The null hypothesis here is that your rent controlled (or stabilized) landlord is worse than your average New York landlord, which is debatable! There's all ki

The null hypothesis here is that your rent controlled (or stabilized) landlord is worse than your average New York landlord, which is debatable! There's all kinds of context being missed here: rent controlled units tend to be in pre-war buildings in very nice neighborhoods, because that's where the housing was built in that era. They're also frequently in co-op or condominium-owned buildings, where the owners took the building private but still have to respect the pre-private holdout leases. They also tend to be larger than their non-controlled price-point equivalent, because they weren't chopped up during housing boom cycles. Is it an unequivocal dream? No, for the reasons you said. But for every single family I know, it's a fantastic deal and an opportunity to live and access things that would otherwise be far outside of their means.