The Left’s Housing Math Doesn’t Add Up

Between 25,000 and 50,000 rent-stabilized apartments in New York City sit empty right now. Not because nobody wants them. Because the 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act made it economically impossible for landlords to renovate and re-rent them. The cheapest units in the most expensive city in America, locked behind closed doors.

Politico reports NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and LA mayoral candidate Nithya Raman want to end “the left’s housing civil war” by fusing rent freezes with pro-construction policy. Moses Kagan, an LA developer who built Adaptive Realty from 32 apartments into a major real estate firm, just explained why the math will never work.

Developers Are Landlords

M

Moses Kagan

@moseskagan

Going to lose my mind. Every developer of rental housing is either a landlord in waiting or hoping to sell to one. You can't be in favor of private rental development, while also being in favor of eviction moratoriums, rent freezes, etc.... the capital just won't finance development at the scale necessary.

Mar 7, 2026

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The financing math is simple. A developer takes a construction loan, builds apartments, then holds them as rental income or sells to someone who will. The building’s value depends entirely on what the landlord can charge. Freeze that number and the building isn’t worth building. Centrist critics have already named the contradiction at the heart of the Raman/Mamdani platform: “capitalism for developers, communism for landlords.”

In a follow-up, Kagan compared the pitch to “trying to get you to build one more round of apartment buildings in Havana in like 1958.” Cuba nationalized housing after the revolution and froze rents. The stock has been decaying for 65 years. When you cap the price, capital leaves.

Why the Synthesis Fails

Raman tells Politico: “My philosophy is you need protection and production in order for cities to thrive.” In practice, she tightened rent limits for 1.5 million Angelenos in rent-stabilized apartments and blocked evictions without cause. Dan Yukelson, head of the Apartment Association of Greater LA: “Our members express such hatred for her.”

Then she tried to pivot. Proposed exempting new multifamily from LA’s mansion tax on property sales over $5.3 million, a levy that’s raised more than $1 billion. Progressive groups called it betrayal. Developers didn’t rally behind her. The proposal collapsed.

Development attorney Dave Rand was won over by Raman’s engagement with industry concerns. He still can’t convince his own clients because all they hear is “rent control.” Too progressive for capital, too capitalist for progressives.

The 88,000-Home Deficit

NYC’s vacancy rate is 1.41%, the lowest since 1968. Fewer than 2 in every 100 apartments are available. Rent-stabilized vacancy is double the city average because landlords pulled those units off the market entirely.

Vital City estimates Mamdani’s proposed four-year rent freeze could push 100,000 additional units into insolvency. Meanwhile, he pitched Trump, who has called him a “communist” and “lunatic,” on a $21 billion Sunnyside Yard project to build 12,000 new units in Queens. Build 12,000, lose 100,000. That’s not a housing plan. That’s a net loss of 88,000 homes.

Dan Garodnick, who built that record as head of NYC planning, offered this to the incoming mayor:

The Evidence from Other Cities

St. Paul passed a 3% rent control cap in 2021. By 2024, construction dropped 80%. The city council walked it back in May 2025. The council member who canvassed for rent control became the lead author of the rollback.

The Brookings Institution found San Francisco’s rent control led to a 15% drop in renters living in treated buildings. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, was blunt: “Rent control is not going to be the solution… you effectively halt production.”

Cities that cut barriers see the opposite. Austin built at 6.8% annual growth and rents dropped 15.2% from peak. For a family paying $2,500 a month, that’s $375 back every month. San Jose went from zero market-rate homes in 2024 to 2,000 breaking ground in 2025 after Matt Mahan cut fees.

Capital has choices. Freeze rents in New York, capital moves to Austin. Tighten limits in LA, developers build in San Jose. The pattern repeats: rent control leads to vacancy control, then renovation bans, each fix creating the crisis that demands the next. The fix that actually works is the opposite: cut fees, streamline permitting, let builders build. Raman and Mamdani aren’t ending a housing civil war. They’re accelerating a capital flight that leaves their renters with fewer homes than before.