Same concept and same essential issue, but would be quite a different court case. In affirmative action the plaintiff would be somebody who didn’t get a job or didn’t get admitted to a school — a slippery matter and hard to prove in an individual case. With rent control it’s quite simple: This is my apartment building. My property. I own it. How can you tell me what I can and can’t charge somebody for the service of getting to live there?
Affirmative action was absolutely easy to prove in individual cases; the test scores themselves. Also, it wasn’t just the “non-preferred victim” impacted by affirmative action; companies are forced to hire useless placeholders to create a façade of “diversity” - and pay them on par with real workers.
As I understand it, property owners are already barred from discriminating in buildings of three or more units; they’ve already telling property owners what they may or may not do. I understand your point, but it is a question from another time; we’ve already conceded plenty of authority to our government overlords in terms of what they may dictate to us.