The NYC rent freeze
What could possibly go wrong?:
“This is a historic victory for New York City tenants. After reviewing the data and hearing from New Yorkers across the city, the independent RGB has delivered a freeze on one-year leases, and the first-ever freeze on two- year leases in our city’s history. This is the relief that working people across our city deserve.”
And what of the kulaks landlords? Well, they’ll just have to make do somehow, because the laws of economics are suspended as far as the left is concerned:
In plain English, he’s warning that private-sector owners must realize they have no rights to cover their costs, let alone to make a profit.
And oh, by the way, developers shouldn’t even think of building rental units here. The free housing market in New York is dead.
Here’s an idea on how this will work:
New Yorkers living in the city’s 1.1 million market-rate apartments are about to get stuck with the bill for the city’s rent freeze, according to the only member of New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board who is an economist and voted “no” on the freeze.
Arpit Gupta, who was appointed to the board by former Mayor Eric Adams, said landlords will likely jack up rents on market-rate units, as the rent-stabilized market stalls with tenants incentivized to stay put and owners forced to pull vacant units off the market.
“I think of this as trying to breathe with one lung,” said Gupta, an economist and associated professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Ah, but Mamdani has his own lived experience:
What’s worse is as many as 30% of rent-stabilized tenants earn six figures, according to the income data in NYC’s Housing and Vacancy Survey.
Until recently that included Mamdani himself, who lived in a $2,300 Astoria pad despite making $142,000 as a state assemblyman and his family wealth, before he moved into Gracie Mansion in January.
Gupta goes on to point out two things. The first is that the inhabitants of rent-stabilized apartments are not means-tested in any way and that many people in what’s called “market-rate housing” are poor. The second is that the vacancy rate in rent-stabilized housing is already high because it costs money to rehab the units and when landlords can’t recoup those costs by raising rent to cover them, they just take them off the market.
As DSA candidates spread, these sorts of brilliant policies will become more frequent in places other than NYC. Will enough voters catch on in time?
[NOTE: Mamdani has a Fourth of July message for Americans on the 250th birthday of the republic. It’s about what you’d imagine it would be.]
Absent emergency, government has NO authority to set prices for this obvious reason. To put it bluntly, this rat bastard is illegally restricting prices in order to steal properties. He said so. He is an effing criminal.
I didn’t used to dislike foreigners, in fact my first wife was one, and I have spent considerable time in Asia and Latin America. But people like Mamdani, Omar, Jayapal, and so many others are really testing my patience.
Except that CAPITALISM is criminal, as are all capitalists.
They are THE ENEMY.
Which means he can, and will, do anything he can do to destroy THE ENEMY.
(And anyone who disagrees with him is ALSO the enemy.)
Typical Leninist (and comrades) “Who-Whom” power maneuver…unless he can be somehow stopped.
(Maybe Letitia James will start taking things personally…or maybe she, like Madame Weird Word Salad, will join in the festivities…or maybe Trump will make things more than a little bit difficult. Don’t know what tools he might have in his toolbox, though.)
All of this was predictable.
(Who else might be THE ENEMY? AKA we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet…)
What Richard Epstein said, “The physical entry is palpable, the compensation wholly iinadequate, the justification shopworn.” Rental real estate is not a monopoly or oligopoly either. The city’s most flush landlord might control 3% of the market. If our appellate courts were worth anything, rent control would be tossed out as an unconstitutional taking. If the state legislature and New York Constitution were worth much, no local government would be accorded this power in statute.
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Note, this is the worldview of perpetually adolescent theater kids.
The accounting will come.
Open, scornful contempt is the appropriate reaction to Mamdani and his ilk. But do so prepared for violence.
Leftists 1 stage thinking
What could go wrong no one thinks about
If liberty is worth defending, then it is worth defending against foreign and domestic enemies.
