Big Government at work:

New York City Housing Follies, 2023 Edition
Manhattan Contrarian | 9 Jan, 2023 | Francis Menton

… these topics of energy and housing policy are closely related. Both involve ignorant politicians promising to supplant the imperfect freedom-based economic system and achieve utopia by using their coercive powers to order that it shall be so. Yet somehow, utopia continues to elude us, and the government mandates only make things worse. And no lessons are ever learned.

Today’s topic is the latest in New York housing policy, and its inevitable consequences. Currently, both houses of our State Legislature, as well as the Governorship, are in the hands of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. We have a rent regulation regime that dates all the way back to World War II (with many modifications along the way), and a resulting situation that is universally described as a “housing shortage.” Available apartments are scarce and expensive. Small amounts of new housing are built annually, but largely for a small slice of the market at the very top.

To our reigning politicians, the solution is obvious: order that rents be restricted and that the housing that gets built be made “affordable” and allocated by government lotteries to income-restricted beneficiaries. How are these policies working out?

. . .

[Thousands] of rent-stabilized apartments . . . now sit unoccupied and unavailable in a city desperately in need of low-cost housing. . . . The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, a sweeping rent reform passed by the state Legislature in 2019, dramatically limited landlords’ ability to increase rents on stabilized apartments. The measure ended the vacancy bonus that had allowed owners to raise rents 20 percent when stabilized units became unoccupied. It also reduced to $15,000 over 15 years the renovation costs that landlords can recover by hiking rents.

How many apartments now sit vacant as a result of these restrictions?

In April, CHIP [Community Housing Improvement Program, a landlord trade organization] launched a campaign to call attention to the city’s unrentable housing stock. The group estimated that 20,000 rent-stabilized apartments in the city were empty because renovations were not economically feasible. In May, the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development released a more staggering number: nearly 43,000 vacant but unavailable units.

And now they will turn their attention to your vehicles, your health, and your electricity.