The City Council’s minority leader yesterday called for the city’s Department of Finance to investigate tenants who live in rent-regulated apartments and also own second homes.

Council Member James Oddo, a Republican of Staten Island, said a report on such tenants in yesterday’s New York Sun “cries out for further investigation.”

The article said thousands of New Yorkers who live in rent-regulated apartments also own second homes, some in the city’s tony weekend retreats.

“We always hear about landlord-gouging. This is gouging by the tenants,” Mr. Oddo said yesterday. “Rent regulation has a chilling effect on private investment.” Mr. Oddo will send a letter to the Finance Department to urge them to investigate where rent-regulated residents with out-of-state second homes are paying their taxes. He said he would encourage the Bloomberg administration to do the same.

“If they are getting the benefits of rent regulation in the city, they should be paying New York City income tax,” Mr. Oddo said. Mr. Oddo accused tenant advocates of employing “revisionist history” by ignoring the genesis of rent regulation, which he said was intended to support and protect people in need.

“Only in the bizarro world of the New York City Council do people not see the nexus between rent regulation and affordable housing,” Mr. Oddo said.

On Sunday, about 40 advocates for tenants’ rights and the homeless rallied outside Mayor Bloomberg’s Upper East Side townhouse, asking the mayor to wrest more control over housing policy from Albany. They said the state’s control over housing policy has resulted in weaker rent and eviction protections for city residents and the annual loss of tens of thousands of affordable housing units.