Liberty should first be defended with logic and reason. In the courts when needed. But when these lawful remedies prove inadequate to preserve liberty, when liberty itself is threatened with extinction, then “politics by other means” becomes justified because liberty is not ‘optional’. It is not a state granted privilege but an irrevocable and bedrock right. One along with faith, family & friends worth fighting for and if necessary, dying for…
Mamdani et al on the hard left are so invested in their ideological delusions that they are incapable of grasping that in trying to destroy Western civilization they are “cutting off the branch” upon which they sit. And that branch sits far above the cold, hard reality that civilization shields them from.
Mamdani says “. . .After reviewing the data and hearing from New Yorkers across the city,. . .”
Mamdani promised during his campaign what he is now delivering. So he has not “reviewed the data” nor has he “heard from New Yorkers.” This decision was baked in before he was elected. This is a flat out lie.
Mamdani would be wise (if that were possible) if he didn’t lie so blatantly. There is no free stuff. Everything he gives away is taken from someone.
F:
I don’t think Mamdani says the stuff will be entirely free. It’s understood that he means it will be free for his favored people. Others will have to pay through the nose.
Mamdani is still popular, perhaps becoming more so. de Blasio served two terms. I don’t have much hope for NYC in the near term, I expect Mamdani to stick around unless he has higher ambitions, but I may not live long enough to see how this ends.
We tend to forget its social-ism not economic-ism: Social policies are the motivating factors. Socialism ecshews wealth creation and wealth conservation. As a result it can only exits as a parasite on a wealth creating society. Thats why it always fails, existing wealth can only carry it so far (Thatcher’s other people’s money).
Churchill described socialism as a gospel of envy, and this is true. No matter where one stands on the economic ladder, socialists want you to be looking up in envy at those above you who have more. Socialism’s dirty little secret, though, is that no matter where you stand on the economic ladder, there are always people looking up at you!
Isn’t it funny how ‘Utopia for All’ seems to always turn out to be just another form of good old Patronage for Some.
OPEC’s oil embargo of 1973-74, and more generally the 1970s energy crisis, hit New York’s rent-controlled apartments hard. Landlords already had thin profit margins, and rising heating oil costs made it impossible to manage many buildings, so they were simply abandoned. Junkies moved in. In the winter, to keep warm, they burned whatever they could find. Often, apartments caught fire and buildings burned down. Whole neighborhoods were destroyed. Parts of Manhattan’s Lower East Side looked like a war zone ravaged by bombing.
Will the past be repeated, or will we just get something that rhymes?
To H with NYC, its socialist Dems, the urban misundereducated young and its dependent riffraff.
@ Neo > “Will enough voters catch on in time?”
Looking at Cornflour’s comment on my way down to post mine, if they haven’t caught on by now, they never will.
Of course, with conservatives moving away, younger liberals aging into conservatism (at least some of them) but apparently not getting much smarter or more well-informed, and new young voters (with even less intelligence or education) always coming on board — you can indeed keep fooling most of the people most of the time.
Hey, it could be worse.
Mamdani could be forcing landlords to rip out any air conditioners.
https://babylonbee.com/news/thousands-dead-after-new-york-man-lowers-apartment-temp-to-77-degrees
The Bee was riffing off of this news story:
https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2026/07/03/mayor-mamdani-orders-nyc-to-sweat-at-78-degrees-while-his-own-city-hall-was-how-cold-n2203963
I did not notice at first, but it was quickly pointed out that Madmani (my preferred spelling) was not seated “behind” the prop desk used in his group photo; he was seated in FRONT of it, as became obvious upon noticing the drawers facing the camera. It certainly shows how familiar he was with actually working at a desk in his life. But I have been struck by just how much of the “political thinking” of these DSA types is merely a regurgitation of The Underpants Gnome installment of South Park. You know, the one with the equation: Phase 1: Collect Underpants; Phase 2: ?; Phase 3: PROFIT! They always gloss over that middle part, the one where stuff actually happens and go from “the big idea” to “success”. Like that ever happens anywhere but in the academic classrooms where they have misspent their formative years.
