Rent control for the rich

In our book, we say that price controls destroy wealth by preventing the movement of assets of higher valued uses. And Representative Rangel's over-consumption of rent-controlled apartments (he lives in three of them, and uses a fourth for an office) has shown us that when politics, rather than markets, are used to allocate apartments, it is the politically powerful who end up with them:

According to the New York City Rent Guidelines Board annual report, "Housing NYC: Rents, Markets and Trends," across the city there are 87,358 New York households reporting income of more than $100,000 a year which pay below-market rent thanks to the city's rent control and stabilization laws. A full 35% of all the city's apartments covered by the rent control regimes are rented by tenants who make more than $50,000 a year.