In Sweden it _only_ applies to first-hand contracts. So I don't think NY is a good comparison here.

The main issue is that the government doesn't build enough. There are just nowhere near enough first-hand contracts, like not even the same order of magnitude.

They've effectively abolished the system by just never building any, much like council housing in the UK.

Thinking this might have been the case... Good strategy amongst the more extreme neoliberals out there. Can see them doing it with the NHS too, play the long game, dismantle it piece by piece and then when everyone has forgotten what it once was like, the private solution becomes insatiable when compared to a disfunctional system that supposedly "never worked".

>They started to remove rent control in the early 50s

Your article says that it shifted from federal to state control in the 1950s, not that it was removed.

Realistically they werent properly weakened until the 1970s.