Bianca Jagger's Rent

Cheers are in order for the three judges on the appellate division — George Marlow, Joseph Sullivan, and James McGuire — who ruled recently that Bianca Jagger, the ex-wife of Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, was not entitled to a rent-stabilized apartment on Park Avenue. The judges based their ruling on the facts that Ms. Jagger is in America on a temporary visa and also claimed a London flat as her primary residence. New York's price controls on rent are so silly and socialistic that they deserve to be wiped off the books. Were Ms. Jagger an American citizen without a London apartment, why should the taxpayers of New York have provided a wealthy woman for more than 20 years the benefit of a below-market-rate Park Avenue apartment?

Ms. Jagger's case underscores the way that the price controls on rent benefit a lucky and privileged few at the expense of ordinary New Yorkers. As even New York magazine — hardly a stronghold of free-market economics — put it, "Why the hell does someone like Bianca Jagger get to have a rent-stabilized apartment, anyway?" And Ms. Jagger is only the latest celebrity to cross our rent-control radar. In a July 8, 2005, editorial, "Cyndi Lauper's Rent," we noted that the 1980s pop-music icon was enjoying a four-bedroom apartment on West End Avenue at a government-fixed rent of $989 a month. In a December 5, 2005, editorial, "Boomerang," we recalled actress Mia Farrow's $2,900 a month, 11-room apartment on Central Park West.

It is true that Governor Pataki and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno achieved changes that allow some individual apartments — and their landlords — to be liberated from the government's apartment price-fixing scheme. But the pace of liberation is slow, as Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council work together to add new price-fixed units to replace those that have been liberated. Nearly a third of the city's housing units are subject to the government price controls. The most recent survey by the city shows that there were actually more such units in 2005 than there were in 2002, the last year surveyed. "The number of rent-stabilized units was 1,042,397 in 2002 and it was 1,043,677 in 2005," the city's housing department reports on its Web site. There were 3.3 million units in the city's entire housing stock.

Defenders of the government price-fixing scheme speak of the impracticality of throwing people out of their apartments if they get rich and of the desirability of keeping New York a city that is affordable to those with a variety of incomes. While there may be a few cases of undeserving beneficiaries, they argue, such cases are the exception. But no one is speaking of evicting tenants, just of charging them a market-rate rent, the same rents paid by millions of New Yorkers who aren't lucky enough to have scored an apartment with a government-fixed price. Our guess is that the city's 2 million non-price-fixed housing units today are more diverse than the price-fixed ones, as they house more recent immigrants. Other residents of price-fixed housing may be less famous or less prosperous than Mmes. Jagger, Lauper, and Farrow. But there is no reason some New Yorkers should get price-fixed apartments and others should not. Better to move to a free-market system that lets landlords and tenants contract for prices free of government interference.