Mayor Mamdani's Rorschach Test

In May 2026, the Mamdani Administration released its NYC housing plan. It included this letter from the Mayor. What is your solution to the issue of high home prices in NYC?

Economists have measured the misallocation induced by such rent control. Small families tend to live in larger units.

Glaeser, Edward L., and Erzo F. P. Luttmer. "The misallocation of housing under rent control." American economic review 93, no. 4 (2003): 1027-1046.

Property owners under-invest in maintenance and let the property depreciate.

Autor, David H., Christopher J. Palmer, and Parag A. Pathak. "Housing market spillovers: Evidence from the end of rent control in Cambridge, Massachusetts." Journal of Political Economy 122, no. 3 (2014): 661-717.

Neighborhood urban problems fester

Autor, David H., Christopher J. Palmer, and Parag A. Pathak. "Ending rent control reduced crime in Cambridge." In AEA Papers and Proceedings, vol. 109, pp. 381-384. 2014 Broadway, Suite 305, Nashville, TN 37203: American Economic Association, 2019.

Ironically, those with sweet rent control units ARE MORE likely to be unemployed! (the subsidy anchors them to the wrong place given their current circumstances).

Jiang, Hanchen, Luis E. Quintero, and Xi Yang. 2025. “Does Rent Control Increase Tenant Unemployment?” Journal of Urban Economics 149: 104000. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jue.2025.104000 (published version).

Mayor Mamdani should read the 1946 paper by Friedman and Stigler.