The real problem is that the Supreme Court has never held that rent control is a “taking,” but rather that it is legitimate regulation of property by a local government. Like Chevron, Roe, and Humphrey’s Executor, the line of cases enabling rent control needs to be overruled. It most certainly is a “taking” if the government forces me to rent my property for $1,000 a month when others are willing to pay $3,000 a month in rent. If a local government wants to give free stuff to certain lucky citizens (or illegals, for that matter), it should simply raise taxes and dip into its coffers to give selected people $2,000 a month, so they can “afford” to rent my apartment (good luck explaining that to the taxpayers). Instead, the government requires the landlord to bear the burden of the $2,000 gift. It’s theft–plain and simple. Not only is it theft, it undercuts the housing market by reducing supply (who wants to build rental housing if the government is going to steal your profit?) and turns regular apartments into slums because landlords won’t maintain and improve apartments that become uneconomic because of “rent control.” This really isn’t that complicated.
he was seated in FRONT of it,
The desk has drawers on both sides, or at least the appearance on the front side as well. Grok calls it a partner’s desk style.
The real problem is that the Supreme Court has never held that rent control is a “taking,” but rather that it is legitimate regulation of property by a local government.
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Local governments are legitimate regulators only to the extent that the power is delegated to them by state governments (or, in countries of modest dimension, the national government). Real estate transactions and landlord-tenant relations are properly the department of the repository of general police power. That’s in Albany, not Manhattan. The regulatory authority of local government should concern efforts to contain externalities and allocate the use of common property resources, issues that are the more acute where people live in close proximity to each other. The fee-for-services transaction between landlord and tenant does not itself incorporate an externality.
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Please note that Greater New York (i.e. the 19 counties around Manhattan) is comparatively affluent; last I checked, real personal income per capita was 37% above the national mean. (Things may have changed, of course). In local areas, the price ratio between one commodity and another may differ from national means and the range of commodities available certainly varies. You live in New York, you have to allocate your income differently than you would if you lived in Omaha.
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Real incomes are not declining nationally and its a reasonable wager they’re not declining in New York or Omaha. You may have jarring and unexpected changes in price ratios. That requires household adjustments. It does not require a political response.
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‘Affordability’ is only properly a political issue if public policy is generating deadweight loss via rendering some good or service more expensive than it would otherwise be. Regulation has both benefits and costs and the quality of the regulation may be that the latter exceed the former. That’s a particular danger in any sector where you have heavy state intervention in different aspects of the production, distribution, and retail trade in a good or a service. Real estate is one of those sectors. You have land use plans (of necessity), building and fire codes, laws on tenancy and property registration, property tax law, laws governing the buying and selling of real estate, and landlord tenant law. Securing the benefits of property ownership requires the muscle of the civil division of the sheriff’s department implementing court orders. There are things governments do which unnecessarily exacerbate costs generated by regulation. These include delineating greenbelts, insufficient staffing of municipal courts and sheriff’s departments, overly elaborate procedures to affect evictions, overly elaborate means for 3d parties to object to real estate developments, anti-discrimination law governing real estate transactions, and rent control. Rent control is just about the worst.
Whoa! The laws of economics? Next thing, neo will be telling us that tariffs are borne by consumers, not foreign suppliers. Except saying that would involve contradicting Trump, so the laws of economics will remain discreetly absent from that discussion.
The stated reason by these thieves is to use rent control to drive properties into distress to acquire them on the cheap. The kind of thing that leads to assassinations and civil war.
Economic warfare.
Next thing, neo will be telling us that tariffs are borne by consumers, not foreign suppliers. Except saying that would involve contradicting Trump, so the laws of economics will remain discreetly absent from that discussion.
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The cost of any excise is apportioned between the customer and the vendor / producer with the proportions contingent on the elasticities of supply and demand for the product in question.
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Any kind of tax will induce some deadweight loss.
@ Sgt Joe Friday in re the foreigners who are “really testing my patience.”
