With 'rent stabilization' or rent control, the fairness issues seem to focus on (1) these mostly mom and pop rental housing operators being deprived of excluding others from their property and (2) not being able to receive rents at full fair market value and providing a public good (below market rents, a subsidy) for ZERO Compensation.
There's plenty of examples besides those below. So a majority of people on a City Council can choose to ignore the 5th Amendment Takings Clause and provide Social Welfare for free at little or no expense to the City, State, or Federal Government?
Here's some examples:
Petitioners in the Pinehurst case—the
Panagoulias family—have twice been unable to
recover their own property for personal use due to the
RSL. In 1974, Dimos and Vasiliki Panagoulias bought
a 10-unit apartment building in Long Island City after
moving to the United States from Greece. Pinehurst
Pet.App. 170a-171a. They raised their family in the
building and own it today. Id. Their son, Dino, lives
there with his family and manages the apartment in
his spare time. Id. Dino knows the tenants well and
considers them his extended family. Id. Around 2011,
Dino applied to New York housing regulators for
permission to recover a two-bedroom rent-stabilized
apartment for use as his family’s home. Id. at 187a.
But the regulators rejected his application, concluding
that, if Dino needed an apartment, he could have
taken possession of a different, one-bedroom
apartment that had previously been available, even
though that smaller apartment would not have suited
his family’s needs. Id. The family ran into a similar
problem when Dino’s sister, Maria, attempted to move
back into the apartment building in 2019. Id. at 187a-
188a. Due to the RSL’s restrictions on recovering rent-
stabilized apartments, the Panagouliases have not
been able to set one aside for her. Id.
The burdens imposed by the RSL, and rent control
generally, inevitably fall most heavily on smaller
“mom and pop” property owners. See Alabama Ass’n
of Realtors, 141 S. Ct. at 2489 (noting that “many
landlords have modest means”). Individuals, as
opposed to businesses, own the vast majority of the
nation’s rental properties."
"Petitioner Constance Nugent-Miller
was unable to reclaim possession of her first-floor
apartment despite severe leg pain that makes it
difficult to walk up to her second-floor apartment. Id.
at 167a-169a. Another petitioner has housed three
generations of a tenant family in a rent-stabilized unit
since 1975 at what is now half the market rental value.
Id. at 159a-160a. A family purchased a building with
the intent of combining several units into their new
home, only to have the 2019 Amendments thwart
their plan and tank the value of their investment. Id.
at 169a-170a. Another property owner has housed a
tenant for four decades at a rent far below market
levels and has been unable to evict the tenant despite
numerous complaints about the foul odors emitting
from the dogs kept in her apartment. Id. at 131a-132a.
When the unit becomes vacant, it will be more
economical to keep the unit vacant rather than make the necessary repairs and rent it out again at a rent-
stabilized level. Id. at 132a."
