This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 19th, 2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

New York City likes price controls on rent, but they go a step further in actively preventing landlords

from changing or selling their property unless tenants agree. The Supreme Court

might take up a challenge to that law. Cato's Tommy Berry details what's at stake.

We've known for a long time that rent control is bad economic policy

and we for a variety of reasons

and yet a lot of states and cities have persisted, most notably New York City has

persisted with a rent control regime that's gone back decades.

What does rent control do to both landlords and tenants?

It has several effects.

So the most commonly known is it sets maximum rent rates.

So the name of this law in New York City is the rent

stabilization law and that's kind of the euphemism stabilization for setting

maximum prices maximum rents that the tenants may charge. It applies to pre- 1974 buildings that

house six or more people. So in total about half of all habitable New York City

apartments are subject to this law and a New York City government

board for each particular building essentially sets a maximum rental price

that they may charge and they take into account several factors not just the value and location of the building,

but also the ability of the tenants to pay in that neighborhood.

But in addition, and the subject of this case, it also has severe restrictions on when you can not

renew a tenant's lease. So of course people can buy leases for however long

they want and an owner has to respect that that contract be it 12 month

...