York City needs more affordable housing for its residents. Pushing private owners out will only make matters worse
“Replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism!”
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani
January 1, 2026
It never ceases to amaze me. No matter how desperate the issue, the government can screw it up more. Case in point, a basic function of any society, housing.
I’ve never lived in New York and there is not enough scotch in Scotland to make me move there. I visited in 2006 and met a NYPD officer working in Times Square. After introducing himself as a Houston cop (we speak the same language), I asked him a few questions of his town. One thing I wanted to know was how much an apartment was. He said, “For a one bedroom in an ‘ok’ neighborhood, I’m paying $1,600 a month.” That was several hundred dollars more than the mortgage note on my four-bedroom house in Texas. And that was 20 years ago.
A cultural trait of New Yorkers is many rent as opposed to buy. Only one-third of the city’s residents own their home. Over half said they never considering purchasing the last time they moved. Reasons include high costs, they don’t consider it a wise investment or wanting short term housing. So there is a market for apartments in New York City. So why is it almost 50,000 apartment units are vacant? Rent control.
The state and federal government started with one form of rent control after another from the Great Depression on. Federal controls, set up in 1942 as a temporary measure in a war time economy, ended in 1950. New York state and the city then took up the slack, passing one rent control scheme after another, cumulating in the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019. The law’s major provisions:
Makes the rent regulation system permanent; Eliminates the removal of units from rent stabilization when the rent crosses a statutory high-rent threshold and the unit becomes vacant or the tenant’s income is $200,000 or higher in the preceding two years; Repeals the ability of property owners to raise rents after a unit becomes vacant, and critically; Lowers the rent increase cap for Major Capital Improvements (MCIs) from six percent to two percent in New York City and from 15 percent to two percent in other counties.
I would point out the rent increase cap discourages repairs or upgrades. So what has this progressive dream resulted in. As you would expect, smaller supply, lower quality. From The Washington Post:
NYC’s small landlords say they won’t survive Mamdani plan to freeze rent
NEW YORK — In a city packed with mighty real estate titans, they are the small ones.
They bought or inherited aging apartment buildings, hoping to bring home a little extra cash as property values grew and they fulfilled the dreams of their immigrant parents. For decades, the investments appeared to pay off, despite stringent rules restricting rental increases for apartment buildings constructed before 1974.
But in recent years, as maintenance and insurance bills surged, the problems added up. Rental incomes largely stagnated even as the costs to replace boilers, roofs, windows and lead-soaked walls soared, leaving property owners in the red.
Now, with the city’s political landscape shifting around them, New York landlords say they are at their breaking point as Mayor Zohran Mamdani begins to implement even more aggressive tenant-friendly policies.
…He vowed to freeze what tenants in the city’s 1 million rent-stabilized apartments pay monthly. And he made landlords an early foil for his administration, scheduling “rental rip-off” hearings to showcase “illegal, unfair, abusive, deceptive, or unconscionable landlord practices.”
“Why is he targeting us?” asked Valentina Gojcaj, who owns two rent-stabilized apartment buildings in the Bronx. “This is my investment and something I expect to retire on. What happens to me when I can no longer afford to run these buildings?”
…The promise of new tenant protections has especially rattled landlords who do not hold vast real estate portfolios — people such as retired transit worker Irving Lee, who inherited an eight-unit rent-stabilized building in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
…He now wonders how much longer he can hold on to his family’s investment, given monthly rents of $700 to $1,500 for units that on average take $1,300 apiece to maintain.
“There are forces in this city that make it extremely difficult for property owners to care for and renovate these buildings,” he said…
City data show the rent-stabilized units represent about 40 percent of all rentals. Their average monthly rent: about $1,600.
To answer your question Ms. Gojcaj, you’re “rich.” To put this into perspective, the average rent for a market priced studio apartment is $3, 000. A three bedroom unit is closer to $7, 000. Also, New York has an apartment vacancy rate of 1.4 percent, that shows there is a demand to be met. How does rent control assist in the need? Not well.
…The New York Apartment Association estimates the city has 50,000 rent-stabilized “ghost apartments.”
“If you walk into pretty much any rent-stabilized building in Northern Manhattan or the Bronx, there will be vacant units that are never going to come back online,” said Kenny Burgos, who heads the association. “And that is really sad when we are in a housing crisis…”
Reading the article, you understand the motives of many smaller real estate investors. They are middle class people wanting to generate side income, provide for their families and prepare for retirement. For generations this was a sound way to do all three. Not anymore.
One family started buying apartments in the early 80s and now owns 200 units. But as cost have risen and ways to increase revenue have been blocked by the city and state, their future has become problematic. This family has tenants paying $650 to $2, 000 a month, with the average unit costing $2, 000 a month expense to run. For example, “We have one tenant who pays $675 for a four-bedroom apartment,” landlord Natalis Bonanno said. Should the person leave, she’d keep the unit vacant “because it would take decades to pay off the cost of the renovation.”
In the Bronx, Ms. Gojcaj and her husband purchased two properties as “a side thing,” believing they would make steady income. It is not working out that way. “Right now we are barely breaking even, and that is just operating costs. Never mind improvements.”
Gojcaj said the 50 units in her buildings rent from $700 to $2,000 monthly — with operating costs averaging $1,500 per unit. At one location tenants owed her $229,000 in overdue rent as of mid-January. “When is the breaking point when you have to say to the bank, ‘I am sorry, but I can’t afford this property anymore and you have to take it back,’” Gojcaj said.
A fear many landlords have is Mr. Mamdani is trying to force private owners to give up their apartments and have them sold to “non-profits.” Now what would make you think that?
A bill approved last year by the city council would have required the owners of some distressed apartment buildings to first give nonprofits an opportunity to buy them. Mayor Eric Adams vetoed it, but landlords fear Mamdani would sign such legislation if it’s brought back.
New York has its tightest rental marker in fifty years and a goal of former Mayor Adams was building 500, 000 units in ten years. At the current rate of construction, assuming they can keep pace, just over 375, 000 units will be filled. Another 50, 000 on the market will help with supply, and therefore cost. The socialist knows that, but he wants power and money, and if poor people must live in squalor, so be it.
Not just New York. Seattle has had housing cost explode as the city has pushed to increase “housing density” (i.e., force people into high-rises) as their population has increased. The lesson. You make it impossible for private owners to profit, investment will stop. Without that, you lose supply, and the cost of what remains will go up (I think I’ve read about that in an economics course in high school). And nothing a politician, bureaucrat, or “non-profit” administrator does will change that. Hopefully New York will get from under Mr. Mamdani’s “warm” collectivism until the Big Apple does turn into a rotten 3rd world hovel.
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers.
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