Washington is finally paying attention to affordability. The President has made bringing down prices a centerpiece of his agenda, and even leading progressives are offering ideas. That’s a welcome shift, but federal momentum won’t mean much if states continue piling on the regulatory barriers that made things unaffordable in the first place. And few states illustrate that problem better than New York.
The data on where Americans are choosing to live is unambiguous. Between 2012 and 2023, high-tax, high-regulation states hemorrhaged taxable income to states with lighter regulatory footprints. People aren’t leaving for the weather but for opportunity, affordability, and a higher quality of life. Moving companies will tell you themselves: today’s migration “fits the narrative of professionals and families moving for career opportunities, lower taxes, and a more affordable lifestyle compared to some coastal states.”
New York should be asking itself why it keeps making that list.
Manhattan is the most expensive city in the United States, clocking in at 139% above the national average, and that doesn’t happen by accident. New York consistently ranks among the worst states in the country for homebuilding regulations. Zillow has flagged New York as a “hot” housing market in 2026, with Buffalo ranking second-highest in the country. But that pressure stems from a lack of housing supply and should be a warning sign for policymakers.
The solution isn’t complicated. Researchers at the Berkeley Economic & Society Initiative put it plainly: if Democrats are serious about the cost of living in the states they govern, the path forward is to make it easier to build housing where people want to live and work. Stricter regulations create shortages. Shortages drive up prices. The supply-demand math is not subtle.
So what has Albany done instead? Rather than confront the regulatory barriers driving the housing shortage, New York fast-tracked a ban on market analytics pricing software. Laws like this should be built on clear evidence showing the software actually forces landlords to act in concert or against their own independent business interests. That evidence hasn’t been demonstrated in New York.
Property managers who use this software reportedly reject its pricing recommendations more than half the time, which directly undercuts the claim that the software is effectively setting prices at all. And in New York City specifically, the targeted software was used to help price fewer than 2% of rental units before it was banned. That is a rounding error, not market control or dominance.
The legal landscape is also moving in the wrong direction for proponents of this approach. In a recent Ninth Circuit decision involving Las Vegas hotels, judges rejected the argument that simply relying on the same data source constitutes illegal coordination. New York’s law rests on a theory the courts are increasingly unwilling to accept.
This is what deflection looks like in policy form: identify a politically convenient scapegoat, move fast, and avoid the harder conversation about zoning, permitting, and building regulations that are the actual drivers of New York’s housing crisis.
The “blue to red” migration happening across the country is a lesson in governing because people respond to tangible results. They respond to questions about whether they can afford rent, buy a home or start a business without wading through years of regulatory red tape. They are not waiting for Albany to win an ideological argument about software pricing algorithms.
New York has the tools to be genuinely competitive on affordability, but that requires an honest diagnosis. The housing crisis in this state is a supply problem, plain and simple. Banning analytics tools doesn’t build a single new unit, while reforming zoning and cutting permitting delays does.
The choice between a state people move to, and a state people leave isn’t made in a single policy decision — it’s made in dozens of them, accumulated over years. New York still has time to start making the right ones.