Monday, August 22, 2011

Some Get Married for Money. Others Get Married for a $400 Rent-Controlled Manhattan Apartment

The Daily Mail is reporting that a 63-year-old woman married an 87-year-old Manhattan man just a month before he died, allegedly to take over his $400 per month rent-controlled apartment in a West Village building where market rents can reach more than $5,000 per month.  The building owner is asking a Manhattan judge to evict the woman.

I am sure there are hundreds of stories in NYC like this that illustrate the distortions caused by rent (price) control laws.  It certainly creates quite an adversarial relationship between tenants and landlords/owners. 

HT: Matt Bixler

2 Comments:

At 8/22/2011 3:19 PM, Blogger Methinks said...

Marrying for a rent controlled apartment IS marrying for money.

All perversions of the market cause distortions. Taxes cause distortions. Regulations (rent control among them) cause distortions. Worse, such distortions advantage the politically connected and disadvantage the ordinary person.

The cost of these distortions, in the name of some supposedly ideal and cosmically just system, are far greater than the supposed disadvantages of free markets.

 
At 8/22/2011 8:26 PM, Blogger Doug said...

Another instance of government policies incentivizing goofy, inefficient activity, though this isn't quite as crazy as cutting cars in half, then welding them together after shipment.

 

Post a Comment

<< Home