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Economics ain't rocket science, but as David Bernstein points out, for the business journalists at the NY Times, it might as well be astrophysics:

This article in the NY Times about rent decontrol in Boston and Cambridge shows typical reportorial ignorance of economics. For one thing, the article harps on the vast increase in rents in those two cities since the end of rent control. What the article fails to mention is that housing prices in Boston and Cambridge have also skyrocketed during the same period. It's hardly a market failure for rental prices to go up at a similar (though, from the data I've seen, somewhat lower) rate than real estate in general. Also, the article notes admonishingly that most new construction has been of luxury apartments, not low income housing. Counterpoint: That's irrelevant, it's the total number of units relative to demand that's important. If new luxury housing gets built, older luxury housing becomes less desirable, and so on down the line, so that building luxury units makes things more affordable for those at the bottom of the housing pyramid.