Mayor de Blasio thinks of himself as a progressive in the tradition of Fiorello La Guardia.
But a vote scheduled for Monday by his appointees on the Rent Guidelines Boards calls to mind another American politician: Richard Nixon.
Back in 1971, Nixon delivered a televised address announcing a freeze on “all prices and wages.” The limits de Blasio’s appointees on the Rent Guidelines Board seek are less sweeping: Word is they will pass the smallest rent hike in decades.
Though the mayor himself backed off from earlier calls for a total freeze, the idea behind his call to keep rent hikes limited — that politicians can make things more affordable by decreeing prices and no one will be the worse — is the same as Nixon’s.
The outcome, too, will also be the same.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once put it this way: “We economists don’t know much, but we know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can’t sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you’ll have a tomato shortage. It’s the same with oil or gas.”
Guess what? It’s the same with rents.
The mayor is right that we have an affordability crisis in this city. But when landlords are forced by politicians to rent below the market rate, they put off repairs and do not expand supply — driving up prices in the non-regulated sector.
Put it this way: If you think apartments are scarce and expensive today, wait until you see what it’s like once Mayor Bill has inflicted on this city all his big-government schemes to make things affordable.