Mamdani’s Mirage: The Illusion of Rent Control
Rent freezes may win elections, but they won’t make housing more affordable.
New York’s Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has a lot to prove. Polling at 5 percent in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary just over a year ago, now he’s beating the streets trying to make good on the promise that won him his office: freezing rent. But sky-high housing costs are more complicated than he let on.
Despite his promise, Mamdani does not hold the unilateral power to freeze the rent. Instead, he must appoint like-minded individuals to the New York City Rent Guidelines Board to vote on the issue. Mamdani has done so, and earlier this month, the Rent Guidelines Board voted to consider a 0–2 percent increase on one-year leases. The final vote is set for June 24. However, Mamdani’s larger promise of delivering affordability is years away, and even then, it’s unlikely to produce sustainable relief for the people of New York.
The reason is simple enough: High rent in cities like New York can be chalked up to a lack of supply, driven by overregulation from federal, state, and municipal governments. According to Goldman Sachs, the United States needs 3–4 million housing units to address the housing shortage. Rent control is a mirage solution that will further reduce supply and limit young renters’ opportunities to find affordable housing.
Mamdani is not the first mayor to win a campaign on impossible housing promises, and based on similar examples, his trajectory looks grim. A 2018 National Bureau of Economic Research study on the effects of rent control expansion in San Francisco found a 15 percent reduction in rental units and a 5.1 percent citywide rent hike. In 2024, progressive San Francisco Mayor London Breed lost her re-election bid to Daniel Lurie, who ran on a more moderate campaign platform. Since then, San Francisco has become the inverse of New York, with Lurie’s housing policies cited as an alternative to Mamdani’s radical campaign promises.
San Francisco’s rent control experiment showed how the policy hurts its most ardent supporters by locking tenants into artificially low rates, decreasing turnover, and limiting renter mobility. A National Multifamily Housing Council report highlighted a 20 percent reduction in mobility for renters in rent-controlled units in San Francisco. This gives those in more expensive, uncontrolled units greater market power, while those in controlled units are cordoned off from the positive effects of market competition. Reduced mobility among those in more affordable, rent-controlled units also results in fewer openings for young renters seeking affordable housing.
The same report found that rent control was more beneficial for higher-income residents in St. Paul, Minnesota. Not only could rent control prove a futile goal, but its benefits could end up in the pockets of those Mamdani campaigned against.
The only way to solve the housing affordability crisis in the long term is by increasing supply, a problem even Mamdani acknowledges. Despite his disastrous rent-freezing policies, the federal government could spur development nationwide through deregulation. Developers are continually stifled by restrictive land-use and environmental review policies that cause lengthy bureaucratic delays, postponing needed housing developments.
The Trump administration is leading on this issue, overturning a Biden-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule that flooded developers with bureaucratic regulations and paperwork. Further action should include the Bipartisan Policy Organization’s proposal to exclude infill housing in already developed areas from time-intensive National Environmental Policy Act review.
States and municipalities should follow federal officials’ lead by continuing to deregulate. Florida is off to a good start, having passed an expedited building review for larger cities and municipalities. The 2024 law has allowed developers to obtain permits more quickly, contributing to the current cooling of the Florida housing market.
Mamdani’s pie-in-the-sky promises inspired young renters in New York and nationwide. However, not only is rent control proving more difficult to enact than he let on, but the results from other cities like San Francisco show just how much worse the housing problem could get if he succeeds.
The slow and steady task of deregulation might be uninspiring on the campaign trail, but it’s the nation’s best hope for increasing the housing supply. Even if Mamdani gets his rent control, voters should take note of whether the results live up to the hype.
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