In this commentary, TJ Walker critiques New York City’s recent rent‑freeze on about one million rent‑stabilized apartments, arguing that while the freeze offers short‑term relief for current tenants, it does not address the underlying housing shortage. Walker likens the progressive reliance on rent control to outdated Cold‑War thinking about Cuba, emphasizing that scarcity—not landlord malice—gives landlords power. He cites a 1.4% vacancy rate to illustrate market dysfunction and compares NYC two‑bedroom rents ($3,825) to those in Charlotte and Austin (≈$1,700) to show the price gap created by insufficient supply. The core solution, Walker contends, is to dramatically increase housing production through zoning and permitting reform, office‑to‑residential conversions, and allowing higher density, while still maintaining tenant protections such as anti‑harassment rules, safety code enforcement, vouchers, and public housing funding. He warns that without new homes, rent freezes are merely temporary anesthesia for a broken system, and that progressive policies must shift from solely regulating landlords to creating competition that empowers tenants with real alternatives.
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Ultimize. New York City just froze rents on roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments after Mayor Zoran Mondani campaigned on "Freeze the Rent." The Rent Guidelines Board vote is a huge political win for him and a huge relief for many tenants. I get it. New York is brutally expensive unless you're a Wall Street zillionaire, a trust fund performance artist, or a rat with inherited subway property. I once lived in a rent-free commune in New York with roommates and 12 cats. Let's just say it was not where I became a second date machine. But the real question is not whether renters are hurting. They are. The question is whether freezing rents solves the housing shortage or just makes liberals and progressives feel virtuous while the storage gets worse. That's where New York progressives need to listen to their own arguments sometimes. For most of my life, liberals have mocked conservatives for magical thinking about Cuba. Conservatives said, if we just isolate Castro long enough, if we just keep the embargo tight enough, if we just show those communists how tough we are, eventually the dictatorship will collapse and Cuba will turn into Denmark with better music. How did that work out? More than 6 decades later, Cuba is still not a thriving democracy. It's not exactly Switzerland with mojitos. Meanwhile, the United States opened up to much of the rest of the communist world. We traded with China, we traded with Vietnam, we engaged with countries we didn't like. And no, it didn't create utopia. It created plenty of problems too, but it also created growth, change, rising living standards in many places, and a more complicated reality than the bumper sticker theory of foreign policy. The conservative Cuba theory was keep doing the same symbolic thing forever because it feels morally pure. Now, New York progressives are doing the same thing with rent. They're saying, if we just regulate harder, if we just freeze harder, if we just punish landlords harder, then affordable housing will appear. No, it won't. That's not a housing plan. That is a prayer candle with zoning restrictions. And before anyone starts yelling, no, I'm not saying landlords are all noble public servants, please. Some landlords act like replacing a broken stove is the Battle of Verdun. Some treat tenants like they are lucky to have hot water twice a month and a ceiling that only leaks during patriotic holidays. But if your only housing policy is stick it to the landlord, You're not actually helping the next person who needs an apartment. You're helping the person already inside the system. That matters. I'm not dismissing it. If you are in a rent-stabilized apartment and this freeze helps you from being pushed out, I understand why you're celebrating. I'd celebrate too. I might even throw a parade through my kitchen, assuming my kitchen were large enough for one adult human to rotate without turning on the oven with his hip. But what about the teacher who wants to move to the city? What about the nurse who wants to live near the hospital? What about the young couple having a baby? What about the immigrant family crammed into an illegal basement apartment? What about the kid from Queens who wants to stay in Queens but didn't inherit a rent-stabilized lease from Aunt Sylvia? A rent freeze does not create an apartment for them. And that's the problem. New York does not have enough homes. That's the central fact. Everything else is decoration. The vacancy rate is 1.4%. That's not a functioning housing market. That is musical chairs where 3 million people are circling one folding chair and somebody is charging a broker fee to look at it. When the vacancy rate is that low, landlords have power. Not because they're smarter, not because they're better, not because they've read Adam Smith in the original Scottish. They have power because tenants have nowhere else to go. Scarcity is the landlord's best friend. A housing shortage is a gift basket to every bad landlord in the city. It says, don't worry, you can be rude, you can be slow, you can ignore repairs, you can paint over mold and call it historic charm. Where else are they gonna live? If progressives really wanna weaken landlords, the answer is not just to cap what landlords can charge in the existing apartments. The answer is to create so many apartments that tenants can walk away. That is real power. The most terrifying sentence a landlord could hear is not the Rent Guidelines Board has issued a determination pursuant to municipal authority. No, the most terrifying sentence is, "No thanks, I found 5 other places." That is how you stick it to landlords. You give tenants options. Would you like to be the sort of successful person who is dominating news, at least in your industry? Well, if so, it's time to up your skills. At ultimize.com, I've created online courses to help you do that. Now, here's the thing. No obligation. You can get a free course on communication skills, a free course on how to build better habits. All you have to do is go to ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com. No obligation. Go there now. Now look at the numbers for 2-bedroom rents. Zillow's latest rent market pages put the average 2-bedroom apartment in New York City at about $3,825 a month. In Charlotte, North Carolina, my hometown, it's about $1,700. In Austin, Texas, it's about $1,706. So New York is not 10 or 20% more expensive. It's more than twice as expensive. That's the gap between, I can make this work if I budget carefully and I need a roommate, a guarantor, a side hustle, and possibly a small inheritance from an uncle I've not yet met. Take Charlotte, North Carolina, my hometown. Charlotte has plenty of problems. I'm not