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.
Classic? I don't agree. Sure it is the most commonly propagated. But many writers dating back to Frederick Bastiat, all the way to Angus Black (author of "Radical Economics" I think 1972), and on to Milton Friedman, as well as Thomas Sowell (both of who you named), have written about how these arguments have aided the rich in getting richer, weakening the middle class and further crippling the poor.
A wealthy land lord is always in a position to profit off any system. While a middle class property developer or landlord faces absolute devastation if a few elements in a plan fail. Unexpected costs have to result price increases. The rich don't have to worry about such costs, they just move some capitol around to make up the difference, and still get their alloted price increases. That is not the case for budget strapped single property developer or owner.
There are lots of "hate the rich" free enterprisers out there, who view all these anti-progressive policies as being designed to aid the rich in the name of helping the poor.
I wonder, are New Yorkers (the natives) so backward, that they actually think it better to have work done by the less competent, so long as it is done by long time natives? It seems to me that any progressive thinking individual always wants the best, regardless of where they are from.