Democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani now has a nearly clear path to implement rent freezes in New York City for rent stabilized tenants after three Rent Guidelines Board members resigned this month, allowing Mamdani to appoint six new members to the nine-member board. If the board decides to vote in favor rent controls for these one million renters (approximately 45 percent of the cities rentable apartments), it would freeze rent for at least one year. The board would then have to vote to determine if they would like to extend that by another year.
On the surface, rent control may sound like a really good idea and a decent way to provide some much needed relief to families who are struggling. But we don’t have to look any further than New York City to discover that rent control program have already been tried and failed. Moreover, we have seen this pattern time after time throughout history.
Just the idea of rent stabilization, which doesn’t prevent prices from rising but fixes how much rent can rise, has proven to be a disaster in New York City. These fixed prices rise much slower than the free market but often do not keep up with rising maintenance costs. Since implementation following the Rent Stabilization Law of 1969, New York City has seen critically low housing availability, an increase in unregulated housing, and deterioration due to landlords no longer having an incentive or financial means to maintain or upgrade properties.
And all of that has occurred under rent stabilization. What Mamdani is proposing, and what the board is likely to vote on this spring, is not simply a continuation of that same failed policy that has been in place for decades, but to go even further and freeze more rents. This would only exacerbate the problems hard-working residents of the Big Apple have experienced over the past several decades under this disastrous policy.
From New York City to Venezuela, the evidence is clear that policies such as rent stabilization, or even worse, rent freezes, only make affordability problems worse.
Levi Mikula is an editorial intern at The Heartland Institute.
