Do Rent Regulations Produce Fair Rents or Forced Subsidies?
by Timothy L. Collins Until about ten years ago it was widely understood that the purpose of New York’s rent regulation system was to eliminate the ability of landlords to charge excessive rents during an ongoing housing shortage. Since the late 1980’s a growing number of elected officials, editorial writers and policy analysts have quietly discarded the traditional “fair rent” objective of the system. Many now accept and echo the more conservative notion that tenants who reside in rent regulated apartments are the beneficiaries of subsidies which are unfairly paid for by their landlords. This subtle transformation has overwhelmed and distorted the more important debate about whether New York’s rent regulations have secured reasonable rents for tenants, provided fair returns for owners and offered sufficient incentives to preserve and improve the housing stock. The idea that rent regulations were designed to secure “fair” rents is clearly evident from the history of New York’s response
