Nicole Huyer and Camilla Cort write for the Daily Signal about another bad idea from New York City’s mayor.
Solving the housing crisis is a bipartisan issue, but the mayor’s campaign promise of rent control is not the silver bullet. And ever since he stacked the Rent Guidelines Board with a like-minded leftist majority that has the power to freeze rent for nearly 1 million units, disastrous rent-stabilized apartments may come to fruition.
Aggressive government intervention does the opposite of making housing more affordable. Instead, market-based solutions such as prudent deregulation, streamlined permitting, and removing barriers to housing construction would drive supply up and stabilize rents.
Take the case of Argentina’s rental market after implementing the 2020 Lipovetzky Law. This law mandated rent controls and housing regulations that extended minimum lease terms, regulated annual rent adjustments, and required rents to be paid in pesos.
From June 2020 to December 2023, long-term rental listings on Zonaprop, one of Argentina’s largest real-estate platforms, fell 53%. The dramatic decrease in the supply of available long-term units caused real rental prices to rise by approximately 50% in the Buenos Aires metro area.
Socialist rent control policies created a housing shortage, upward of 200,000 vacant units, and through-the-roof prices.
But when Javier Milei was elected in 2023 and repealed the Lipovetzky Law, it took just seven months for rental supply to increase by 212%. Rental listings on Zonaprop rose by 15,300 units, a 180% increase as of February 2025. And not only did rental supply increase, but the real price of renting decreased by nearly 27%.
Eradicating rent control and onerous housing regulations empowered Argentinian landlords to set rents at competitive rates and allowed the “invisible hand” of free-market supply and demand to dictate housing price and quantity. This, in turn, produced rental agreements that were beneficial for both tenants and landlords.
Mamdani’s plan of imposing a four-year rent freeze on approximately 1 million rent-stabilized apartments would, akin to Lipovetzky Law outcomes, lower housing supply, reduce housing quality, and push uncontrolled unit prices up.
