A Stitch in Haste

To review: Rent regulation in New York State, consisting of "rent control" (a permanent price ceiling) and "rent stabilization" (a below-market rate of rent increases) was established at the end of World War II as a "temporary" price control scheme to address a housing "emergency."

So far, the "temporary emergency" has lasted for over 60 years. Thus ever with central planners.

Meanwhile, landlords of rent stabilized apartments, who year after year have as a group played by the (unfair) rules, accepting below-market rents, and below-market increases in rent (among other infringements of their private property rights), have at least had one consolation — one carrot dangled before them as an incentive not to riot in the streets over their unfair treatment under this abominable program: The knowledge that, once the rent of a stabilized apartment trickled up to $2,000 per month, that apartment would be unshackled from rent regulation tyranny and returned to the free market. Just be patient, the landlords were assured, and eventually you will be allowed to make your market-based return. It might take years; it might take decades. But your day will come.

Instead came Spitzer:

Legislative sources briefed on the plan said the governor will soon propose a bill to raise the rent threshold at which an apartment can be deregulated to $2,800 a month, with a mechanism for subsequent annual increases based on the consumer price index.

In other words, the light at the end of tunnel for landlords will be forever extinguished. The goal, once universally thought to be $2,000, is — presto! — $2,800 ... and climbing forevermore. If the increases in the ceiling exceed the (regulated) increases in rent (and of course they will), then the apartment will simply never be deregulated. The "temporary emergency" is now guaranteed to last forever.

It's quite simple really: Changing the rules toward the end of the game is cheating. Turning an already unfair, unwise and immoral confiscation of property rights into a Sisyphean nightmare is yet another example of how all politicians are, by definition, moral defectives.

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Note that I'm arguing strictly on rights-based reasoning, ignoring the economic (i.e., consequentialist) argument, namely the axiom that all below-equilibrium price ceilings, including rent control, create shortages, and that anyone who really wanted to catalyze the creation of more housing, including more "affordable" housing, would of course champion the total abolition of all rent regulation and other government-imposed impediments to building.

If the politicians don't care about elementary economics, then why should I?