If the born-here Leftist Americans were not aiding and abetting the foreign imports, they would not be in positions of power and prominence, and we wouldn’t have them testing our patience or anything else.
The call is coming from inside the house.
@ Geoffrey > “they are “cutting off the branch” upon which they sit. And that branch sits far above the cold, hard reality that civilization shields them from.”
Well said.
As the Iron Lady told us, socialism only works until you run out of other people’s money.
Removing any political entity from the system that produces wealth assures that you will run out of money very quickly and painfully.
https://museumofpsychology.org/2019/03/28/sawing-off-the-branch-you-are-sitting-on/
The operations of socialism (communism-lite) also remind me of the classic trope of a swing hung from two branches, one on either side of the tree trunk, so that it can’t actually swing at all. I would liken one branch to the the products of civilized behavior (morally and economically), as Geoffrey does, and the other to the promises of socialist utopia.
https://www.businessballs.com/_assets/local/pix/businessballs/treeswing/treeswing_manufactured.jpg
The two supports are incompatible in the long run. Although people are created equal in dignity and rights, they are not equal in ability and motivation (among other things).
The long discussion on that incompatibility needs no rehearsal here.
I found that image at this post, and the author’s extensions of the old joke* that produced it are hilarious.
https://www.businessballs.com/amusement-stress-relief/tree-swing-cartoons-new-versions/
*What the customer asked for, …, what was manufactured.”
@ Charles > “I may not live long enough to see how this ends.”
It’s a toss-up right now between a bang and a whimper.
@ Chases Eagles > “to drive properties into distress to acquire them on the cheap”
There was, and perhaps still is, speculation that the initial slow-walking of building permits in Palisades CA was for that same purpose, although the dearth of rebuilding appears to be just the general result of messed up economic, social, and political policies in California.
(see post below)
I hope that Spencer Pratt stays on his mission (“to make sure the Palisades Fire isn’t forgotten in the dustbin of history”) even if he is never elected mayor of Los Angeles.
I would vote for him in a heartbeat.
https://mayorpratt.com/
Quote is from this early story of his campaign.
https://www.deseret.com/politics/2026/05/01/reality-tv-star-spencer-pratt-mayoral-race-viral-ad/
********
The slow pace of rebuilding has a lot of moving parts, all of them willful choices by California politicos. However, there is no indication yet that the derelict, and sometimes deserted, properties are being snapped up in a coordinated or clandestine fashion.
But as we have seen, sometimes it takes a really deep data dive to find the connections (thank you DataRepublican and DOGE).
https://www.smobserved.com/story/2026/03/30/news/very-few-pacific-palisades-residents-pull-building-permits-or-plan-to-rebuild-heres-why/9748.html
Art Deco: Glad to see that someone here will contradict Donald Trump, but sorry that neo isn’t one of those people.
And neo: the tariffs only apply to certain people, as you know but cannot admit even to yourself. Your sudden posturing as an opponent of cronyism is unpersuasive.
Willard:
Thanks for illustrating one of the first rules of trolls – they tend to combine ignorance, arrogance, and condescension. It’s not the greatest mix.
If you actually knew much about this site, you would know that not only do many commenters here criticize Trump and certain things he has done, but that tariffs are one of the things he’s done that has drawn the most criticism, including from me.
Disagreement on the merits is fine. But trolls add nothing meaningful to the conversation.
“And neo: the tariffs only apply to certain people, as you know but cannot admit even to yourself. Your sudden posturing as an opponent of cronyism is unpersuasive.”
Neo,
The above statement by Willard is a great example, as you point out, of not so much trolls, but leftists in general. Before I stopped engaging with such, their statements were much in the same vein. Dripping with the sense of how much smarter they are than any conservative, and how much more they are enlightened in their moral superiority. It got to be so stereotypical that I could write exactly what their responses would be. A slice of humble pie would be good for these people, but they can never admit needing such.
Art Deco: Glad to see that someone here will contradict Donald Trump
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I was contradicting you.
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Reading comprehension. It’s great stuff.