Despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s \u201crent freeze,\u201d the costs for New York apartments continues to soar \u2014 except it\u2019s not really \u201cdespite\u201d at all: His policies either don\u2019t touch the problems, or make them worse.<\/p>\n
The average rent of an open Manhattan unit just hit an eye-watering $6,655 a month<\/a>, report industry pros, a 10% jump from last year.<\/p>\n An average studio is now going for more than four grand; you\u2019ll have to plunk down more than $12,000 every first of the month if you want three bedrooms.<\/p>\n One major reason: Rent regulation insulates 1 million apartments<\/a> \u2014 more than one quarter of the entire city\u2019s housing stock \u2014 from market pricing.<\/p>\n Those tenants rarely leave, making open units more scarce, and so forcing up prices<\/a> for the 1 million market-rate apartments.<\/p>\n And the rent freeze (which actually benefits higher-income folks<\/a> more that lower earners) only makes things worse. <\/p>\n \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n Plus, when a longtime rent-stabilized tenant finally moves out, 2019 state \u201creforms\u201d make it unaffordable for landlords to bring the unit up to code, so even vacated apartments can\u2019t get offered to new tenants. <\/p>\n All of this makes the city\u2019s \u201crent inequities\u201d even worse<\/a>, with would-be newcomers facing the most ridiculous rents while the \u201chaves\u201d already here get an ever-better break<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Yes, barriers to new construction made the supply crisis worse, and Mamdani\u2019s talking about addressing those \u2014 but that means facing down other stale ideas and vested interests, so the going is beyond slow.<\/p>\n Indeed, the mayor\u2019s fellow progressives keep doubling down on stale ideas, such as the state\u2019s \u201cGood Cause\u201d eviction limits (which penalize good landlords and reward bad tenants) and the city FARE Act that tries to make landlords pay all brokers\u2019 fees, as if those were the root problem rather than a response to the market\u2019s insanity. <\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s rent freeze only benefits people who already live here; he\u2019s done nothing to help those who want to come \u2014 which increasingly means only the very well off (highly paid, or with ample wealth) can move to New York.<\/p>\n He\u2019s done nothing to change the recipe for atrophy that\u2019s destroying the city\u2019s middle class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s \u201crent freeze,\u201d the costs for New York apartments continues to soar \u2014 except it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[148],"tags":[810,3427,3971,55,11318,11319,11320,10734,553],"class_list":["post-187226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zohran-mamdani","tag-affordable-housing","tag-editorial","tag-housing","tag-opinion","tag-rent","tag-rent-control","tag-rent-stabilization","tag-tenants","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117086836139313352","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}