The Danger of Rent Control

If true, this case could — no, will — be used to reform the rent control laws:

A Queens landlord accused of plotting to kill two brothers living in a rent-controlled apartment told cops he struck a deal with another tenant to try to scare the pair into moving, according to a videotaped statement presented in court yesterday.

“He [the tenant] offered me to take out [remove] the people in the apartment,” the landlord, Juan Basagoitia, says on the videotape. “[The tenant] needed some money to go to Canada with his girlfriend. He never told me how it was going to get done. . . . He was going to scare them.”

The tenant and an accomplice sneaked into the apartment in March 2003 and attacked the brothers with hook knives, leaving them with scars on their faces and hands.

Defense lawyer Stewart Orden said his client didn’t know the two would try to kill the brothers.