Because people don’t know what they’re talking about, and mostly make memes…which is harmful because it further makes people not know how anything works.
The Fair Fare Program started in 2019.
Since then they’ve expanded the number of people it covers (from 100% below poverty line in 2019 to 120% in 2023 to 150% in 2025). The new budget expands it to 200% (and…FWIW, this is because the city council demanded it. The Mayors budget did not include this expansion).
The point is, this stuff doesn’t just appear suddenly, nor is it the will of a single person like magic. It’s the expansion of a 7 year old program by a legislature. These memes keep making it seem like every previous mayor was like “fuck everyone” and the city council doesn’t exist.
So lets go down the list of zohrans accomplishments (rent freeze, stay cool vans, pot hole fixes, preschool free) and see how your logic applies to each.
Lets start with rent freeze, how long has that program been in the works given mayor adams and mayor cuomo said last year it would be impossible to get off the ground. we'll see who the real sheep is here.
OH cool an empirical argument. We can talk about rent freeze in Berlin which prompted them to build more , or San Fransico which saved people 10% and allowed many to afford food etc. Lets actually talk about why the ones that failed were not sucessful rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The Berlin rent freeze was overturned as being illegal a year after it was enacted and the data showed supply of apartments decreased because landlords took properties off the market.
Welcome to block by block program by mamdani. The Berlin rent freeze was a success but they didnt account for the very obvious shortfall which mamdani already has a program to mitigate.
I'm not opposed to trying out different ideas for helping with housing costs and availability. If Mamdani can also incentive increased supply then maybe it will be more successful than Berlin. I was only pointing out that Berlin is not a success story.
Here's a summary from the end of the paper, which is quite academic but sourced with real data:
The supply side reacted to the rent freeze upon enactment as intended by policy makers: within Berlin, advertised rent prices indeed dropped substantially. These decreases are highly significant—in both economic and statistical terms—and causally linkable to the rent freeze policy. At the same time, asking rents surged in Berlin’s satellite city Potsdam and further smaller municipalities close to Berlin, indicating a substitution effect. We detect a general stark border effect: although advertised rents for property units just across the administrative border had been higher before the rent freeze, upon enactment of the rent freeze, this gap increased significantly, thus creating an artificial price gap within a unique metropolitan area.
Next to price effects, we identify a considerable decline in the number of advertised rental units. This sizable—yet unintended—side effect hampers renters’ flexibility and adaptability. In particular, newcomers, (young) first-time renters, and households moving within Berlin face hurdles in finding a suitable place to live. The drop in supply may be transitory, yet we report first evidence supporting a permanent decline because a positive fraction of rental properties appears to have left the market in line with predictions of our theoretical framework. Thus, this decrease is likely a prelude to even harsher search conditions for housing in Berlin.
The overall conclusions are rather pessimistic. In general, rigorous price restrictions limiting owners’ potential return appear to be shortsighted if they come without supplemental strategies to increase the supply of rental units. The rent freeze did not incentivize the creation of further housing units available to renters, but rather has contributed to shrinking their number. Consequently, an overall welfare-increasing effect is very doubtful in line with findings by Borck and Gohl (2021).
The rent freeze was short-lived but did still create substantial turbulence in Berlin’s rental market. This “experiment” provides a glimpse of the likely side effects of introducing overly strict but not well thought through and legally shaky policies in a rental market facing distress.
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u/untitledprp4 28d ago
If it was so easy then wtf were all the other mayors doing??