She's now 47 years old and says she's had a hard time finding work as a singer because of her insecurities about crowds and an inexplicable problem remembering lyrics. Maybe she would be pressured into finding a more lucrative career. I have no idea, never having heard her sing. Maybe that subsidized apartment would nurture a brilliant future career. But I wonder if losing the apartment might ultimately be a blessing in disguise for her.
Rent control can be an enabler of mediocrity.
A cheap apartment, like a trust fund, can free an artist from the need to produce anything that anyone wants to pay for. You know you'll never find another deal like it. Two middle-age writers dressed in shabby black clothes were lamenting the public's indifference to their existential insights. After cursing modern literature, one of them confessed, sheepishly, that he was moving uptown. He had inherited his grandmother's rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side.