Get real now: After landlords refuse to invalidate laws limiting their ability to raise rents, turn to pragmatic fixes

A federal appeals court has spoken: New York City’s rent stabilization regime, strengthened in 2019 state laws we didn’t care for, are not an unconstitutional seizure of property. “The case law is exceptionally clear that legislatures enjoy broad authority to regulate land use without running afoul of the Fifth Amendment’s bar on physical takings,” wrote Judge Barrington Parker — appointed by George W. Bush, if it matters — in two unanimous three-judge decisions.

Building owners who brought the cases are clearly banking on the highest court in the land, and they’re swinging for the fences in hopes of an ideological ruling that would deem these price controls forbidden in America.

Speaking of ideology, economists and editorial boards across the political spectrum, this one included, are on record opposing laws that cap what owners can charge tenants. As liberal Paul Krugman put it in 2000: “Almost every freshman-level textbook contains a case study on rent control, using its known adverse side effects to illustrate the principles of supply and demand. Sky-high rents on uncontrolled apartments, because desperate renters have nowhere to go — and the absence of new apartment construction, despite those high rents, because landlords fear that controls will be extended? Predictable. Bitter relations between tenants and landlords, with an arms race between ever-more ingenious strategies to force tenants out…and constantly proliferating regulations designed to block those strategies? Predictable.”

Alas, here in real-world New York, rent regulation isn’t going away anytime soon. Tenants, who pay through the nose, demand enforceable legal limits on what landlords can charge — and, given the punishing cost of living here, we don’t blame them.

Anyone who cares about actually alleviating that financial stress should be backing plans by Gov. Hochul and Mayor Adams to produce much more housing, because increasing supply is the best way to lower costs. We badly need property tax reform; a 421-a style incentive to build; and zoning reforms in the city and suburbs to spark new construction and conversions.

Judges won’t rescue renters. Only the politicians can do that.