I'm glad that Zohran seems to be positioning himself as a YIMBY. I'm worried, though, specifically about rent control in New York City. From an economic point of view it's clear that rent control is a force against housing construction. And it's so strong in NYC already - according to some sources roughly half of NYC residents are under rent control. So I'm just worried that a stance of "YIMBY but also supports rent control" is going to net out to be "NIMBY" because strengthening rent control could easily outweigh everything else he does, in terms of the housing market.
We'll see. Fingers crossed that NYC starts building more housing. It would be great for there to be a progressive pro-housing success story that others could emulate.
There are lots of ways of "supporting rent control" in NYC right now that will have wildly different outcomes. The most destructive would be forcibly putting new construction on rent control, which is not going to happen, I think. Doing a rent freeze for existing stabilized units should have much smaller impact on new construction, since it only matters if you think the government is going to later force you to adopt rent control. Mamdani has talked about reviving 421a, which is an opt in program for new construction to get tax abatements in return for stabilized units. I'm not sure this is the best use of money, but it's not NIMBY by any means.
I'm glad that Zohran seems to be positioning himself as a YIMBY. I'm worried, though, specifically about rent control in New York City. From an economic point of view it's clear that rent control is a force against housing construction. And it's so strong in NYC already - according to some sources roughly half of NYC residents are under rent control. So I'm just worried that a stance of "YIMBY but also supports rent control" is going to net out to be "NIMBY" because strengthening rent control could easily outweigh everything else he does, in terms of the housing market.
We'll see. Fingers crossed that NYC starts building more housing. It would be great for there to be a progressive pro-housing success story that others could emulate.
There are lots of ways of "supporting rent control" in NYC right now that will have wildly different outcomes. The most destructive would be forcibly putting new construction on rent control, which is not going to happen, I think. Doing a rent freeze for existing stabilized units should have much smaller impact on new construction, since it only matters if you think the government is going to later force you to adopt rent control. Mamdani has talked about reviving 421a, which is an opt in program for new construction to get tax abatements in return for stabilized units. I'm not sure this is the best use of money, but it's not NIMBY by any means.
Minor note, you mis-spelled "canon" as "cannon".