Environmental review is just another way of saying NIMBY.

Developers building non-rental housing don't care about rent control. In fact, they benefit from rents being high, and from there being a housing shortage, as it makes non-rental housing more financially attractive.

Developers building rental housing shouldn't care much about it, either, as their financing is dependent on what they are going to rent the units out for, not what some grandma who lived in her apartment for 30 years is paying. Grandma's not part of the tenant market for new units, L5 SWEs making 400k/year are.

Rent control isn't the reason you can't build.

> Rent control isn't the reason you can't build.

Can you explain why builders are paying rent control tenants to leave [0]? And where does the payoff money come from? Future rent? Future home buyers?

[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/25/nyregion/new-york-builder...

What % of a development's budget goes to this? I expect it to be less than 2% on the average, across the whole city.

It's not the first, second, or even fifth reason for the supply-side shortage. The costs are passed on to the buyers/renters, and despite that, demand continues to massively exceed supply.

Rent control is amazing deal for old people: Multi-million dollar payouts and insanely cheap rent, but these benefits are paid by the future generation of residents.

As you said, eliminating rent control would lower prices by 2% on average (saving future residents millions) and helps projects be built faster (by removing red tape).