And I'm not arguing against them. Where TF did I do that?
When you say "the cost everyone else must pay for rent control," you show not only that you were ignorant before this thread started but also that you haven't learned anything from it, or at least answered my point that no, not everyone pays for it. Not even the landlords pay for it, being the only class of businesspeople who get a guaranteed increase every year, no matter what the economy is doing.
As for the neighborhoods, if you think all that has to happen for a brand-new neighborhoods to exist is for disparate people to move there from all over the place, you really know nothing about neighborhoods.
And I never said there was an unlimited supply of housing. It does not keep up with demand, forcing housing costs higher, and that is because it is limited by factors other than the existence of rent regulations.
Once again, for the thread-reading-impaired, NO ONE IS SUBSIDIZING THESE RENTALS. There is a reason why the housing court in NYC is so pro-tenant, and that is the rapacious landlords who would ship their mother to the heart of the most crime-ridden slum if they could get market rate for her apartment.
I'm a little tired of repeating myself, so I'm going to try to stay off this thread and get some work done.
Your humanities degree is showing.
I get really tired of educating people in basic economics, but your known well, and not a DU disrupter so I'll go over it for you very slowly.
Everyone subsidizes rent controlled apartments. That's the way economics works. The cost of everything else is higher (in this case, all other housing), to make the cost of the rent controlled apartments artificially lower. To believe otherwise is like trying to deny the law of gravity.
The landlords pay for it because their rent increases are set at a maximum, but their costs are not. It also reduces the number of uncontrolled apartments available, allowing them to make up the difference lost on the rent controlled spaces by charging more on the uncontrolled ones. (That pesky law of supply and demand again,... I assure you, it does work in Manahattan)
We haven't seen anything like that in New York in a few years, but what exactly do you think happens when a landlord is guaranteed no more than a 4% per year increase, and the union laborers he’s required to hire demand a 9% increase in wages? What happens when all of the costs associated with being a landlord outpace the fixed increases?
And by the way, there isn't a single landlord anywhere in this country anyway, that is ever guaranteed an increase in rent. If the people move away, and there is no-one else to rent the place, where is his increase then? (OK, I promised I'd go slow,... he doesn't get one.)
The arguments you make only make sense if you specifically ignore some other part of the machine. Not only are you arguing like a socialist, but your spouting the classic, "hate the rich" (rapacious landlords) argument.
(By the way, I'm having a little bit of trouble with the idea that a well known freeper is pointing at the New York State court system and saying "See?! If they do it the way they do, it must be the right way." I guess if you live long enough you really do see everything.)
Tell me you have a rent controlled place and that you want to keep it that way, and I'll say fine. Tell me you would rather have everyone else pay extra to preserve the character of the community, and I'll say fine. Tell me that you have pretty much any personal stake in the idea of rent control and I'll admit that you have a valid point. Just because I value preserving the integrity of the community less than you doesn't mean I'm right, so if you point is focused on how we value these non-quantitative assets, I’ll happily concede.
But trying to tell me that no one subsidizes rent control is like telling me that the sky is red. You're insisting that something regarded as a basic fact by anyone with a little knowledge of contemporary economics is not true. Your trying to insist that virtually all of the economic community has been fooled into believing that these silly “free markets” are good for us. And I think you had better re-think your position.
You might also want to read “Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman, or virtually anything by Thomas Sowell. If you don’t believe the things I say, maybe you’ll be willing to let them show you the error of your ways.