Be sure to check out this interview ("Rent Control Is a ‘New York Tragedy’") on Hamodia, with law Professor Richard Epstein.
As you might expect, the interview is full of insights and bon mots. There's even a reference to the judicial takings case, Stop the Beach Renourishment. And a lot of things that just make you shake your head because anyone who had done a modicum of thinking on the rent and vacancy control issue can tell there's no real "exit strategy" by the governments who impose it, and that when the music stops -- as it must, eventually -- someone is going to be left standing up without a chair. It is not, at least as practiced in New York, "sustainable" (in today's parlance).
And when you go to the New York courts, it’s a death trap. They’re all consistently pro-government in these cases. You try moving it to federal court, and you get a very liberal panel. And so the whole thing turns out to be bottled up. You look at the situation in the City Council, and you can wait a long time before the drought will be over. So essentially all the current avenues seem to be over. There’s no state constitutional challenge that’s going to be viable, no federal constitutional challenge that’s going to be viable, there’s going to be no state Capitol override of what is taking place in the city. And the city itself doesn’t want to move. So something has got to give.What gives is the population: People who cannot find housing in the city at a sensible price march off to places where it doesn’t take you a year and a day to get the first step of a building permit. So off they go to Tennessee, Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Alabama. New York has lost more people in absolute terms than even California, which is no wonderful place. But everybody in power in New York seems to be oblivious to what’s going on, because they don’t take the exit option seriously. And it is going to ruin this city.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of criticisms, but not a lot of suggestions for pathways out of the problem. But nonetheless, please read the entire interview. Well worth your time.
