This is an important point that the author of the article seems to have not noticed. His whole argument is based on the idea that rent control leads to a decrease in supply, with a resulting hike in price due to unmet demand. But I wonder just how many apartments can really be built in Manhattan? Or in intra-muros Paris, or in the City in London...
Manhattan could have 3x the number of apartments by increasing average building size, granted transportation would become an even larger problem. However, when you increase the cost to live somewhere you decrease the number of people who want to live there so it's probably not a problem.
IMO rent control is best when it limits how much above inflation you can increase rent per year. At 3.5% over inflation you can basically double the real cost over 20 years, but people can plain ahead and know they will not be forced out next year. The major problems seem to occur when rent suddenly goes up 20 percent with little notice or fall significantly below market.
PS: London and Paris are less developed than Manhattan, but they seem to want to maintain their historic look which limits growth. DC has started building down because they can't increase building height which is extremely expensive.
But rent control is probably not the whole story. I'm not familiar with NYC laws but I'm sure there's a lot of regulatory red tape besides rent control that keeps housing scarce and expensive.
