Advocates of control and stabilization of rents in New York City are constantly arguing that the policy is necessary, as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver put it recently, to achieve the goal of “keeping the middle class in the city.” But what if it turned out that the only places that regulated rents are significantly lower are in some of the city’s otherwise priciest neighborhoods?

In other words, hardworking outer-borough and Harlem taxpayers are paying to administer a costly system that provides a lucky few with the chance to live in Upper East Side and Upper West Side apartments that rent at $400 a month below the market rate. That might help a few a bit. After all, most everyone’s for keeping the middle class in the city. But why should residents of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx be paying taxes to administer the system to subsidize a lucky few who get sweet deals on Central Park West and Park Avenue?

Well, it turns out that is pretty much what’s going on, according to a housing economist, Henry Pollakowski, of the MIT Center for Real Estate. Mr. Pollakowski finds, in a new study out from the Manhattan Institute, that of the city’s million-plus regulated — or “stabilized”— units, the vast majority of the benefit accrues to the residents of affluent areas of Manhattan. The outer boroughs, on the other hand, are hardly affected by rent control. Regulated renters in the Bronx only see a difference of $58 a month. In Brooklyn, the number is $5. Queens and Staten Island effectively see no benefit. Compare that to those $400-plus numbers for the Upper East and Upper West Sides.

This is something to consider as the legislature debates the future of the regulations in 2003. It turns out rent regulation isn’t keeping the middle class in the city. It’s keeping a lucky few on the Upper East and Upper West Side, while the middle class taxpayers everywhere else get stuck with a bill on the order of $40 million to administer this unequitable system.