined "It's Better than the Stock Market," and the agency's own 2014 Factbook boasted that medallion values had "increased over 500%" since 2001. From 2002 to 2014, the task force found, the city made more than $855 million selling medallions and collecting a 5% transfer tax on private resales.

Prices obliged, then didn't. The last time the city auctioned medallions, in March 2014, the winning average bid hit $1,164,378 apiece — an all-time high.▸ By January 2018 the secondary-market average had fallen to $188,796. By November 2019 it was $164,518, with 66% of that year's transfers driven by foreclosure, not sale. Today, under the city's own relief program, a defaulted medallion resells for a $135,000 average.

That 88% collapse from the 2014 peak wasn't abstract to the people who'd financed a medallion purchase at the top of the market.▸ The task force documented at least nine members of the taxi and for-hire workforce who took their own lives amid the crisis, and found that "reports indicate that financial difficulties may have played some role." One of them, Yu Mein "Kenny" Chow, owed at least $700,000 on his medallion when large loan payments caused him to fall behind on his mortgage and max out his credit cards.

The city's response — the Medallion Relief Program (MRP), launched March 2021, and its successor MRP+, launched September 2022 — didn't cancel debt outright.▸ It paid to make lenders write it down. Owners got city grants of $20,000 to $30,000 apiece as a restructuring down payment; in exchange, lenders like Marblegate Asset Management, which held the largest share of medallion loans, agreed to cut loan principal to something an owner's fares could actually service. By the time the TLC filed its 2025 Annual Report in January 2026, that combination had erased over $476 million in debt for the owners of more than 2,300 medallions. Of that total, city officials testified to the Council in February 2025 that $65.7 million was direct city grant funding — meaning roughly seven dollars of debt disappeared for every one the city put in, with lenders absorbing the rest.

The same February 2025 testimony that produced the $65.7 million figure also disclosed the parts of the crisis the program hasn't touched: 419 medallions were still in default, 90 days or more behind, and only 45 defaulted medallions had been resold through MRP+.▸ The program itself sunset in April 2024 — meaning owners whose lenders never signed on now have nowhere left to apply.

That group isn't small.▸ NY Focus reported in September 2024 that, per a New York Taxi Workers Alliance estimate, between 250 and 400 drivers remain locked out of the deal because their individual lender refused to participate — stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece in loans the relief program was built to erase. Dorothy LeConte, a Haitian immigrant who has driven a cab for more than 35 years, said her lender offered to sell her medallion back for $130,000 cash; refuse, and her debt stays north of $200,000 with steep monthly installments. Lorenzo Ponce, who bought his medallion in 2009 for a $550,000 valuation with a $100,000 down payment, still owes more than $400,000 and said he has no idea why his lender declined to join MRP+: "They only care about money. That's it."

Medallion price and debt-relief figures come from official NYC Council and NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission documents spanning 2020 to 2026; figures on excluded drivers rely on a New York Taxi Workers Alliance estimate reported by NY Focus, since no city agency publishes a count of drivers whose lenders declined to participate. All dollar figures are nominal, not inflation-adjusted.