Middle class is $140k for NY renters
Davidson admits that eliminating rent controls would likely drive everyone who makes less than $90,000 out of Manhattan, which he says would not be healthy for the city, but then he claims that it would be "great" for the middle class. This makes sense if he's defining "middle class" as an income in the low-mid six figures, visualizing all the fantastically located apartments in Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn occupied by rent-regulated peasants, and imagining that a mass eviction would open up many more choices on the market and might even enable him to snag a place for $3,300 instead of $3,750.)
Curiously, the real-estate lobby has yet to advocate for the tax increases necessary to adequately fund the federal Section 8 rent-subsidy program, which has been closed to new applicants here since 2009 and generally won't help pay for a two-bedroom apartment that costs more than $1,474.
A lesser-known but important issue is that rent-controlled and rent-stabilized tenants can't be evicted without a legal reason, while unregulated tenants have no right to renew their leases. How stable would the city's neighborhoods be if rising rents forced residents to move every year or two? How would people raise children? How would they maintain the social relationships that sustain communities?