I knew that rent controls have frozen a great deal of New York's housing stock, but I had no idea how much.  From the WSJ:

Today, there are 43,317 apartments where tenants (or their heirs) pay rents first frozen in 1947. There are another 1,043,677 units covered by rent stabilization. All told, about 70% of the city's rental apartments are either rent controlled or rent stabilized.

Every new entrant into the New York rental market is competing for just 30% of the available housing stock.  This explains a lot about New York's rental culture.  Also why so much rental housing is being converted into condos or co-ops.

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