The Right to Be Cool
23rd December 2025
As of April 1 of last year, New York City had more than one million apartments, but 47,720 were vacant. That’s up from about 27,000 in 2015 and 45,000 in 2023. A recent article in City Journal argues that landlords leave many of these apartments unrented because rent control, excessive government regulation, and the high cost of doing business in New York City makes it unprofitable to take in tenants.
Gee, whoda thunkit.
This is only going to get worse thanks to New York City Council member Lincoln Restler, who last week persuaded the rest of the council to pass an ordinance giving the city’s residents a right to be cool. That means that landlords will be required to install sufficient air conditioning to keep apartment temperatures at or below 78 degrees with 50 percent humidity in the summer months.
In hearings on the ordinance, experts testified that meeting the twin goals of 78 degrees and 50 percent humidity would be “prohibitively expensive.” Such targets are normally set only for “laboratory, medical, and other sensitive building programs” and the technology does not exist to retrofit residences to meet both targets. The council passed the ordinance anyway.
A common proglodyte delusion is that just passing a law somehow alters the nature of reality to make the impossible possible and the unaffordable affordable.
Time to leave.