here to pretend it's an urban paradise. It has sprawl, it has traffic, it has apartment buildings that look like they were designed by a committee of people whose favorite color is beige. But Charlotte builds housing, and because it builds housing, rents are dramatically lower than New York. The $1,700 a month there, that's still a lot of money. It's not nothing for working people. That's a serious bill, but it's not New York City where people routinely pay luxury car money for an apartment with a bathtub in the kitchen and a super who communicates only through passive-aggressive tape on the elevator. Austin, Texas is an even clearer example. Austin had a massive housing boom, and guess what? Rents fell. Not because Austin landlords woke up one day and said, you know what, I've made enough money. I now dedicate my life to the children. No, rents fell because supply increased. Landlords had to compete. That's the part of capitalism liberals should love. Competition punishes greed better than speeches do. If there's only one apartment available, the landlord can act like a monarch. If there are 20 apartments available, the landlord has to answer the phone, fix the sink, waive the fee, lower the rent, and maybe even stop describing a closet as a junior studio. The progressive answer should be flood the market with homes, build apartments near transit, convert offices to housing. Legalize more density. Stop letting every neighborhood meeting become a hostage situation run by people who bought brownstones in 1983 and now think they own the sun angle. Make it possible for nonprofit builders, private builders, public builders, and small landlords to add housing without spending 10 years in permitting purgatory. And yeah, protect tenants. Of course, protect tenants. Have anti-harassment rules. Enforce safety codes, fund public housing properly, use vouchers, build social housing, help low-income people directly, stop landlords from using neglect as an eviction strategy. All of that is legitimate, but none of it replaces supply. You can't regulate your way out of a shortage. You can't freeze your way out of a shortage. You can't lawsuit your way out of a shortage. You can't chant your way out of a shortage. You have to build your way out. This is where big city Democrats have failed, not just in New York. California has failed too. San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York. These are places filled with educated, compassionate, liberal people who say all the right things about equity, opportunity, diversity, and inclusion. Then they build a system where only rich people can live near the good jobs. Sorry, but that's not progressive. That is aristocracy with a reusable grocery bag. You can't claim to be for working people and then make it impossible to build enough housing for working people. You can't say you love immigrants and then force immigrant families into overcrowded, unsafe apartments because every legal unit is treated like a threat to neighborhood character. You can't say you care about climate change and then block apartments near subway lines, forcing people farther and farther away into longer commutes. You can't say you care about inequality and then protect the property values of people who already got in while locking out everyone else. At some point, the results matter. Rent stabilization began in New York in 1969. Since then, the city has added layer after layer of rules, reforms, adjustments, protections, exemptions, boards, formulas, and lawsuits. And after all that, is New York City affordable? No. Is the middle class thriving there? No. Can a young family easily move in and build a life? No. Can a normal person look at the housing market and say, this seems sane? Only if that person has recently been hit in the head with a Citi Bike. So maybe the policy mix is not working. That doesn't mean every rent rule is evil. It doesn't mean every tenant protection should disappear. It doesn't mean we should turn the city over to developers and say, please build whatever you want, wherever you want, and remember, playgrounds are for communists. It means the central focus has to change. The test of housing policy can't be, did this sound compassionate at a rally? The test has to be, Did this create enough decent homes for people at different income levels to live here? By that test, New York City has failed. And I say this as someone who still thinks New York City is the most interesting place on the planet. I love the energy. I love the ambition. I love the weirdness. I love the fact that at any hour of the day you can find dumplings, jazz, genius, stand-up comedy, insanity, and a guy on the subway explaining cryptocurrency to a pigeon. But loving New York City doesn't mean pretending its housing policy works. In fact, if you love New York City, you should be furious that the city has made it so hard for normal people to live there. That's where Mandani gets right. The pain is real. The city is too expensive. Rent is crushing people. The working class and lower middle class have been failed. But being right about the pain does not automatically make you right about the cure. A doctor who correctly diagnoses a broken leg and then prescribes a scented candle is still not practicing medicine. A rent freeze is relief. It's not a cure. And that's the distinction serious politicians have to make. Donald Trump has his fantasies. He thinks he can take over Greenland, bully entire countries into submission, or get reality itself to sign an unconditional surrender. It's absurd, but Democrats can't respond by building their own fantasy land where housing becomes affordable because a board voted for the number zero. Zero is not a housing plan. Zero is a pause button. Sometimes people need a pause button, but after you hit pause, you still need to fix the machine. New York's machine is broken because it doesn't allow enough homes to be built where people want to live. Until that changes, every rent freeze will be temporary anesthesia. The surgery still has to happen. And yeah, surgery's messy. Permitting reform is boring. Zoning reform doesn't fit on a protest sign. Nobody gets goosebumps chanting, "Increase the floor area ratio!" But that is where the real solution is. More homes, more competition, more options, more power for tenants because they can leave. That's how you build an affordable city. Not by pretending scarcity can be managed forever by better slogans. Not by treating every landlord as the only villain while ignoring the political system that made housing scarce in the first place. Not by doubling down on policies that have been tried for decades while the city becomes less and less livable for anyone who isn't rich. New York needs compassion, yes, but compassion without results is just theater, and New Yorkers don't need more theater. They have Broadway. They need apartments. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. Ultimize.
