How to Destroy a City Without Bombs: Zohran Mamdani’s Rent Control Plan for New York City

Price controls are the failed idea that never dies. Yet they are surging in popularity among Democrat politicians. During her presidential campaign, Kamala Harris floated the idea of passing federal legislation to prosecute grocery stores for so-called "price gouging." And now Zohran Mamdani, frontrunner for mayor of New York City, announced plans to freeze rents in nearly 2 million rent-stabilized apartments. That’s roughly half of the city's rental stock.

As Robert L. Schuettinger documents in Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls: How Not to Fight Inflation, attempts to cap prices stretch back thousands of years. The results have been bleak. From the Roman Emperor Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices to the French Revolution's Laws of the Maximum, price controls have triggered shortages, black markets, declining product quality, and widespread economic distortions.

Under Richard Nixon, wage and price controls were intended to curb inflation, but instead created supply bottlenecks and long lines at gas stations. Time and again, policymakers have convinced themselves they could suspend the laws of supply and demand by decree. Reality had other plans.

Among all forms of price controls, rent control has arguably caused the most enduring damage. As the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck observed, "In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city, except for bombing." By capping rents below market levels, these policies discourage new construction, accelerate the decay of existing buildings, and hurt the very tenants they are supposed to help.

New York City's experience with rent control is a cautionary tale. The city first imposed rent regulations during World War II as an emergency measure. Over time, those controls became a permanent fixture of housing policy. By the 1970s, landlords were abandoning buildings or converting them to co-ops to escape the system. Some owners even resorted to setting their properties on fire because it was more profitable to collect insurance money than to keep rent-controlled units on the market. This is precisely why New York now exempts most new buildings from rent control.

The reason price controls consistently fail is that politicians imagine suppliers simply choose prices arbitrarily. But prices are signals reflecting supply and demand. Imposing price controls is like smashing a thermometer during a heat wave. It doesn't change the underlying reality, but it does make it harder for people to adapt and makes the situation worse.

One question voters rightly ask is: Who turned up the heat? Why have prices on everything from groceries to rent increased so dramatically?

Progressives claim that greedy corporations have driven prices up. But inflation stayed in the low single digits from the 1990s to 2020. Then it spiked up between 2021 and 2022. Are we really supposed to believe corporations suddenly became greedier? Of course not. Profit incentives are a constant. Inflation is a change. A constant cannot explain a change.

The real reason prices surged from 2021 to 2022 is that the government printed money at a record pace and Congress injected enormous amounts of fiscal stimulus into the economy. More money chasing the same number of goods and services inevitably leads to higher prices.

As for rents, the main driver is restricted housing supply. Zoning laws in many cities prohibit multi-family housing on most residential land and make it costly and time-consuming to acquire construction permits. Cities in California and on the East Coast with the strictest zoning laws have the highest housing prices. On the other hand, cities like Houston and Austin, with less regulated housing markets, have remained relatively affordable despite increases in demand.

Argentina provides another positive example of what happens when the government gets out of the way. President Javier Milei ended rent control and rolled back housing regulations. As a result, the rental housing supply in Buenos Aires tripled and prices fell by 30 percent.

Many American cities, especially New York, can learn from the example of Houston, Austin, and Argentina. If the goal is more housing and lower rents, the answer isn’t more regulation but less.

Austin O’Connell is a policy associate at Americans for Tax Reform.

People like to say “ha ha, they voted for it”

First of all, the vast majority NY’ers did NOT vote for Mamdani. He achieved his present status by a rigged method (ranked choice voting) in a very specific and narrow election (Mayoral Democrat Primary). It’s a minority, of a minority voting in this.

We no longer have a Republic with dispersed power, responsibility, and dispersed finances. We live in a highly centralized, quasi-collectivist state, all funded from Washington DC with our printed, fiat money and massive debt

What happens in NY City will not be contained in NY City. if NY City has a marxist mayor, no doubt the political example will spread elsewhere, NY City is still the center of financial trading in the USA, and government funding/bailouts will certainly need to come from Washington DC. We will all pay for this.

“”Some owners even resorted to setting their properties on fire because it was more profitable to collect insurance money than to keep rent-controlled units on the market.””

You’ve heard of ‘food deserts’... ie lack of grocery stores due to the left’s idiotic polices on theft/crime? Well Mamdani’s idiotic policies will create ‘housing deserts’... which will result in even more hoards moving from NY to other states.

And ironically, on the other coast... Newscum is planning to use some of the burned out properties in LA for “affordable housing”, thus making even more of LA into a ghetto.

This is “stuff” you can’t make up and don’t need to...

because it’s real.

"In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city, except for bombing."

I would say that rent control is far more efficient, if you are willing to wait. It will take a decade or two.

Of course you have to be willing to rule the city during the process rather than sit in the distance dropping bombs or firing shells.

Their is also the advantage that rent control does not require the expenditure of capital. You just legislate taking another’s property.

It is funny how these communist are able to totally ignore the Constitution’s Takings clause when talking about these things.

‘Trump was right’ - John Kerry says Democrats allowed migrant ‘siege’ of US border
BBC ^ | 07/10/2021 | Anthony Zurcher
Posted on 7/10/2025, 8:19:52 AM by TexasKamaAina

Former US Secretary of State John Kerry has told the BBC his fellow Democrats allowed the US-Mexico border to be “under siege” during Joe Biden’s presidency.

In sometimes sharp words, Kerry - who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004 and a US senator from Massachusetts - said he told Biden the party had “missed” on the issue of immigration for years.

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com …

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr4wk52rwqpo

Ha.
Despite Dire Straits, the locals will soon remember West Side Story:

I like to be in America
O.K by me in America
everything’s free in America
for a small fee in America.

I’ll have my own washing machine.

What will you have, though, to keep clean?

Industry boom in America.

Twelve in a room in America.

Lots of new housing with more space.

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