Ignorance or ill will? I'm going with the latter, but gentler hearts may disagree

Coming to a neighborhood near you

New York Democrats poised to enact state-wide rent control

Progressives in the state Legislature … are looking to impose universal rent control — subjecting every Empire State apartment to rules that say that rent hikes are “unreasonable” if they exceed 3 percent, or one-and-a-half times the inflation rate.The “Good Cause Eviction” bill would prohibit landlords from evicting tenants in nearly every market-rate apartment without first showing “good cause.” Tenants could fight evictions if they say they can’t pay such an “unreasonable” rent.

Right now, roughly a million apartments in the city, all in buildings that went up before 1973, are rent-regulated; this would effectively extend it to 2 million units — and anything built in the future.

…. The Legislature last year made it harder for landlords to cover their costs for modernizing rent-stabilized units and buildings, a reform that’s already forcing them to take hundreds of apartments off the market. This new legislation is guaranteed to prompt rapid deterioration in buildings that are now high-quality, by forcing landlords to cut their spending on maintenance and repairs.

Bernie Sanders, along with his fellow travelers proposes extending rent control across the entire country. If there’s anything economists of all shades of the spectrum agree on, it’s that rent control destroys housing, yet Democrats love it.

The late Charles Krauthammer had a rule: “Whenever you're faced with an explanation of what's going on in Washington, the choice between incompetence and conspiracy, always choose incompetence.” I’d like to think he’s right.