Spitzer Wants to Strengthen Rent Control

The New York Sun reports:

Eliot Spitzer's gubernatorial opponents have accused him of not offering any actual ideas and, well, New Yorkers are starting to see why: Whenever he does venture a proposal, it turns out to be a bad one. The latest example? Rent control. Mr. Spitzer thinks the city needs more of it. His desire to perpetuate rent regulation comes disguised as a proposal to index to inflation the ceiling beyond which rent regulations no longer apply.

Currently, once a rent-stabilized apartment inches its way beyond a rent of $2,000 a month, it drops out of the stabilization program and the landlord can start letting it out at market rates. Based on the persistence of market-distorting rent regulation the $2,000 ceiling is too high, but Mr. Spitzer purports to be afraid that over time inflation could leave the ceiling too low, pushing too many units out into the free market. To "solve" this "problem," he would ask the legislature to introduce inflation indexing, so the ceiling would creep perpetually upward.

Rent control and stabilization have not made housing more affordable for most New Yorkers. As a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, Nicole Gelinas, notes in the most recent issue of City Journal, the greatest benefits accrue to renters living in spacious abodes in pricey neighborhoods. Everyone else finds the stock of available housing dramatically restricted because rent stabilization provides an incentive for tenants to stay in regulated units for decades, when in a free market they would downsize.

Real Americans aren't for rent control.