Ari Paul has a problem with New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio’s housing plans. Sure, he admires de Blasio’s push for pre-K, his confrontation with charter supporters, his tangling with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and many of the people he’s picked to lead his administration. But when De Blasio allowed the developer of the Domino Sugar plant in Williamsburg to build taller residential towers, even in exchange for adding more affordable housing units, this was a clear reveal that de Blasio was unlikely to escape becoming just another tool of the developers — the real estate “titans are going to call the economic shots.”

The problem with Paul’s analysis is that it acts as if the problems of working class New York has been housing construction run amok — when the problem has been the exact reverse. Manhattan in the last century, in fact, saw a decrease in population from over 2.3 million people in 1910 to less than 1.6 million today. This was counterbalanced by growth of semi-suburban housing in places like Queens, but the core of the city was emptied of hundreds of thousands of people in favor of commercial development.

The inevitable result was rising rents in the central city and, with zoning blocking most new housing there, that demand for housing has rippled out to northern Manhattan and surrounding boroughs, driving up rents and housing prices there as well.