Damon Root on the Case Against Rent Control
James Harmon, a former federal prosecutor who owns a five-story brownstone apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, has filed a powerful legal challenge asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down New York City's four-decades-old rent stabilization law. At first, New York officials thought so little of Harmon's challenge that they waived their right to file an opposing brief with the Supreme Court. But as Senior Editor Damon Root observes, those officials got a rude awakening when the Supreme Court asked them to respond to Harmon's petition anyway, signaling that somebody at the Court took the legal challenge seriously. Does the case against rent control have merit?