Why the Democratic NYC mayoral candidates have housing all wrong

The Democratic primary candidates for mayor all agree: the city faces a housing cost crisis.Brad Lander says it requires declaring a “state of emergency.”Andrew Cuomo fears losing the “soul of our city.” Scott Stringer insists “the housing system is broken.”  Unfortunately, the solutions which they — and especially Queens Assembly member Zohran Mamdani — offer will only make matters worse.They’re ignoring the financial distress of private residential property owners, many operating at a loss, which could lead them simply to walk away from their buildings and bring New York back to the 1970s days of “the Bronx is burning.” What’s more, they overlook the damage and high costs of their preferred solution:  still more subsidized, rent-regulated “affordable housing.”By far the most potentially dangerous idea is the centerpiece of the Mamdani campaign:  a freeze on all rent-stabilized rents. A rent freeze would be a quick way to drive those struggling small landlords out of business altogether.  That’s what the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, which sets the rents for nearly a million rent-stabilized buildings, heard at its April 10 meeting.  They were told by Mark Willis of the Furman Center on Real Estate at NYU that owners of rent-stabilized properties in The Bronx are, on average, losing a stunning  $120 per month on every apartment, such that 200,000 units, concentrated in that borough, are under “severe distress.”  Their income has simply not kept up with rising costs — property taxes and utilities, whose prices are definitely not frozen. They’ve been hit hard, too, by the 2019 state Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, which limited any rent increases even for building improvements. Yet Mamdani asserts that “our government works for the landlords.” Ann Korchak, who heads the Small Property Owners of New York, disagrees.

“The costs of everything are rising.We’re not in a vacuum.

A freeze would c...