New York fights over a rent freeze. Minneapolis has results

Weeks into New York’s rent freeze, the argument over it has moved to a Manhattan courtroom, where landlords and City Hall are fighting over text messages and whether the mayor leaned on the board that voted it through.

The court will decide whether the freeze was approved properly. What no court can change is what a freeze does: It protects the tenants who already have a lease and adds not one home for the people who don’t. For them, the useful evidence is 1,000 miles west, in Minneapolis, six years into the country’s most closely watched zoning experiment.