I think you should be able to build it the way you want, and if you wish to rent it, or sell it, then it has to brought up to standards. I bought a house with d

I think you should be able to build it the way you want, and if you wish to rent it, or sell it, then it has to brought up to standards. I bought a house with deck railings that were far apart even though I had a 3 month old baby. We kept the door to the deck locked, and I installed railings the following Spring. I grew up in Brooklyn, but I now live in rural East Java, Indonesia. Yep, life is very different, but I like it. You adapt. Some people choose not to, and that is their perogative. I think rent control is a big issue in the sense that it allows people who can truly afford a higher rent, a nice lifestyle. A friend lived in TriBeca NYC, paying $600 per month for a > 2000 sq. ft. loft in an area of million dollar lofts. She could afford it, or to move to Brooklyn at the time, but did not want to leave the luxury afforded to her by rent control. It's not old people eating cat food out of cans in unheated apartments as much as people protray it. I lived in Chelsea, NYC in the late 1990s. I paid a fair rent, a lot of older people paid rent control, or their grandkids who lived there while they lived elsewhere in the suburbs. I spoke to the owner of the building, who showed me the boiler that was constantly in need of repair. He said he wanted to buy a new one, but 90% of the tenants were paying around $400 per month rent. The boiler installed was over $100K. I like to see both sides. My belief is we should do away with rent control, let the market stabilize, build affordable housing up to code, and ride the wave until it becomes a better situation. Subsidies, and delaying the solution is only creating more disparity.