What really needs to be understood about NYC housing is that rent prices are driven two ways. 

1) Demand pricing - not enough housing, too many people looking for housing. Seller of housing pricing the demand. The City of Yes and building of new supply is all an attempt to lower this price. Cities like Austin and elsewhere and centuries of economic research have shown this is effective. 

2) Operational Cost - taxes, regulation, renovations, labor, insurance, etc. 

Lawmakers feel compelled to cap and control rents because they feel like 1 is a theory. It can be argued as greed. Could be real could not be real but either way they feel incentivized to act on high prices either by promoting more housing or claiming as elected officials they need to protect their constituents by controlling it. 

But operational costs are also a major factor in rents. They are mostly controlled by government and they are rising extremely fast. 

Rents must cover the operational costs of housing at a minimum. In NYC that’s $1400 per apartment per month. That is currently not happening on nearly 400,000 units of rent stabilized housing across the city of New York by the rent guidelines board's own math.  

If rents stay flat while operational costs continue to rise, more buildings will become insolvent. 

The key point is that too often the cost of housing someone is hand waved away as 1 when it’s really 2.

If we keep trying to solve for 1 without addressing 2, the housing market will collapse further.