A housing policy as described by intellectual eight year old's. How's the NYCHA working out for the tenants?

Cynthia Nixon sounds confused by her own ‘universal rent control’ plan

By Post Editorial Board

August 17, 2018 | 8:31pm

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Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams at universal rent control rally.Eduardo Munoz Alvarez

Cynthia Nixon may be an accomplished actress, but she apparently has a big problem handling material that’s not included in her script. 

In Brooklyn on Thursday, the gubernatorial candidate and her running-mate, City Councilman Jumaane Williams, tried to tout “universal rent control,” a pet proposal of their party’s rising socialist wing.

But when reporters asked just what that policy means and how it would be enacted, the pair found themselves in over their heads trying to explain.

In fact, Nixon couldn’t offer much of anything in the way of details — or, more important, cost figures: Asked how much rent increases would be limited to under her plan, she replied: “Well . . . it depends on what would be passed in that cycle.”

Williams wasn’t much help, either — and he’s a veteran tenant activist. But he offered assurances that “it’s a very good concept.”

Actually, it’s not — and it gets worse once you examine the details that Nixon and Williams couldn’t provide.

Essentially, it means expanding rent regulations to cover every apartment building with at least six units, including those that have already been deregulated — though the candidates also struggled with just what rents would be on the “recaptured” units.

As we’ve long noted, rent regulation in general is a disastrous (though politically popular) policy that’s largely responsible for the city’s permanent housing shortage.

It has taken a million units off the market — leaving them unavailable for the low-income people that Nixon-Williams claim to want to help. That’s why one leading economist has called rent control “the best way to destroy a city — other than bombing.” 

Yet Nixon-Williams would even extend rent regs to newly built units — a move that’s never been allowed, because it would discourage developers from building new housing and banks from making such loans.