I live 35 minutes away from Manhattan (on a good day) in Brooklyn, on the border of Queens. Is your conjecture that rent stabilization drives rent prices up con

I live 35 minutes away from Manhattan (on a good day) in Brooklyn, on the border of Queens. Is your conjecture that rent stabilization drives rent prices up confirmed by anything but randroidian theory? I have a feeling that luxury units laying vacant, purchased in a cash-only private deal, do more to drive up the price of housing than rent stabilization. That, by the way, is a vast majority of investment in new housing stock in NYC. Some buildings cut a deal with the city to get tax breaks for providing 20% of the units as stabilized. If rent were fully deregulated: good luck finding someone willing to travel three hours to work in a midtown office for peanuts (or, for that matter, in any job other than finance). Do you have any non speculative examples of full deregulation actually increasing the stock of affordable, safe, up-to-code housing in a growing city?