Rent Control’s Resurgence in New York

Nicole Gelinas and Howard Husock join Seth Barron to discuss New York’s landmark rent-regulation law and its potential impact on housing in the city and state. Lawmakers in New York recently passed the toughest rent-regulation law in a generation, imposing new restrictions on landlords’ ability to increase rents, improve buildings, or evict tenants. The bill made permanent the state’s existing rent regulations, meaning that future legislatures will find it harder to revisit the issue. Housing experts like Husock argue that the new laws will discourage landlords from investing in building improvements, causing the housing stock to degrade statewide. And economists across the political spectrum, from Milton Friedman to Paul Krugman, have also maintained that rent regulation can be counterproductive and detrimental to housing quality.