Reporters missed something yesterday in the court case challenging the RGB’s decision to freeze rents. Likely because they, like most New Yorkers, have been misled into believing that rent stabilization is, or ever was, designed as an affordability program. On multiple occasions, attorneys for both the city and Legal Aid, the advocacy group that had an office in the State Senate writing the 2019 rent laws, made statements amounting to this: the rent freeze is so vital to affordability for hundreds of thousands of renters that overturning it would trigger mass evictions and homelessness. Aside from being factually untrue and physically impossible (we’ve covered before how hard it actually is to get evicted in NYC, especially for nonpayment), it lays bare a stark truth. This system relies on the taking of private property. Costs the city and state control get absorbed by private citizens, both other renters and property owners. The whole thing depends on other renters paying higher rents and owners eating the difference. It is likely the largest off-book public benefit program in the world. Tens of billions of dollars in costs are unsubsidized and shifted onto other renters and building owners to keep certain rents low, with no restrictions or requirements on who qualifies for this burden. I say burden because those costs remain despite rent freezes. The RGB’s own data says it. The city’s corp counsel said it plainly: “It’s not easy enough to just say, ‘Owners’ costs are up and therefore rents have to go up too,’” Moston said. “The board has to consider all factors.” Actually, no. The entire statute lays out cost measurements and housing supply factors but never once states a definition of affordability or even mentions the word. The Rent Guidelines Board SHALL consider other factors, but its primary purpose, the reason it exists at all, is to determine whether rents need to adjust to cover operating costs within a system designed only to control price gouging during housing shortage emergencies. Not to provide blanket affordability. Legal Aid’s attorneys switch sides on this argument constantly. In some cases they admit this is not an affordability program when they want to advocate for more laws. In others, like yesterday in court, they claim the program is so vital to half of New York’s renters that not freezing rents for two years would produce waves of homelessness. If that’s to be believed, it’s further proof that this is a public benefit the government is forcing a group of private citizens to provide without compensation. That, by definition, is a taking under the Constitution. You may not have a right to make money. But the founders and the courts that followed were smart enough to know that government cannot be given the power to force you to provide a service without just compensation. Consider: the average rent stabilized apartment already rents thousands below an unregulated one. That rent is locked in place even if the unit sits empty. Renovation costs are strictly controlled. Operating costs are dictated by the government. And the revenue to pay for all of it is capped directly. There is simply no way this law survives honest constitutional review. It must be struck down.