The landlord had told them he wanted to raise the rent to $3,500 and when they complained he decided to raise it to $9,500.
“We know that our building is not rent controlled and this was something we were always worried about happening and there is no way we can afford $9,500 per month," Yumna Farooq said.
Jesus, I’m getting it from both ends here, somebody else is dumping on me for suggesting that a rent-control system that’s a few points above inflation so that landlords could adapt to the market without abruptly bankrupting their tenants was somehow a reasonable compromise.
I’m not arguing for extreme rent-control policies, just that no rent control is bad because it lets landlords write their own eviction laws.
Peg it at like 2.5% or 5% per year above inflation and you can’t use it as a sudden backdoor eviction but you also let landlords adapt to market reality over time.
Capping rents might be stupid for all the reasons economists say, but putting a damper on sudden price shifts is just being humane.
The “humane” thing would be to make any and all rent seeking behavior very explicitly illegal, but that’s unlikely to happen.