It turns out that the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel, has been enjoying the use of four rent-stabilized apartments, The New York Times reports in this morning’s paper. It also reports that Mr. Rangel also owns a villa in the Dominican Republic and has also owned in the past decade a Harlem building and a Florida condominium.

The Times, which deserves kudos for unearthing this news, tries to make a scandal of Mr. Rangel’s particular case, quoting “Congressional ethics experts” who suggested that the $30,000 a year difference between the market-rate rent and what Mr. Rangel is paying on three of the four apartments could be considered a gift from a developer seeking government approvals for its projects.

RELATED: Report: Rangel Has Four Rent-Stabilized Apartments.

To our view the question raised here is not particular to Mr. Rangel. The question raised here relates to the entire system of government price controls on housing in New York City. This is the same spirit in which we wrote in May about Governor Paterson’s rent-stabilized apartment in the same building as Mr. Rangel’s apartment. We went back to the New York City Rent Stabilization Law of 1969, which stated that a “transition from regulation to a normal market of free bargaining between landlord and tenant” is “the objective of state and city policy.”

Nearly 40 years later, while Governor Pataki and Senator Bruno have put some apartments back into the market system, the “transition” to a “normal market of free bargaining” has yet to take place. On the contrary, Mayor Bloomberg has been building new “affordable” housing units almost as quickly as old units are being taken out of circulation by the de-control laws. These units are built and preserved at great cost to the city’s tax base.

Just this week, the Times reported that bids for an “affordable” Starrett City had come in between $700 million and $900 million, which is far less than the $1.3 billion that had been offered on a free-market basis before Senator Schumer — scandalously assisted by the Bush administration — blocked the transaction on the grounds that it was “overpriced.” We look forward to Senator Schumer using the same logic to reject high bidders when it comes time for him to sell his personal property in Park Slope.

Rather than lavishing a $400 million subsidy on a few lucky ducks in Starrett City, why not cut taxes across the board for everyone and let New Yorkers use the money to pay for their own housing? In the first issue of our New York Sun, on April 16, 2002, we ran a front-page news article noting that even the Times, in a 1996 editorial, wrote that “Rent regulation has not served New York City well” and created “an irrational system in which some well-to-do tenants pay very little rent for large apartments while less-prosperous newcomers are forced to pay rents that are artificially inflated by the shortage of market-rate housing.”

In other words, this isn’t a liberal or conservative issue. 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. In an October 23, 2007, editorial, “Bianca Jagger’s Rent,” we applauded a court ruling that the ex-wife of Rolling Stone Mick Jagger was not entitled to a rent-stabilized apartment on Park Avenue in addition to her London residence.

We have nothing but high regard for Chairman Rangel, a towering figure whom we like and admire a great deal and who, as far as Democrats go, is among those least hostile to capital formation. He’s just doing what every New Yorker in a rent-stabilized or rent-controlled apartment is doing — enjoying the privilege that a bad law affords a lucky few at the expense of the rest of us. If his own penthouse underscores to the public the illogic of the law, he will have rendered the city a great service.