The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a major property-rights challenge to rent control laws in New York City and elsewhere that give tenants a right to stay for many years in an apartment with a below-market cost.
A group of New York landlords had sued, contending the combination of rent regulation and long-term occupancy violated the Constitution’s ban on the taking of private property for public use.
The justices had considered the appeal since late September. Only Justice Clarence Thomas issued a partial dissent.
Then NYC needs to manage itself better by purchasing property and knocking shit down to build larger buildings with more tenements in the same footprint. That “flavorful” 2 story with 12 apartments in Manhattan? Bulldoze that clunker and build a new 20 story with 120 apartments in it!
Then you keep doing it. NYC buys property, knocks down whatever tiny thing is there and rebuilds it to 10 or 20 times the previous capacity. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
All that’s happening with their current scheme is that the rent controlled apartments are being subsidized by everyone who lives in the market rate apartments so that they don’t damage the “character” of certain areas. The only winners are the people in the relatively few available rent controlled apartments and they’re only winning because they’re literally taking money from other people.
It’s not sustainable.
Who are you proposing do this exactly? Certainly not the city, that’s government intervention. Maybe an enterprising developer, one that would see the shape of the market and realize that prices go up far faster than square footage does? You can see the same issue happening with single family housing, no developer wants to build small but affordable homes because large and expensive ones cost only two or three times as much to build yet sell for probably ten times that much, and there is always a market for them because there are always corporations and hedge funds willing to pay that much and just sit on it as an investment. With apartments the issue is actually worse because you first need to buy the property and evict all the tenants, then you need to get your plans certified by the bureaucracy (and there are several), then you need to demolish the building, and only then can you start building a new one with all those cheap apartments that definitely aren’t worth building just because the people buying or renting them can’t afford to make up the difference even with the increased number of them.